Donald Trump spoke with Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito hours before urging the court to postpone his upcoming sentencing in his hush money case.
The conservative justice told ABC News that he agreed to take the incoming president’s call to recommend a law clerk for a position in his administration.
“I agreed to discuss this matter with President-elect Trump, and he called me yesterday afternoon,” Alito told CNN.
“We did not discuss the emergency application he filed today, and indeed, I was not even aware at the time of our conversation that such an application would be filed,” Alito says.
“We also did not discuss any other matter that is pending or might in the future come before the Supreme Court or any past Supreme Court decisions involving the President-elect.”
Trump, desperate to return to the White House with a clean slate following the defeat of his criminal prosecutions, is set to become the first criminally convicted president in US history, unless the Supreme Court intervenes.
He is set to be sentenced by New York Justice Juan Merchan in Manhattan criminal court on January 10, more than eight months after a unanimous jury convicted him of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
The president-elect will be inaugurated ten days later, on January 20.
The Supreme Court will also hear oral arguments on Friday in a case deciding whether the federal government can prohibit the immensely popular social media app TikTok from operating in the United States.
Trump petitioned the court to postpone the impending ban, claiming that he “alone possesses the consummate dealmaking expertise, the electoral mandate, and the political will” to resolve the matter.
In a filing on Wednesday, the president-elect’s attorneys argued that the Supreme Court should halt his hush money proceedings “to prevent grave injustice and harm to the institution of the presidency and the operations of the federal government.”
The court, which includes three conservative justices appointed by Trump, was asked to determine whether a landmark decision on presidential “immunity” also applies to Trump as a private citizen.
In May, a jury of 12 New Yorkers convicted Trump of falsifying business records to conceal reimbursement payments to then-attorney Michael Cohen, who paid “hush money” to adult film star Stormy Daniels, whose story about having sex with Trump threatened to derail Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Trump’s lawyers argue that the evidence used against him at trial should have been protected by the Supreme Court’s “immunity” decision as part of the protected “official” acts of the presidency, and that the high court’s decision should preclude any criminal prosecution of a president-elect.
Attorneys for Justice Merchan and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg are expected to respond to Trump’s filing on January 9.
Alito has faced widespread criticism for joining Supreme Court decisions that have sided with Trump and right-wing interests, including July’s “immunity” decision, which overturned the president-elect’s criminal cases. Alito also wrote the Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v Wade and revoked the constitutional right to abortion care.
He also rejected calls from Congressional Democrats to recuse himself from matters involving the president-elect, who has repeatedly sought Supreme Court intervention in his campaign for the presidency.
Alito was also the subject of a number of investigative reports detailing his relationship with right-wing figures representing Republican interests.
Alito resisted calls for his resignation after an upside-down U.S. flag and a “Appeal to Heaven” flag — banners waved during Capitol riots and by supporters of the “stop the steal” movement supporting Trump’s false claims of election fraud — were discovered at his properties following the 2020 presidential election.
