Left: Donald Trump speaks with reporters (AP Photo/Evan Vucci). Right: New York Attorney General Letitia James (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews).
New York has responded to Missouri’s requested intervention at the Supreme Court over Donald Trump’s felony hush-money convictions, arguing that the “extraordinary” attempted gambit by the Show Me State’s attorney general to sue the Empire State and shut down Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s (D) ongoing case ahead of sentencing — to the advance the “interests” of the former president — “seriously undermines the integrity of the courts and risks setting a dangerous precedent that encourages a flood of similar, unmeritorious litigation.”
Missouri AG Andrew Bailey (R) earlier this week drew attention to the opposition deadline by saying the high court had “ordered” the Empire State to respond to his motion for leave to file a bill of complaint on Wednesday. New York was always going to have to respond, but that reality does not mean the justices have taken up the case or that they will ultimately grant Bailey leave to file his complaint, even if Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito end up reasserting their individual beliefs that the court has no choice but to grant leave, as Law&Crime has discussed. This is a replay of sorts of the state v. state maneuvering that failed in the aftermath of the 2020 election.
New York, represented by its Attorney General Letitia James (D) and Solicitor General Barbara Underwood, summed up Bailey’s case as a collection of “generalized and speculative grievances of Missouri residents who wish to hear former President Trump speak in person at rallies in Missouri and fear that their ability to do so will be impaired by any sentence imposed on him, or by restrictions that have been imposed on his extrajudicial statements.”
Bailey has asked the justices for a stay of an already loosened gag order on Trump in the Manhattan case and to stay the former president’s “impending sentence” for 34 felony falsification of business records convictions at least until after the 2024 election, even if that sentence is probation.
New York has countered Missouri by telling the justices they should deny the injunction request and deny Bailey leave to file the bill of complaint. Missouri has failed to “present a proper controversy between sovereign States that falls within this Court’s original and exclusive jurisdiction” and it lacks standing because the attempted lawsuit is based on a basket full of assumptions, the opposition said.
Missouri AG Andrew Bailey speaks to reporters after taking the oath of office in 2023. (AP Photo/David A. Lieb, File)
“It is speculative, because the potential sentence and speech restrictions may prove no obstacle to the interests of people who wish to hear from former President Trump. Sentencing has already been adjourned to September at the earliest and may not occur if the trial court grants former President Trump’s pending motion to set aside the verdict,” New York responded. “And he already can speak about all of the topics that Missouri’s declarants have attested they want to hear—including his views on the Manhattan DA, witnesses, jurors, and the trial court judge.”
“Missouri’s purported injury is also generalized, rather than concrete, because it is an interest that could be asserted by anyone,” the response continued. “Ultimately, the purported injury is not sovereign because Missouri is clearly and impermissibly seeking to further the individual interests of former President Trump.”
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Trump has a state forum to challenge both the hush-money verdict and the “mostly terminated” gag order restrictions — and he’s “currently litigating those issues. In addition, most of Bailey’s complaints are filled with baked-in assumptions about a sentencing that’s already been pushed back until September, if it’s going to happen at all following SCOTUS’ immunity case ruling, New York said:
Missouri’s theory of informational harm stemming from the (now- adjourned) sentencing, for example, turns on a chain of speculative inferences, including the assumption that: sentencing will proceed in September; former President Trump will receive a sentence that restricts his travel; this sentence will not be stayed pending appeal; as a result, he will be unable to travel to Missouri when he otherwise might have; and, in turn, Missouri’s electors or voters will not be able to receive information from him personally from within Missouri. Such a “highly attenuated chain of possibilities” is clearly insufficient to establish actual or imminent sovereign injury.
Warning that rewarding Bailey’s efforts would “permit an extraordinary and dangerous end-run around former President Trump’s ongoing state court proceedings and the statutory limitations on this Court’s jurisdiction to review state court decisions,” New York said the justices should not view complaints about “former President Trump’s ability to campaign” as an “actual controversy” between states warranting SCOTUS intervention in a local prosecutor’s case against an individual defendant.
“There is no merit to Missouri’s attempts to identify a cognizable sovereign injury distinct from the individual interests of former President Trump,” the opposition said.
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