Donald Trump is seeking to stop his sentencing from going ahead Friday as his lawyers appeal a pair of rulings upholding his historic criminal conviction for the 2016 Stormy Daniels hush money scheme. Late Sunday — two days after Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan denied Trump’s requests to throw out the case and guilty verdicts against him in light of his election win — the president-elect’s lawyers notified the judge they would appeal the rulings along with other defense requests he denied in December and said he should “immediately vacate” the sentencing set for Friday at 9:30 a.m. Merchan, on Jan. 3, flatly rejected Trump’s position that he was in any way protected as president-elect from criminal proceedings based on the Supreme Court’s July 1 ruling on presidential immunity and rejected his arguments that the will of voters should override that of the jury who found him guilty. It followed his ruling on Dec. 16, which also found that the Supreme Court immunity decision had no bearing on Trump’s criminal case in Manhattan. The judge unexpectedly ruled Friday that Trump must appear in person or virtually for his sentencing on Jan. 10 to bring closure to the case and avoid causing “immeasurable damage to the citizenry’s confidence in the Rule of Law.” He said he would impose a sentence of an unconditional discharge, which means Trump will not be subjected to jail time, probation, fines or any other form of punishment. The scheduling of Trump’s sentencing for around 10 days before his inauguration came as a surprise, with prosecutors previously conceding that Trump may not be sentenced until 2029. In court papers made public Monday, Trump’s lawyers, who have argued the case’s existence will impact his ability to govern, said their impending appeals to a mid-level New York appellate court should automatically halt the proceedings from going forward. In the alternative, they said Merchan himself should grant an immediate pause. “[The] court should not continue to act while its very power to act in the first place is under appellate consideration,” Trump lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove wrote.  “[T]here is no legal basis to rush ahead to sentencing rather than impose a stay, other than [the Manhattan district attorney’s] preference to get this done prior to President Trump’s inauguration … so that DA Bragg can tell voters in his upcoming election that he completed the case,” they later wrote. Then-former President Donald Trump leaves Manhattan Criminal Court after being found guilty in his hush money trial on May 30, 2024. (Seth Wenig-Pool/Getty Images) Trump spokesman Steven Cheung, in a statement Monday, said, “President Trump’s legal team moved to stop the unlawful sentencing in the Manhattan D.A.’s Witch Hunt. The Supreme Court’s historic decision on Immunity, the state constitution of New York, and other established legal precedent mandate that this meritless hoax be immediately dismissed.” A spokeswoman for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who brought the case, said, “We will be filing our response with the court this afternoon.” Merchan’s denials on Friday set up Trump to take office as the first felon to serve as U.S. president. A jury on May 30 found him guilty of falsifying business records in 2017 relating to his reimbursement to Michael Cohen for paying off porn star Daniels in the leadup to the 2016 election. Trial evidence showed that the payoff was one of at least three made to suppress unflattering information about his past from voters in 2016. The charges carry up to four years in prison. Trump decried the case and officials involved in a string of Truth Social posts over the weekend, claiming, “I never falsified business records. It is a fake, made up charge by a corrupt judge who is just doing the work of the Biden/Harris Injustice Department, an attack on their political opponent, ME! He created a case where there was none.”