The former president has separately sued the judge in a state appeals court, claiming that the judge overstepped his jurisdiction when he denied Trump’s presidential “immunity” defense by allowing the sentencing date to move forward without an appeals court decision on “immunity.”

Manhattan Acting Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan denied a defense request to stay sentencing pending appeal. The defense team is now asking a mid-level appeals court to find the judge does not have the jurisdiction to issue rulings on presidential immunity matters.

New York’s Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, refused to stop Trump’s sentencing Thursday morning, as the president-elect went to the court after both Merchan and a New York appeals judge declined to pause it while Trump appeals two orders Merchan issued upholding the guilty verdict.

Donald Trump’s lawyers turned to the nation’s highest court to call off Friday’s sentencing in his hush money case in New York.