The defeat at the Supreme Court was a rare reversal for Trump’s strategy of seeking to delay his criminal cases with multiple appeals – which he used in his federal cases to buy time until he could use his executive authority to thwart them. Of course, for this to work he had to live up to his end of the bargain and win the election.

New York’s highest court on Thursday rejected Donald Trump’s effort to stop his sentencing from going ahead Friday, leaving the matter in the hands of the Supreme Court. In a letter to Trump’s attorney,