The court’s 5-4 order Thursday clears the way for Judge Juan M. Merchan to impose a sentence Friday on Trump, who was convicted in what prosecutors called an attempt to cover up a $130,000 hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels.

New York’s Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, also 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.

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.