A divided Supreme Court has rejected President-elect Donald Trump’s bid to delay sentencing in his New York hush money case.

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.

Donald Trump will be sentenced Friday in his New York hush money case, after the Supreme Court deemed his sentence “relatively insubstantial.”