A New York judge on Monday rejected a request from President-elect Donald Trump to postpone Friday’s scheduled sentencing in his New York hush money case.

The ruling means Trump will have to get an appeals court to block his conviction if he fails to appear at the trial 10 days before he is scheduled to be sworn in as president for a second non-consecutive term in the White House.

Trump’s lawyers had argued earlier Monday to Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan that the sentencing should be automatically stayed pending an appeal of recent decisions he made in the case.

Merchan rejected this argument.

“This court has reviewed defendant’s arguments in support of his motion and concludes that they are largely a repetition of arguments he has made numerous times in the past,” Merchan wrote in a decision.

“Furthermore, this court finds that the authorities relied upon by defendant in the present motion are largely factually distinguishable from the actual record or are not legally applicable,” the judge wrote.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office had previously asked Merchan to deny Trump’s request to delay his sentencing pending an appeal.

The prosecutor’s office said there was a “strong public interest in expeditious prosecution and the finality of the criminal proceedings – interests that are particularly salient here in light of the jury’s guilty verdict.”

Trump was convicted in May of 34 counts of falsifying business records related to a hush-money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016, just before that year’s presidential election.

Merchan said last week that he was not inclined to sentence Trump to prison in the case and also suggested he would impose a sentence that did not include probation or a fine.

The same day, Merchan rejected arguments that he should dismiss the case in light of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that presidents enjoy presumptive immunity from prosecution for official acts while in the White House and because of the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause.

The prosecutor’s motion on Monday said Trump would “suffer no harm from the conclusion” of the case through conviction because Merchan has “already indicated his intent to impose the lowest sentence permitted by law,” which would allow him to do so to appeal his conviction.

In a statement Monday, Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said: “Today, President Trump’s legal team took steps to stop the wrongful conviction as part of the Manhattan District Attorney’s witch hunt.”

“The Supreme Court’s historic decision on immunity, the New York State Constitution and other established precedents demand that this baseless hoax be immediately rejected,” Cheung said.