Former President Donald Trump and others have asserted that his New York criminal prosecution, particularly the continued gag order and impending sentencing following a guilty verdict in May, constitutes election interference and a violation of the rights of Trump and millions of his supporters.

Missouri's Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey made such arguments in a lawsuit filed against New York in the U.S. Supreme Court, but the high court on Monday declined to allow that lawsuit to proceed and rejected a request to intervene in the matter, according to Fox News.

The requests from the Missouri AG were considered legal longshots but the denials were still disappointing to some.

Supreme Court denial and dismissal

SCOTUSblog reported that, following former President Trump's criminal conviction in New York, Missouri AG Bailey asked the Supreme Court for permission to file an election interference lawsuit against New York along with a requested stay on the continuing gag order and impending sentencing hearing.

On Monday, however, in an unsigned order, the court announced that "Missouri’s motion for leave to file a bill of complaint is denied, and its motion for preliminary relief or a stay is dismissed as moot."

The order added that Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito "would grant the motion for leave to file the bill of complaint but would not grant other relief."

SCOTUSblog observed that Bailey had accused New York of having brought "transparently weak charges for the transparent purpose of trying to impose political damage against Trump and trying to restrain his ability to campaign in advance of an election forecasted by the polls to be very close.”

Predictably, Bailey's counterpart in the Empire State, Democratic Attorney General Letitia James, opposed the move by Bailey and accused him of pursuing an "extraordinary and dangerous end-run around" the New York judicial system and of "seeking to further the individual interests of former President Trump."

"The fight is not over"

In response to the Supreme Court's order, AG Bailey said in an X post, "It’s disappointing that the Supreme Court refused to exercise its constitutional responsibility to resolve state v. state disputes. I will continue to prosecute our lawsuit against @KamalaHarris @JoeBiden’s DOJ for coordinating the illicit prosecutions against President Trump."

In a separate post a short time later, he wrote, "New York is working to hijack our national election and jail President Trump. Missourians absolutely have an interest in ensuring that does not happen. The fight is not over."

Fox News reported that an attorney for Trump, David Gelman, said of the denial, "It was a Hail Mary effort by the Missouri AG to get [the Supreme Court] to block the legal proceedings. That’s called thinking outside of the box," and added, "This still doesn’t mean the sentencing will happen in September and if it does, it will be appealed faster than the Democrats dropping Biden."

AG Bailey going after New York, Biden-Harris DOJ

On July 3, AG Bailey announced that he had filed an election interference lawsuit against New York and said in the filing of the prosecution against Trump, "This lawfare is poisonous to American democracy. The American people ought to be able to participate in a presidential election free from New York’s interference. Any gag order and sentence should be stayed until after the election."

Just a couple of weeks later, on July 16, in the wake of the failed assassination attempt against Trump, Bailey filed a related brief that urged New York to vacate the conviction and prosecution of the former president, and said, "This attack came in the days after New York tethered him to a courtroom, so they could launch a politically motivated, legally specious, and corrupt prosecution against him And still, he is gagged and unable to speak freely as he campaigns."

Separate but related, Bailey also issued a May 9 press release to demand the Biden-Harris administration turn over any relevant documents related to Trump's New York case as part of an investigation into alleged collusion between the federal Justice Department and the New York prosecutors.