Manhattan prosecutors are urging the judge who oversaw Donald Trump’s criminal hush-money trial to uphold his conviction, seeking to cast doubt on the former president’s long-shot bid to overturn the case because of a recent Supreme Court ruling.
In a court filing made public Thursday, the Manhattan district attorney’s office argued that the Supreme Court’s decision this month granting Trump broad immunity for official actions he took in the White House had “no bearing on this prosecution.”
The Manhattan charges did not hinge on official acts; instead, prosecutors noted, Trump was convicted of covering up a sex scandal that had threatened to derail his 2016 campaign, which did not involve his conduct as president.
In May, a jury of 12 New Yorkers convicted Trump on all 34 felony counts of falsifying records to cover up a hush-money payment to a porn actor, Stormy Daniels, in the final days of the 2016 campaign. Trump’s fixer at the time, Michael Cohen, paid Daniels $130,000 to bury her story of a sexual liaison with Trump. Trump repaid Cohen soon after ascending to the presidency and approved plans to lie on company paperwork to hide the nature of the reimbursement, the jury found.
In a recent filing to the judge who presided over the Manhattan trial, Juan M. Merchan, Trump’s lawyers contended the Supreme Court’s decision had invalidated at least some evidence presented in Manhattan, including the testimony of former White House employees and tweets Trump sent as president. The Supreme Court had held that official acts could be inadmissible as evidence — even if a case concerned private misconduct.
But the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, fired back this week, arguing that the former president’s lawyers had missed their window of opportunity to raise the immunity defense and then distorted the Supreme Court’s ruling once it emerged.
Todd Blanche, a lawyer for Trump, declined to comment on the district attorney’s filing. But in a two-page letter to Merchan on Thursday, he attacked “the jury’s flawed and unjust” verdict and argued that the prosecutors’ filing contained several “legal and factual misrepresentations.”
Merchan agreed to rule on the verdict Sept. 6. If he sides with prosecutors and upholds the conviction, he will impose a sentence Sept. 18. Trump faces up to four years in prison, though Merchan could sentence him to a few weeks in jail or even probation.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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