Manhattan DA suggests freezing Trump’s case while he is President

NEW YORK — Manhattan prosecutors on Tuesday rebuffed President-elect Donald Trump’s request to dismiss his criminal conviction in the wake of his electoral victory, signaling instead their willingness to freeze the case while he holds office.

In a letter to the judge overseeing the case, prosecutors from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office emphasized that a jury had convicted Trump of falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal. Prosecutors and judges are often loath to unravel a jury’s verdict.

But acknowledging the unprecedented nature of the case — Trump would be the first felon to serve as president — prosecutors raised the prospect of a four-year freeze so that he will not be sentenced for his crimes until he is out of office.

The judge, Juan Merchan, will decide in the coming weeks whether to freeze the case or dismiss it outright, a momentous ruling that will shape the outcome of the only one of Trump’s four criminal cases that made it to trial. Dismissing the case would further embolden Trump as he enters his second presidential term, solidifying an aura of invincibility around him.

In their letter, prosecutors spoke out against a dismissal, urging the judge to balance the interests of the presidency with “the integrity of the criminal justice system.”

“The people deeply respect the office of the president, are mindful of the demands and obligations of the presidency, and acknowledge that defendant’s inauguration will raise unprecedented legal questions,” prosecutors wrote. “We also deeply respect the fundamental role of the jury in our constitutional system.”

In a recent letter to the district attorney’s office, Trump’s lawyers requested that the prosecutors proactively move to dismiss the case. They argued that doing so would “avoid unconstitutional impediments to President Trump’s ability to govern,” citing the “complex, sensitive and intensely time-consuming” presidential transition process.

District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a career prosecutor and elected Democrat, had limited and unappealing options for responding. He could have either dropped the case, a move that would have voided the jury’s verdict and alienated his liberal Manhattan base, or suggested some way to pause it, potentially intensifying Trump’s ire and drawing a legal challenge.

His prosecutors, who took a week to deliberate before delivering Tuesday’s much-anticipated response, ultimately determined that there was no law requiring the dismissal of a jury conviction obtained before a defendant was elected president. They raised the four-year freeze as a preferable alternative to a dismissal, highlighting “the need to balance competing constitutional interests.”

But Trump, eager to clear his criminal record, will now take his dismissal request to Merchan as soon as this week, setting in motion a legal battle that could cast a shadow on his second presidential term and ultimately reach the Supreme Court. That fight will almost certainly delay Trump’s sentencing, which had been scheduled for next week, as prosecutors asked the judge to pause the case while both sides submit formal arguments.

A spokesperson for Trump, Steven Cheung, celebrated the delay, calling it “a total and definitive victory for President Trump and the American people.”

He added: “The lawless case is now stayed, and President Trump’s legal team is moving to get it dismissed once and for all.”

That effort will tee up a legally and politically fraught decision for Merchan, the no-nonsense judge who presided over Trump’s seven-week trial this year.

Even as Trump has accused Merchan of being “biased” and “corrupt” — and leveled personal attacks at his daughter, a Democratic political consultant — the judge has vowed to apply “the rules of law evenhandedly.”

It is unclear how Merchan will eventually rule as he balances the weight of a jury verdict against the extraordinary status of the defendant.

A former prosecutor known for his law-and-order leanings, Merchan might be hesitant to throw out the verdict. Instead, he could be more amenable to freezing the case, having postponed the sentencing twice.

Long sentencing delays are not unheard-of. When defendants are ill — or cooperating with prosecutors against other defendants — it can take months or years for them to be sentenced.

But another delay for Trump, this one lasting four years, would underscore the sharp reversal in his legal fortunes. Just a few months ago, Trump was facing the prospect of time behind bars in New York, as well as trials in three other criminal cases.

Now, all four cases may unravel. In July, a judge Trump appointed during his first term dismissed his federal classified documents case in Florida in its entirety. The same month, his federal election interference case in Washington was upended following the Supreme Court’s landmark decision granting him broad immunity for official actions taken as president.

While the federal special counsel who brought those cases sought to revive them, Trump’s victory thwarted those plans. The judge overseeing his election interference case in Washington recently paused all filing deadlines while the special counsel, Jack Smith, weighed whether to drop the case.

The future is less clear in Georgia, where Trump’s state racketeering case has been on hold for months while an appeals court weighs whether to disqualify the prosecutor. At some point, Trump’s lawyers are expected to call for a long delay if not an outright dismissal.

Trump’s lawyers will not settle for a delay in Manhattan, and should Merchan decide against a dismissal, he will not have the final word.

The former and future president could appeal the judge’s decision in either state or federal court. If he loses, the case might wind its way to the Supreme Court, where the 6-3 conservative majority includes three justices Trump appointed.

As he gears up for a legal dogfight, Trump might eventually revamp his legal team. Last week, he picked two of the lawyers who represented him at trial, Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, for senior roles at the Justice Department, most likely creating an opening for a new group of appellate lawyers to take over.

A new legal team could also inherit Trump’s separate effort to overturn his conviction based on the Supreme Court’s immunity decision. Within hours of the ruling in July, Trump’s lawyers had moved to throw out the verdict.

Manhattan prosecutors have argued that the immunity ruling had “no bearing” on their case, noting that Trump’s cover-up of the sex scandal was unrelated to his presidency. Merchan was poised to rule on the matter last week but shelved the decision in light of Trump’s new bid to have the case dismissed.

Trump’s two-pronged attack on the Manhattan case — wielding both the immunity ruling and the election results — demonstrated his expansive view of presidential power.

In arguing that the case should be dismissed because of his election, Trump’s lawyers are likely to rely on broad interpretations of a 1963 law that enshrined the importance of a smooth transition into the presidency, as well as a long-standing Justice Department policy that a sitting president cannot face federal criminal prosecution.

That policy undoubtedly applies to both of Trump’s federal criminal cases, but its authority over Bragg, a local prosecutor who secured Trump’s conviction before the presidential election, is an open question.

The stakes remain high for Trump. He faces up to four years in prison after he leaves the White House, though he would most likely be sentenced to far less time or to probation.

A New York Times examination found that over the past decade in Manhattan, more than one-third of convictions for falsifying business records resulted in jail or prison time for the defendants.

Trump has maintained his innocence and blasted Bragg for bringing the charges against him, which culminated in May with a jury of 12 New Yorkers handing down a guilty verdict on 34 counts of falsifying business records.

The case arose from porn actor Stormy Daniels’ account of a sexual encounter with Trump, which threatened to derail his first presidential run in 2016. To keep the story under wraps, Trump’s fixer, Michael D. Cohen, reached a $130,000 hush-money deal with Daniels.

Trump eventually repaid Cohen, who later broke with his boss and became a star witness at his trial. The former president, Cohen testified, orchestrated a scheme to falsify records and hide the true purpose of the reimbursement.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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