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Trump Seeks to Set Aside NY Hush Money Verdict Hours after SCOTUS Ruling
By: Michael R. Sisak & Jake Offenhartz
Donald Trump’s lawyers on Monday asked the New York judge who presided over his hush money trial to set aside his conviction and delay his sentencing, scheduled for next week.
The letter to Judge Juan M. Merchan cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling earlier Monday and asked the judge to delay Trump’s sentencing while he weighs the high court’s decision and how it could influence the New York case, according to the letter obtained by The Associated Press.
The lawyers argue that the Supreme Court’s decision confirmed a position the defense raised earlier in the case that prosecutors should have been precluded from introducing some evidence they said constituted official presidential acts, according to the letter.
In prior court filings, Trump contended he is immune from prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office. His lawyers did not raise that as a defense in the hush money case, but they argued that some evidence — including Trump’s social media posts about former lawyer Michael Cohen — comes from his time as president and should have been excluded from the trial because of immunity protections.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office declined comment Monday night.
The Supreme Court on Monday ruled for the first time that former presidents have broad immunity from prosecution, extending the delay in the Washington criminal case against Trump on charges he plotted to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss.
In a historic 6-3 ruling, the court’s conservative majority, including the three justices appointed by Trump, narrowed the case against him and returned it to the trial court to determine what is left of special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment. Trump celebrated a “BIG WIN” on X.
The ruling reflected a muscular view of presidential power, and left dissenting judges to criticize it as undermining a core democratic principle that no person is above the law.
The court’s decision highlighted how the justices have been thrust into an impactful role in the November presidential election. Earlier, they had rejected efforts to bar him from the ballot because of his actions following the 2020 election. The court last week also limited an obstruction charge faced by Trump and used against hundreds of his supporters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The split among the justices also in many ways mirrored the political divide in the country.
Trump was convicted in New York of 34 counts of falsifying business records, arising from what prosecutors said was an attempt to cover up a hush money payment just before the 2016 presidential election.
Merchan instituted a policy in the run-up to the trial requiring both sides to send him a one-page letter summarizing their arguments before making longer court filings. He said he did that to better manage the docket, so he was not inundated with voluminous paperwork.
In denying Trump’s bid to move the trial from New York state court to federal court last year, a federal judge found that the allegations at the center of the case pertained to Trump’s personal life, and do not “reflect in any way the color of the President’s official duties.”
“The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the matter was a purely a personal item of the President — a cover-up of an embarrassing event,” U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein wrote in the ruling. (AP)
