Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office suggested several ways the judge overseeing Trump’s hush money trial could uphold the 34-count guilty verdict against the president-elect while respecting the immunity he receives as president.
While Trump was convicted in May, his sentencing hearing was pushed back multiple times to address a new Supreme Court ruling on immunity and then postponed indefinitely after Trump’s reelection.
Prosecutors floated several possible courses of action for New York State Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan in a court filing Tuesday, including freezing the case while Trump serves as president and taking jail time off the table.
The district attorney’s office argued vehemently that Merchan should disregard Trump’s team’s request to toss the case immediately.
“There are no grounds for such relief now, prior to defendant’s inauguration, because President-elect immunity does not exist,” they wrote, going on to point out there are still several weeks before Trump takes the oath of office and becomes immune from prosecution.
They also said that the Supreme Court ruling, which gave presidents broad immunity for “official acts,” does not apply to the facts of the hush money case, which “all involve purely personal and unofficial conduct.” Merchan has yet to rule on Trump’s earlier motion to dismiss the case on presidential immunity grounds.
Trump’s trial centered on a $130,000 hush money payment made to porn actor Stormy Daniels in the final days before the 2016 presidential election, during a tumultuous time for Trump’s campaign. A dozen New Yorkers agreed that a scheme to reimburse Trump’s personal attorney at the time, Michael Cohen, resulted in falsified business records, a low-level felony.
Trump pleaded not guilty, maintaining that he did not have an affair with Daniels and did nothing wrong.
If Merchan does not sentence Trump before his inauguration, prosecutors suggested pausing the proceedings for the duration of Trump’s term, picking them back up in 2029.
They also made a suggestion in the event Merchan agrees with Trump’s attorneys that pressing pause would still interfere with his ability to serve as president because he would have the threat of imprisonment hanging over his head the entire time. Merchan could close the case with a notation stating that “the jury verdict removed the presumption of innocence; that defendant was never sentenced; and that his conviction was neither affirmed nor reversed on appeal because of presidential immunity,” prosecutors said.
They noted that it’s a move some judges make when a defendant dies in the time between their conviction and sentencing.
Alternatively, Merchan could address the interference concerns by removing the possibility that Trump is sentenced to jail, prosecutors suggested.
They noted what many legal experts have said about the case: that while Trump faces up to four years behind bars, his lack of a prior criminal record means he would probably serve little to no jail time.
Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung dismissed the 82-page document as “a pathetic attempt to salvage the remains of an unconstitutional and politically motivated hoax.”
Democracy In The Balance
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“This lawless case should have never been brought, and the Constitution demands that it be immediately dismissed,” he said in a statement, The Associated Press reported.