NEW YORK — Donald Trump’s legal team has formally asked a judge to toss out the former president’s hush money conviction and the indictment that led to his trial, saying last week’s Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity means some of the evidence prosecutors used should not have been allowed.
In a motion made public on Thursday, Trump’s lawyers cited testimony by former White House communications director Hope Hicks about her conversations with Trump when he was president, as well as messages that Trump posted on his Twitter account, which he used to communicate with the public during his term.
Both, they argued, should have been considered official presidential acts, and therefore excluded from the grand jury process and the trial.
“The jury’s verdicts cannot stand,” lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove wrote.
The Supreme Court ruled last week that presidents have immunity for official acts but not private conduct, a sweeping decision that seems likely to impact most, if not all, of Trump’s criminal trials.
As part of the ruling, which split along ideological lines, the conservative majority said evidence related to official acts could not be used against a former president in court. The justices labeled some presidential conduct — such as communications with the Justice Department — as clearly official, but did not define others, leaving those decisions up to trial judges. Whatever they decide will likely be appealed, however, potentially bringing the question back to the Supreme Court.
The high court decision came from a case involving Trump’s federal indictment in D.C., which accuses him of illegally trying to block Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory. But it had immediate repercussions in Manhattan, where Trump — the presumptive Republican nominee in this year’s election — was convicted in May of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to a hush money payment.
He is the first former president convicted of a crime.
Sentencing had been scheduled for Thursday but was tentatively postponed until September byNew York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan to allowTrump’s lawyers and the Manhattan district attorney’s office time to argue over whether evidence used in the case must now be thrown out.
Merchan, will have to decide whether to override the jury’s verdict, which judges are usually reluctant to do. That said, the legal question at issue is unprecedented.
Blanche and Bove wrote that prosecutors relied heavily on “official act” evidence throughout the case, beginning with the grand jury that indicted Trump in March 2023. Merchan “now has the authority to address these injustices, and the Court is duty-bound to do so in light of the Supreme Court’s decision,” their 52-page filing said.
The attorneys also argued that any legal rationale Merchan might consider to uphold the verdict should not undo the error of including prohibited evidence. Even if Merchan found that there was enough other evidence to support the jury’s finding, they said,the guilty verdict should still be reversed.
If Merchan tosses out the verdict and dismisses the indictment, it would mean Trump cannot be retried on the original charges. The judge would have to decide if prosecutors maypresent the case to a new grand jury panel without using evidence found to be problematic.
In addition to Trump’s tweets and the testimony from Hicks, the defense lawyers saidevidence offered by former White House aideMadeleine Westerhout should have been excluded.
Blanche and Bove pointed to prosecutor Joshua Steinglass’s closing argument to illustrate that testimony from Hicks and Westerhout — which the defense lawyers referred to as “unconstitutional official acts evidence” — was vital to the district attorney’s trial presentation.
Trump’s tweets related to the hush money payments, they added, were on “a Twitter account that has been recognized as a formal channel of White House communication in the Trump Administration.”
If the guilty verdict stands, Trump faces up to four years in state prison — although given his lack of a prior criminal record and the logistics involved with jailing a former president, incarceration would be unusual. Even before the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling, he had vowed to appeal.
Trump’s New York trial centered on a $130,000payment to adult-film star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election in exchange for her silence about a sexual encounter she said she had with Trump at a celebrity golf tournament in 2006. Trump, who denies having sex with Daniels, reimbursed his former attorney Michael Cohen for that payment in a set of installments in 2017, after Trump had taken office.
Prosecutors have signaled that they will tell Merchanthe Supreme Court decision should have no impact on the trial, since the falsification of recordsstemmed from an agreement made before Trump was president. Their response to Trump’s motion is due by Sept. 24.
A federal judge in New York, ruling last year on whether the trial should be moved from state court to federal court, said Trump’s role in the Daniels transaction was unrelated to his official position as president.
Source link : https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/07/11/trump-immunity-new-york-trial-dismiss/
Author :
Publish date : 2024-07-12 01:19:08
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.