President-elect Donald Trump’s attempt to discredit his faith manhattan hush money case based on US Supreme Court’s immunity decision A judge rejected it on Monday.
In his 41-page decision, Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan effectively upheld the 34-count conviction for now, concluding that it Immunity faces decision,
“The use of these acts by people as evidence of decidedly individual acts of falsifying business records poses no danger of intrusion upon the authority and function of the executive branch,” Marchan wrote in his opinion.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office had fought against the effort to vacate the conviction, arguing that the underlying activity occurred before Trump, 78, ascended to the Oval Office.
“Extremely contradictory, Acting Justice Merchan’s decision today in the Manhattan DA witch hunt is a direct violation of the Supreme Court’s ruling on immunity and other long-standing jurisprudence,” Trump communications director Steven Cheung said in a statement.
“This chaotic case should never have been brought, and the Constitution demands that it be immediately dismissed, as President Trump must be allowed to continue the presidential transition process.”
Over the summer, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a president has “absolute” immunity for official acts in office, but neglected to explain how that affected any of the four criminal cases against Trump at the time.
Last month, a The judge dismissed The four-count 2020 election sabotage case against him and former special counsel Jack Smith moved to withdraw his efforts to revive the 40-count classified documents case, which was dismissed by a judge over the summer.
That leaves Trump with only a 13-count Georgia election-tampering indictment — which is stuck in appeals — and a money-related conviction in Manhattan.
Merchan has yet to rule on the merits of a separate effort by Trump’s team to neutralize hush money convictions based on the president-elect’s victory last month.
Trump’s team had pointed to the Justice Department’s policy against convicting a sitting president and argued that upholding the conviction could create “unconstitutional barriers to President Trump’s ability to govern.”
If the conviction is upheld, Trump would be the first convicted felon to enter the White House as president. His lawyers are working to appeal that conviction on several fronts.
Trump was found guilty by a jury in May on charges that he concealed hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels and several others to suppress stories that could be damaging to him during the 2016 campaign. Business records were falsified.
That case, which was based on new legal principles, has attracted bipartisan criticism, including most recently from Senator John Fetterman (D-Pa.), who suggested the case. There was “bulls—” and it was fair to forgive,
Merchan, who oversaw the hush money case against Trump earlier this year while he was on trial, argued in his 41-page decision that “overwhelming evidence of guilt” had been demonstrated during the proceedings.
As Cheung pointed out, Trump allies have emphasized the work that Merchan’s daughter has done in progressive circles, including Vice President Kamala Harris and Democrats.
Bragg’s team stands against any efforts to vacate Trump’s conviction. Instead, he has suggested that the case could be put on hold until Trump completes his second term as president.
Under federal law, Trump cannot be jailed in that case as president.
(TagstoTranslate)Politics(T)US News(T)Guilty(T)Courts(T)Donald Trump(T)New York(T)Stormy Daniels
