Trump asks judge to throw out guilty verdict in ‘hush money’ trial
On his original sentencing date, defence lawyers for Donald Trump formally asked a New York State judge to overrule the historic trial verdict that branded the former president a felon.
Their 52-page motion released on Thursday pressed Judge Juan Merchan to reject the 34 guilty counts in the hush money trial returned by the jury on May 31 following a seven-week trial and two days of deliberations.
Trump attorneys relied on the US Supreme Court’s July 1 decision in Trump v United States granting some presidential immunity from prosecution for official acts.
“The Supreme Court held in Trump that prosecutors cannot use evidence of a former president’s official acts in a criminal prosecution,” the defence motion said.
“Presidential immunity is absolute with respect to a president’s exercise of core powers arising from the Constitution.”
In light of the high court’s ruling, Merchan had already postponed the sentencing hearing to September 18 “if such is still necessary;” it is preceded by a ruling on the immunity question on September 6.
The Trump motion from Todd Blanche and Emil Bove argued Merchan “is duty-bound” to revisit the verdict because the Manhattan District Attorney “violated the presidential immunity doctrine…by relying on evidence relating to President Trump’s official acts in 2017 and 2018.”
Trial testimony and evidence showed after taking office in 2017, then-President Trump executed a hefty reimbursement to his former attorney, Michael Cohen, who had paid pornographic movie actress Stormy Daniels $130,000 (£100,600) to keep quiet during the 2016 campaign about the sexual encounter she says she had with Trump at a Nevada golf resort 10 years earlier.
Trump denies the extramarital liaison, saying as recently as his June 27 debate with President Joe Biden: “I did not have sex with a porn star.”
Trump Organization financial ledgers, invoices solicited from Cohen, and checks signed by Trump, his sons, and his chief financial officer - 34 business records in all - falsely recorded the Cohen payments as a monthly retainer, or normal legal expenses, the jury found.
The new motion criticised the use of prosecution witnesses such as former White House Communications Director Hope Hicks and former White House executive assistant Madeleine Westerhout.
In different ways, Hicks and Westerhout, testifying under subpoena, corroborated elements of the prosecution’s theory of election interference underlying the falsification of business records.
Hicks told the jury about conversations she had with Trump after the Wall Street Journal broke the story of the Daniels deal in January 2018.
"I think Mr Trump's opinion was it was better to be dealing with it now, and that it would have been bad to have that story come out before the election," Hicks testified, a point Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass called “utterly devastating” in his closing argument.
Westerhout testified how Trump was very upset when the Daniels story came out, how Cohen had visited Trump in the Oval Office in early February 2017, right before the reimbursement checks began flowing, and how Trump “preferred to sign things himself,” as he did with most of the $35,000 (£27,000) monthly checks that went to Cohen in 2017.
Trump’s attorneys wrote in their motion that Westerhout was forced “to provide details of how President Trump operated the Executive Branch, including as to national security matters, based on observations that she made while sitting outside the Oval Office.”
They said: “This invasive compelled testimony included information regarding President Trump’s official-capacity ‘work habits,’ ‘preferences,’ ‘relationships and contacts,’ and ‘social media’ practices at the White House.”
The defence motion also criticised prosecutors’ use of Trump's posts to his dormant Twitter account, which the defence attorneys labelled “an official communications channel during his presidency, to communicate with the public regarding matters of public concern.”
Certain 2018 tweets attacked Cohen, who had been arrested by the FBI, for wanting to “flip” against him and “make up stories in order to get a deal.”
The jury heard how Dan Scavino, the White House Director of Social Media, often posted tweets for the president.
“The official-acts conclusion is further supported by the fact that President Trump relied on a White House employee to help him operate the account,” the attorneys wrote.
Because the immunity applies even to the “outer perimeter” of the president’s “official responsibility,” the defence attorneys wrote, the Hicks and Westerhout testimony should have been inadmissible.
They added: “The jury’s verdicts must be vacated because the use of official-acts evidence at trial violated the presidential immunity doctrine.”
The district attorney’s reply brief is due on July 24.
Even before the Supreme Court decision, Trump promised to appeal the verdict.
Want a quick and expert briefing on the biggest news stories? Listen to our latest podcasts to find out What You Need To Know…