Trump 'hush money' trial judge delays immunity ruling, asked to uphold guilty verdict
The judge who presided over Donald Trump's “hush money” trial is delaying by 10 days his anticipated ruling on whether the verdict making Trump the first president to become a convicted felon should stand.
It follows a recent US Supreme Court ruling granting presidents some immunity from criminal prosecutions.
New York State Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan announced on Tuesday that he would push back his ruling on the immunity question from September 6 to September 16.Merchan will rule first - next week - whether he should recuse himself from the case.
In light of Vice President Kamala Harris’ emergence as the new Democratic presidential nominee - she named Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate Tuesday - Trump's attorneys have again asked Merchan to step down because of his daughter Loren's paid political consulting work on Harris campaigns, including the 2020 Biden-Harris campaign.
Trump attorney Todd Blanche noted in a July 31 letter to Merchan that Harris, a former San Francisco district attorney and California Attorney General, has framed this November's election as a “prosecutor vs a convicted felon.”
Merchan has twice rejected prior defence requests to step down for such alleged political bias he has derided as “innuendos” and “unsupported speculation".
If the judge stays on the case and allows the trial verdict to stand, Trump's sentencing hearing will be on September 18, two days after the immunity ruling.
The Manhattan prosecutors who achieved the historic verdict convicting Trump of 34 felonies are urging Merchan to reject Trump's argument to toss out the verdict.
In a 69-page brief to Judge Juan Merchan, the District Attorney argues a recent US Supreme Court ruling providing presidents broad immunity from criminal prosecutions “has no bearing” on the case.
District Attorney Alan Bragg asserts his office’s prosecution of Trump for falsifying business records to cover up a 2016 campaign hush money payment to pornographic movie actress Stormy Daniels, who says she had sex with Trump in 2006 when he was married to former First Lady Melania Trump, covered “unofficial acts,” not any official acts immunised by the high court.
The prosecution reply brief filed on July 24 is co-signed by Assistant District Attorneys Matthew Colangelo, Christopher Conroy, Susan Hoffinger, Becky Mangold, and Joshua Steinglass.
This team executed the seven-week trial that ended with a jury of 12 New Yorkers convicting Trump on all counts on May 30.
Trump's lawyers filed a motion on July 10, the eve of his original sentencing date, contending certain trial testimony and evidence should have been excluded from the jury's consideration based on the new Supreme Court parameters.
However, the prosecutors write: “The evidence that he claims is affected by the Supreme Court's ruling constitutes only a sliver of the mountains of testimony and documentary proof that the jury considered in finding him guilty of all 34 felony charges beyond a reasonable doubt. Under these circumstances, there is no basis for disturbing the jury's verdict, and defendant's motion should be denied.”
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Trial evidence showed in October 2016, then-Trump Organisation top attorney Michael Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 (£102,000) to enter a non-disclosure agreement, and that from January to December 2017, while Trump was in the White House, Trump and his company reimbursed Cohen more than triple the amount and disguised the payback as normal legal expenses.
The prosecution depicted the Trump Organisation business records underlying the charges – 11 invoices solicited from Cohen, then serving as Trump’s personal attorney in New York; 11 checks signed by Trump or his sons and chief financial officer; and 12 financial ledger entries labelling the checks as a monthly legal retainer – as an election interference conspiracy.
Last year, following Trump's indictment, a federal judge found the hush money scandal to be a private matter unrelated to the former president’s official duties, helping clear the path to the Manhattan trial.
Trump attorneys now say Judge Merchan should have excluded certain trial testimony, for example, from former White House Communications Director Hope Hicks and former White House Executive Assistant Madeleine Westerhout.
A Trump defence attorney did object to Hicks’ appearance during the trial, but Merchan overruled him.
Hicks told the jury about discussing the Daniels hush money scheme when the story was about to become public in 2018, saying Trump told her it was better for the story to come out then instead of before the 2016 election.
Prosecutors disagree that this portion of her testimony should not have been heard, because “that scheme was entirely personal and largely committed before the election, and it had no relationship whatsoever to any official duty of the presidency.”
Westerhout, who handled secretarial tasks from her desk outside the Oval Office, told the jury about also handling personal matters for the president and serving as a liaison with the Trump Organisation. For example, she testified how she received FedEx deliveries from the company containing personal checks for him to sign, including the hush money reimbursement checks for Cohen.
“Westerhout's general descriptions of defendant's work practices also do not trigger any concerns about official acts immunity because she provided no testimony about any particular official act of the president,” prosecutors write.
The Manhattan prosecutors see only a “narrow category of absolute immunity” in the new Supreme Court standard exempting actions derived from a president’s executive powers granted by the Constitution – not the mere fact of occupying the Oval Office.
“As for a President's unofficial acts, there is no immunity," said the prosecutors, quoting the Supreme Court decision, adding; “even if he committed those acts while serving as president.”Prosecutors reject the argument that certain Trump Tweets about the Daniels NDA or Cohen after his guilty plea – characterised by the defence as communicating with the American people as commander-in-chief - about Cohen in 2018 should not have been presented to the jury, because, prosecutors say, the Tweets expressed “his personal opinion about his private attorney does not bear any conceivable relationship to any official duty of the presidency.”
The Supreme Court’s July 1 decision in Trump v United States defining presidential immunity from prosecution stems from the pending federal case against Trump for his role in the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot that temporarily thwarted the certification of his November 2016 Electoral College loss to President Joe Biden and threatened a peaceful transition of power.
On January 13, 2021, the House of Representatives impeached Trump for “incitement of insurrection.”
On February 13, 2021, a majority of the US Senate found Trump guilty, but the 57 votes from all 48 Democrats, both Independents and seven Republicans fell 10 votes short of the two-thirds majority needed for a conviction under the Constitution.
“The principal holding of Trump vs United States concerns the scope of a former President's immunity from criminal prosecution 'for official acts taken during his Presidency,' prosecutors wrote.
“That holding has no bearing here because, as the defendant does not dispute, the charges in this case all involve purely personal conduct, rather than official presidential acts.”
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