Manhattan prosecutors are urging the judge overseeing Donald Trump’s hush money trial to preserve the jury’s 34-count guilty verdict, even if it means postponing any sentencing until after his presidency comes to an end in 2029.
But Trump can’t be shielded from criminal prosecution as “president-elect,” because “president-elect immunity does not exist,” they wrote in a lengthy filing made public on Tuesday.
Even after his inauguration, Trump’s “temporary immunity” as the sitting president “will still not justify the extreme remedy of discarding the jury’s unanimous guilty verdict and wiping out the already-completed phases of this criminal proceeding,” lawyers for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg told New York Justice Juan Merchan.
Prosecutors’ 82-page filing in response to Trump’s attempt to toss the case altogether after his election victory suggested that “at most” the judge could grant “temporary accommodations” to avoid interfering with the presidency.
But prosecutors shot down a long list of arguments from Trump’s attorneys, including their “false claims of misconduct” that have already been “examined and rejected by this and many other courts.”
“Apart from defense counsel’s disingenuous and repeated effort to malign and menace [prosecutors], the Court, and their families with inflammatory falsehoods and conspiracy theories, there is no misconduct here — much less any showing of the ‘exceptionally serious misconduct’ required to support dismissal in the interest of justice,” they wrote.
Trump’s own conduct in the case and his “dangerous pattern of harassment and intimidation” should also weigh heavily in the judge’s decision to preserve his conviction, including his “ominous and violent“ rhetoric and “frequent attacks on witnesses and their families” based on “transparent falsehoods,” proscutors said.
“He threatened ‘death and destruction’ if he was indicted and posted a photo of himself wielding a baseball bat at the back of the District Attorney’s head,” prosecutors noted as they outlined a history of his public attacks.
Trump’s “pervasive history of attempting to interfere with the administration of justice in this case and others” includes 10 criminal contempt charges, resulting in thousands of dollars in fines.
The latest arguments from Manhattan prosecutors in this case could be their last, at least for now — Judge Merchan is imminently expected to issue a decision on whether to preserve the case, based on arguments from Trump’s attorneys and prosecutors, whose lengthy filing offered broad overview of the historic case against the former president.
Last week, Trump’s attorneys argued that presidential “immunity” from prosecution, regardless of the crimes committed, should apply to Trump after his election, despite the fact a jury convicted him six months earlier.
The “disruptions to the institution of the Presidency violate the Presidential immunity doctrine because they threaten the functioning of the federal government,” his attorneys wrote in a 72-page filing.
But what Trump’s attorneys are arguing is for blanket immunity from both before and after his immunity, “wiping out the effects of an indictment and jury verdict that took place before he was even re-elected,” according to prosecutors.
Besides, none of the actions at the center of Trump’s hush money case have anything to do with the “official acts” protected under the Supreme Court’s immunity decision, according to prosecutors.
“Falsifying business records to cover up personal payments to an adult film star” are “not related” to a president’s official acts, prosecutors wrote.
Judge Merchan has agreed to postpone Trump’s sentencing date indefinitely as he hears the latest arguments on whether to vacate the conviction and dismiss the case.
In last week’s filing, Trump’s attorneys argued his “overwhelming victory” and his status as a “soon-to-be sitting President” entitles him to a broader shield of immunity, and that the “continued criminal proceedings pose a constitutionally unacceptable risk of diversion” from his upcoming presidency.
On May 30, a jury found Trump guilty of falsifying business records in connection with a scheme to silence adult film star Stormy Daniels, whose story about having sex with Trump threatened his 2016 presidential campaign.
Trump’s reimbursements to his then-attorney Michael Cohen, who paid off Daniels, were falsely recorded in accounting records as “legal expenses.”
Further delays in his sentencing, and the potential for the case to be frozen for four years or tossed altogether, mean that Trump will enter office having avoided any consequences for the allegations and convictions against him.
Special counsel Jack Smith has effectively closed the federal criminal cases against the former president, for now, and an appeals court in Georgia has postponed arguments related to his election interference case in Fulton County.
