A judge on Monday declined to overturn President-elect Donald Trump’s hush money conviction in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent presidential immunity ruling. But the overall future of the issue is unclear.
Manhattan Judge Juan M. Merchan’s decision removes a potential off-ramp from the case before Trump returns to office next month. However, his lawyers have raised other arguments for dismissal.
Prosecutors have said there should be some accommodation for the incoming president, but insist they must remain firm. A jury convicted Trump on May 34 of falsifying business records related to a $130,000 hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels in 2016. Trump has denied wrongdoing.
The allegations included a scheme to hide payments to Daniels in the final days of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign – to keep her from campaigning – and to keep voters from hearing – about her claims of a sexual encounter with a then-married businessman years earlier. He says that there is no sexual relationship between them.
A month after the verdict, the Supreme Court ruled that former presidents could not be prosecuted for official acts — those they performed while running the country — and that prosecutors could not cite those acts to bolster a purely focused case. Personal, informal demeanor.
Trump’s lawyers then cited the Supreme Court’s opinion that the hush money jury found some improper evidence, including Trump’s presidential financial disclosure forms, testimony from some White House aides and social media posts while he was in office.
In Monday’s decision, Marchan rejected the bulk of Trump’s claims that prosecutors had evidence related to official acts and implied immunity.
The judge said that even if he had found some evidence related to official conduct, he would still find that prosecutors’ “decision to use these acts as evidence of individual acts that decided to falsify business records does not pose any threat of intrusion into the authority of the executive branch.”
Even if prosecutors had erroneously introduced evidence that could have been challenged under a defense claim, Marchan continued, “such error was harmless in light of the overwhelming evidence of guilt.”
Prosecutors said the evidence in question was only “a tip” of their case. Trump communications director Steven Cheung on Monday called Merchan’s decision a “direct violation of Supreme Court rulings on immunity and other long-standing jurisprudence.”
“This lawless case should never have been brought, and the Constitution demands that it be dropped immediately,” Cheung said in a statement. The Manhattan district attorney’s office, which prosecuted the case, declined to comment. Trump takes office in January. 20.
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