Lawyers for President-elect Donald Trump on Friday criticized a suggestion by Manhattan prosecutors that a judge should consider an option for Trump’s “hush money” case, which is typically used when a defendant dies before sentencing .
In a filing earlier this week, prosecutors had suggested that Judge Juan Merchan could end Trump’s criminal case “by indicating that the jury’s verdict was not overturned and the indictment was not dismissed.” They acknowledged that it was an option that arises when defendants die before the end of the proceedings, but called it a “novel” solution to the dilemma of a case interrupted, after conviction, by the election of an accused to the presidency.
In a response Friday, Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, Trump’s lawyers, called the idea “unbalanced.” They said it was an “extremely disturbing and irresponsible analogy between President Trump – who has survived multiple assassination attempts and will soon be “the only person who single-handedly makes up a branch of government” – and a hypothetical dead defendant. »
The filing comes as Trump and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg have sought to influence Merchan’s next decision on how to pursue the case. Trump was convicted in May, but his sentencing was repeatedly postponed, and in the meantime he was elected president.
Trump is scheduled to return to the White House on January 20.
Bragg’s office says Trump’s election should not call into question the decision of the 12 jurors who found him guilty of dozens of crimes. Trump’s lawyers argued in the filing Friday and in a motion to dismiss earlier this month that the Constitution requires his conviction to be vacated and the case against him dropped, because he was elected.
“The Federal Constitution, which guarantees presidential immunity, is the supreme law,” Blanche and Bove wrote, in a section of their filing titled “Presidential Immunity Categorically Excludes Further Proceedings.”
Prosecutors argued in their previous filing that presidential immunity was not yet applicable because Trump had not yet returned to the Oval Office.
“There is no such thing as president-elect immunity,” they wrote, urging Merchan to make a decision before Trump’s inauguration.
A unanimous jury concluded in May, Trump was guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records. The verdict makes Trump the first former president ever convicted of crimes. On November 5, he became the first person with a criminal record in United States history to be elected president.
Trump has pleaded not guilty in the case and has promised to appeal his conviction if it is not thrown out.
