Donald Trump´s lawyers immediately attempted to seize upon the Supreme Court ruling granting him immunity by asking a New York judge to delay sentencing in his hush money trial.
His attorney on Monday sent a letter asking to set aside his conviction and delay his sentencing, scheduled for next week.
The letter to Judge Juan M. Merchan cited the U.S. Supreme Court´s ruling earlier Monday and asked the judge to delay Trump´s sentencing while he weighs the high court´s decision and how it could influence the New York case.
The lawyers argue that the Supreme Court´s decision confirmed a position the defense raised earlier in the case that prosecutors should have been precluded from introducing some evidence they said constituted official presidential acts, according to the letter.
In prior court filings, Trump contended he is immune from prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office.
His lawyers did not raise that as a defense in the hush money case, but they argued that some evidence – including Trump´s social media posts about former lawyer Michael Cohen – comes from his time as president and should have been excluded from the trial because of immunity protections.
The Manhattan district attorney´s office declined comment Monday night.
The Supreme Court on Monday ruled for the first time that former presidents have broad immunity from prosecution.
This extended the delay in the Washington criminal case against Trump on charges he plotted to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss.
Merchan instituted a policy in the run-up to the New York trial requiring both sides to send him a one-page letter summarizing their arguments before making longer court filings.
He said he did that to better manage the docket, so he was not inundated with voluminous paperwork.
The judge claimed that they do not ‘reflect in any way the color of the President´s official duties.’
‘The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the matter was a purely a personal item of the President – a cover-up of an embarrassing event,’ U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein wrote in the ruling.
Trump was dramatically found GUILTY on all counts in his historic criminal trial on May 30.
The jury of seven men and five women at Manhattan Criminal Court deliberated for nearly 10 hours before convicting the former President of 34 charges of falsifying business records.
It was the first time a former U.S. President has faced a criminal trial and the verdict could upend the 2024 White House race, proving a pivotal moment in the history of the United States.
Speaking outside court Trump said: ‘This was a disgrace, this was a rigged trial by a conflicted judge.
‘The real verdict is going to be November 5th by the people and they know what happened here, and everybody knows what happened here.
‘We didn’t do anything wrong. I’m a very innocent man. That’s OK, I’m fighting for our country, I’m fighting for our Constitution. Our whole country is being rigged right now. This was done by the Biden administration in order to wound or hurt an opponent, a political opponent.’
He added: ‘I think it’s just a disgrace. And we’ll keep fighting and fight till the end, and we’ll win because our country’s gone to hell.’
The former President’s son Donald Trump Jr. called the verdict a ‘joke’ and ‘such bull****’.
Donald Trump ´s lawyers immediately attempted to seize upon the Supreme Court ruling granting him immunity by asking a New York judge to delay sentencing in his hush money trial
Alvin Bragg, the New York District Attorney, who brought the case, said he had ‘done his jonb’ as a public servant.
Bragg said: ‘While this defendant may be unlike any other in American history we arrived at this trial and, ultimately, today at this verdict in the same manner as every other case that comes to the courtroom doors – by following the facts and the law and doing so without fear or favor.’
He added: ‘I did my job. We did our job. There are many voices out there. The only voice that matters is the voice of the jury and the jury has spoken. Donald J. Trump has been convicted of 34 counts of falsifying business records.’
The charges Trump was convicted of each carry a maximum potential sentence of up to four years in prison.
In denying Trump´s bid to move the trial from New York state court to federal court last year, a federal judge found that the allegations at the center of the case pertained to Trump´s personal life.
Prosecutors told of a plot by Trump to ‘corrupt’ the 2016 election by hiding a $130,000 hush money payment by his ‘fixer’ Michael Cohen to porn star Stormy Daniels.
Daniels alleged that she and Trump had sex a decade earlier, which he has denied.
The case featured explosive evidence by Daniels and lifted the lid on the ‘catch and kill’ practices of the National Enquirer tabloid, which bought stories that could be damaging to Trump and suppressed them.
But the actual criminal charges concern something more prosaic – the reimbursements Trump signed for Cohen for the payment.
The reimbursements, paid by Trump in monthly installments, were recorded as being for legal expenses.
Prosecutors say that was a fraudulent label designed to conceal the purpose of the hush money transaction and to illicitly interfere in the 2016 election.
Defense lawyers argued that Cohen actually did substantive legal work for Trump and his family and was paid for it.
In a marathon day of closing arguments on Tuesday prosecutors and defense lawyers had one final chance to score points with jurors as they embarked on their momentous task.
The two sides offered wildly different accounts of Trump’s culpability, the strength of the evidence, and the credibility of witnesses.
Prosecutors accused Trump of trying to ‘hoodwink’ voters in the 2016 election by stifling embarrassing stories that could torpedo his campaign.
‘The name of the game was concealment, and all roads lead inescapably to the man who benefited the most: the defendant, former President Donald Trump,’ prosecutor Joshua Steinglass told jurors.
He said Daniels’ story was ‘messy’ and ‘probably makes some of you uncomfortable to hear, but that’s kind of the point.
‘In the simplest terms, Stormy Daniels is the motive.’
But Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche said Daniels could not be trusted.
And he branded the star prosecution witness – Cohen – as the ‘greatest liar of all time,’ giving him the acronym ‘the GLOAT’.
Blanche said: ‘President Trump is innocent. He did not commit any crimes, and the district attorney has not met their burden of proof, period.’
Trump did not take the stand to give evidence in his own defense.
Towards the end of the trial Trump posted angrily on social media that he was the victim of a ‘Kangaroo Court!’ and added: ‘In God We Trust!’
Jurors heard the payoff to Daniels in 2016 unfolded against the backdrop of the disclosure of a 2005 ‘Access Hollywood’ recording in which Trump could be heard bragging about grabbing women sexually without their permission.
Had the Daniels story emerged in the aftermath of the ‘Access Hollywood’ scandal it would have further damaged his campaign, the court heard.
Steinglass told jurors: ‘It’s not about whether you like Michael Cohen. It’s not about whether you want to go into business with Michael Cohen.
‘It’s whether he has useful, reliable information to give you about what went down in this case, and the truth is that he was in the best position to know.’