Judge spurns Donald Trump effort to scrap hush money conviction based on immunity
President-elect Donald Trump’s bid to toss out his conviction in the Manhattan hush money case based on the US Supreme Court’s immunity ruling was rejected by a judge on Monday.
In his 41-page ruling, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan effectively upheld the 34-count conviction for now, concluding that it withstands the immunity decision.
“The People’s use of these acts as evidence of the decidedly personal acts of falsifying business records poses no danger of intrusion on the authority and function of the Executive Branch,” Merchan wrote in his opinion.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office had fought against the effort to nix the conviction, arguing that underlying activity transpired before Trump, 78, first ascended to the Oval Office.
“Today’s decision by deeply conflicted, acting Justice Merchan in the Manhattan DA Witch Hunt is a direct violation of the Supreme Court’s decision on immunity, and other longstanding jurisprudence,” Trump’s communications director Steven Cheung said in a statement.
“This lawless case should have never been brought, and the Constitution demands that it be immediately dismissed, as President Trump must be allowed to continue the Presidential Transition process.”
Over the summer, the US Supreme Court ruled that a president enjoys “absolute” immunity for official acts in office, but neglected to explain how that affected any of the four criminal cases against Trump at the time.
Last month, a judge dismissed the four-count 2020 election subversion case against him and former special counsel Jack Smith moved to withdraw his efforts to revive the 40-count classified document case, which had been thrown out by a judge over the summer.
That leaves Trump with just the 13-count Georgia election tampering indictment — which is bogged down in appeals — and the Manhattan hush money conviction.
Merchan still has yet to rule on the merit of a separate push by Trump’s team to neutralize the hush money conviction based on the president-elect’s victory last month.
Trump’s team had pointed to a Justice Department policy against indicting a sitting president and contended that keeping the conviction could pose “unconstitutional impediments to President Trump’s ability to govern.”
Should the conviction stand, Trump will be the first felon to ascend into the White House as president. His lawyers have been working to appeal that conviction on multiple fronts.
Trump had been found guilty by a jury in May on allegations that he falsified business records to conceal hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels and several others to suppress stories that could be damaging to him during the 2016 campaign.
That case, which was predicated on novel legal theories, has attracted bipartisan criticism, including recently from Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), who suggested the case was “bulls—” and that a pardon was appropriate.
Merchan, who oversaw the hush money case against Trump when he was on trial earlier this year, argued in his 41-page ruling that there had been “overwhelming evidence of guilt” exhibited during proceedings.
As Cheung alluded to, Trump’s allies have harped on the work that Merchan’s daughter has done in progressive circles, including for Vice President Kamala Harris and Democrats broadly.
Bragg’s team has stood against any efforts to throw out Trump’s conviction. Instead, they’ve suggested that the case could be put on hold while Trump carries out his second term as president.
Under federal law, Trump cannot be put in jail as president in that case.