Manhattan DA asks judge not to throw out Trump’s criminal hush money conviction

(NEW YORK) –Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg on Thursday asked a New York judge to reject former President Donald Trump’s attempt to throw out his criminal hush money conviction, arguing that the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling on presidential immunity “has nothing to say about defendant’s conviction.”

Trump earlier this month asked Judge Juan Merchan to vacate his conviction on the grounds that the trial was “tainted” by evidence and testimony that was made off-limits after the Supreme Court ruled Trump has presumptive immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts taken while in office.

Prosecutors said in Thursday’s court filing that paying hush money to an adult film actress is “entirely personal” with “no relationship whatsoever to any official duty of the presidency.”

The former president was found guilty in May of falsifying business records related to a 2016 hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels in order to boost his electoral prospects in the 2016 presidential election.

The jury convicted Trump of 34 felony counts after seeing “overwhelming evidence of the defendant’s guilt,” prosecutors argued in the filing.

Trump argued that certain evidence presented at trial — including testimony from former White House aide Hope Hicks and Trump’s tweets about his former attorney Michael Cohen — related to his official acts as president and should now be considered inadmissible in light of the Supreme Court opinion.

Prosecutors pushed back in their filing.

“The challenged Tweets bear no resemblance to the kinds of public comments that the Supreme Court indicated would qualify as official presidential conduct,” the district attorney’s office said. “Defendant’s Tweets conveying his personal opinion about his private attorney do not bear any conceivable relationship to any official duty of the Presidency.”

Prosecutors also argued that testimony from Hicks, who was once Trump’s communications director, “related solely to unofficial conduct.”

“[T]he evidence that he claims is affected by the Supreme Court’s ruling constitutes only a sliver of the mountains of testimony and documentary proof that the jury considered in finding him guilty of all 34 felony charges beyond a reasonable doubt,” the filing said.

Earlier this month, Judge Merchan postponed Trump’s sentencing in the case from July 11 to Sept. 18 so he could consider Trump’s request to vacate his conviction.

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