Judge declines to toss Donald Trump’s New York hush-money conviction

Justice Juan Merchan has ruled Donald Trump’s hush-money conviction remains valid, rejecting arguments from the president-elect that it should be dismissed on immunity grounds.

Donald Trump has failed in effort to have his hush-money conviction dismissed. Picture: Getty Images via AFP.

A New York judge ruled Monday that Donald Trump’s hush-money conviction this year remains valid, rejecting arguments from the president-elect that it should be dismissed on immunity grounds.

The judge left for another day the question of whether Mr Trump should ever be sentenced for 34 low-level felony counts of falsifying business records. A jury convicted the former president in May of causing the misleading records to cover up money paid to silence adult-film star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election. She says she and Mr Trump had an affair, a claim he denies.

Justice Juan Merchan, who presided over Mr Trump’s New York trial earlier this year, found that the US Supreme Court’s July ruling granting former presidents broad immunity didn’t affect Mr Trump’s state conviction, which largely involved conduct that took place before the Republican began his first term in the White House.

Mr Merchan said that even though some of the evidence introduced in the case stemmed from his tenure in office, such as certain Twitter posts and testimony from former aide Hope Hicks, that material related entirely to conduct that wasn’t part of Mr Trump’s official duties.

“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,” wrote Mr Merchan in a 41-page ruling.

A Trump spokesman said the decision violated the Supreme Court’s ruling. “President Trump must be allowed to continue the Presidential Transition process, and execute the vital duties of the presidency, unobstructed by the remains of this, or any other, Witch Hunt,” he said.

A spokeswoman for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat whose office brought the case, declined to comment.

Mr Trump’s election to a second term has up-ended the four criminal cases against him. Federal cases accusing Mr Trump of plotting to overturn the 2020 election and alleging he unlawfully retained classified documents have been dismissed at the request of special counsel Jack Smith. Justice Department policy doesn’t allow the prosecution of a sitting president.

A separate Georgia prosecution of Mr Trump alleging election interference has been mired in delays.

The fate of the New York case is in some ways the most complicated because it already went to trial. The district attorney’s office has suggested that any sentencing of Mr Trump could be postponed until after he leaves the White House again. Prosecutors have also floated the possibility that the judge could leave Mr Trump’s conviction on the books but never sentence him at all.

Mr Trump’s lawyers have argued against both proposals, maintaining that the case has to go away entirely.

If Mr Trump had lost the election, it is possible the judge could have sentenced him to prison time, though many observers thought that wasn’t likely.

Prosecutors argued that the false-record charges were felonies because Mr Trump committed the offences in connection with other illegal conduct. Mr Trump’s other conduct, prosecutors alleged, involved taking part in a conspiracy, alongside his former lawyer Michael Cohen and a tabloid publisher, to influence the 2016 election.

Mr Trump’s lawyers argued that swaying voters was legal.

The Supreme Court’s summer immunity decision came in Smith’s election-interference case. The 6-3 decision held that former presidents couldn’t be prosecuted for exercising core constitutional powers and were entitled to a presumptive immunity from prosecution for all official acts. The court made clear, however, that not everything a president does is official.

Dow Jones