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A judge on Monday refused to throw out US President-elect Donald Trump’s conviction, thrown out due to the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on presidential immunity. But the overall future of the case remains unclear.
The decision by Manhattan Judge Juan M. Merchán eliminates a possible exit from the case before the former and future president’s return to office next month. However, Trump’s lawyers have raised other arguments for the firing. It is unclear when (or if) a sentencing date could be set.
Prosecutors have said there should be some accommodations for his upcoming presidency, but insist the sentence should stand.
A jury convicted Trump in May of 34 counts of falsifying business records related to a $130,000 hush payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels in 2016. Trump denies any wrongdoing.
The allegations involved a scheme to conceal the payment to Daniels during the final days of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign to prevent her from going public (and prevent voters from hearing) her claim of a sexual encounter with the then-married businessman years earlier. . He says nothing sexual happened between them.
Supreme Court ruling after verdict
Weeks after the verdict, the Supreme Court ruled that former presidents cannot be prosecuted for official acts (things they did while ruling the country) and that prosecutors cannot cite those actions to bolster a case focused on purely personal matters. , unofficial conduct.
Trump’s lawyers then cited the Supreme Court opinion to argue that the silenced jury obtained some inadequate evidence, such as Trump’s presidential financial disclosure form, testimony from some White House aides and social media posts made while he was in office.
In Monday’s ruling, Merchan denied most of Trump’s claims that some of prosecutors’ evidence related to official acts and involved immunity protections.
The judge said that even if he found some evidence related to official conduct, he would still find that prosecutors’ decision to use “these acts as evidence of decidedly personal acts of falsification of business records does not pose any danger of intrusion into the authority and function of the executive branch.”
Even if prosecutors had mistakenly introduced evidence that could be challenged through an immunity claim, Merchan continued, “such error was harmless in light of the overwhelming evidence of guilt.”
Prosecutors had said the evidence in question was only “a small part” of their case.
Trump’s communications director, Steven Cheung, on Monday called Merchan’s decision a “direct violation of the Supreme Court’s decision on immunity and other long-standing case law.”
“This illegal case should never have been filed and the Constitution requires that it be dismissed immediately,” Cheung said in a statement.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office, which prosecuted the case, declined to comment.
Merchán’s decision noted that part of the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling stated that “not everything the president does is official.” Trump’s social media posts, for example, were personal, Merchan wrote.
SEE | Breaking down the key evidence that led to Trump’s conviction: 
Former US President Donald Trump has been found guilty in his hush money trial in New York. CBC’s Anya Zoledziowski breaks down the evidence and key witnesses that led the jury to the historic conviction.
He also pointed to an earlier ruling by a federal court that concluded that the hush money payment and subsequent refunds concerned Trump’s private life, not his official duties.
Trump, 78, will take office on January 20. He is the first former president convicted of a serious crime and the first convicted felon elected to office.
Click to see conviction and dismissed case
Over the past six months, Trump’s lawyers have made numerous efforts to get the conviction and the case thrown out overall. After Trump won last month’s election, Merchan indefinitely postponed his sentencing, which was scheduled for late November, so defense attorneys and prosecutors could suggest next steps.
Trump’s defense argued that anything short of immediate dismissal would undermine the transfer of power and cause unconstitutional “disruptions” to the presidency.
Meanwhile, prosecutors proposed several ways to preserve the historic conviction. Among the suggestions: freezing the case until Trump leaves office in 2029; accept that any future sentence will not include jail time; or close the case by pointing out that he was convicted but not sentenced and his appeal was not resolved because he took office.
The latter idea is drawn from what some states do when a defendant dies after conviction but before sentencing.
Trump’s lawyers called the concept “absurd” and also took issue with the other suggestions.
