Manhattan prosecutors have implored a New York judge to uphold the guilty verdict against former President Donald Trump in his hush-money criminal case. Trump contends that the verdict is now irrelevant due to the U.S. Supreme Court's recent ruling on presidential immunity, Courthouse News reports. In a 69-page court filing made public Thursday, the Manhattan district attorney told New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan to disregard Trump’s argument that certain evidence from the hush-money trial should have been withheld from the jury based on the landmark immunity decision.
Trump has argued the entire case should be tossed because prosecutors elicited testimony from Hope Hicks about her efforts to downplay a 2018 Wall Street Journal article about Trump’s supposed adulterous behavior. Since Hicks was Trump’s presidential communications director at the time, Trump claims prosecutors violated his presidential immunity in getting her to testify. Trump also argues prosecutors shouldn’t have been able to show the jury certain tweets that he made while president. But prosecutors said Thursday that this evidence only concerns Trump’s unofficial conduct, which is not protected under the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling. “There is no basis for disturbing the jury’s verdict, and defendant’s motion should be denied,” they wrote. The Supreme Court ruling has already disrupted Trump’s sentencing schedule. Merchan was initially slated to sentence Trump on July 11, but he pushed back the date to mid-September to allow the presidential immunity issue to be fully briefed.
Comentários