The judge will rule on the immunity request News, Sports, Jobs

NEW YORK (AP) — A gut punch for most defendants, Donald Trump has turned his criminal conviction into a rallying cry. His supporters wrote “I’m Voting for the Felon” on T-shirts, hats and lawn signs.

“The real verdict will be on November 5th by the people,” Trump proclaimed after his conviction in New York last spring on 34 counts of falsifying business records.

Now, just a week after Trump’s resounding election victory, a Manhattan judge is poised to decide whether to uphold the hush money verdict or throw it out because of a July U.S. Supreme Court decision that granted presidents immunity broad criminal investigation.

Judge Juan M. Merchan said he would issue a written opinion Tuesday on Trump’s request to overturn his conviction and either order a new trial or dismiss the indictment entirely.

Merchan was expected to govern in September, but delayed “to avoid any appearance” he was trying to influence the election. His decision could be back on ice if Trump takes other steps to delay or end the case.

If the judge upholds the verdict, the case would be on track for a hearing on November 26 – although that could change or disappear depending on appeals or other legal maneuvers.

Trump’s lawyers have been fighting for months to overturn his conviction, which involved efforts to conceal a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels, whose affair allegations threatened to derail his 2016 campaign.

Trump denies her claim, maintains she did nothing wrong and condemned the verdict as a “measured, shameful” result of a politically motivated “witch hunt” designed to damage his campaign.

The Supreme Court ruling gives former presidents immunity from prosecution for official acts — things they do as part of their job as president — and bars prosecutors from using evidence of official acts to try to prove that purely personal conduct violated the law.

Trump was a private citizen — campaigning for president but not elected or sworn in — when his then-lawyer Michael Cohen paid Daniels in October 2016.

But Trump was president when Cohen was reimbursed, and Cohen testified that they discussed the reimbursement arrangement in the Oval Office. Those reimbursements, jurors found, were falsely recorded in Trump’s records as legal expenses.

Trump’s lawyers say the Manhattan district attorney’s office “tainted” the case with evidence — including testimony about Trump’s first term as president — that should not have been allowed.

Prosecutors argue that the High Court’s decision provides “no basis to disturb the jury’s verdict”. Trump’s conviction, they said, involved unofficial acts — personal conduct for which he is not immune.

The Supreme Court has not defined an official act, leaving it to the lower courts. Nor did he clarify how his ruling — which arose out of one of Trump’s two federal criminal cases — relates to state-level cases like Trump’s criminal prosecution.

“There are some unclear aspects of the court’s ruling, but one that is particularly relevant to this case is the question of what counts as an official act,” said George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin. “And I think it’s extremely difficult to argue that this reward for this woman qualifies as an official act, for a number of fairly obvious reasons.”

Trump’s efforts to overturn the verdict have taken on new urgency since his election, with a sentencing date looming at the end of the month and possible punishments ranging from a fine or probation to up to four years in prison.

Presidents-elect don’t typically enjoy the same legal protections as presidents, but Trump and his lawyers could try to leverage his status as former and future commander-in-chief into a kind of “get out of jail free” card.

One likely argument: Trump would not only save himself a possible prison sentence, he would save the nation from the calamity of its leader behind bars — however remote that possibility may be.

“It’s going to ask every court in the world to step in if it can, including the Supreme Court, so things could drag on a little bit,” said Syracuse University law professor David Driesen, author of “The Specter of Dictatorship: The Judicial Activation of Power presidential.”

At the same time, Trump again tried to move the case from a state court to a federal court, where he could also assert his immunity. His lawyers asked the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn the September court ruling denying the transfer.

If Merchan orders a new trial, it seems unlikely that it could happen while Trump is in office.

Trump’s lawyers argued in court papers that, given the Supreme Court’s ruling, jurors should not have been allowed to hear about the matters, including his conversations with White House communications director Hope Hicks, nor the testimony of another aide about his work practices.

They also said prosecutors used Trump’s 2018 financial disclosure report, which he was required to file as president. A footnote noted that Trump reimbursed Cohen in 2017 for unspecified expenses a year earlier.

Trump lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove argued that prosecutors were trying to “attribute a criminal motive” to some of Trump’s actions in office to “unfairly prejudice.” For example, they wrote, prosecutors advanced the “dubious theory” that some of Trump’s 2018 tweets were part of a “pressure campaign” to keep Cohen from turning against him.

The immunity ruling “precludes inquiry on these grounds,” Blanche and Bove wrote.

Prosecutors countered that the decision did not apply to the evidence in question and that, regardless, it was “just a sliver of the mountains of testimony and documentary evidence,” the jury found.

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