Trump’s lawyers say hush money case must be dismissed after election victory
By Jack Queen
(Reuters) – Donald Trump’s lawyers told a judge that the Republican’s conviction for illegally covering up hush money payments to a porn star should be dismissed because he won the U.S. presidential election and sentencing would threaten government stability.
In a letter filed on Tuesday and made public Wednesday, the Republican president-elect’s lawyers asked New York State Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan for permission to file a formal motion laying out their arguments by Dec. 20.
“Just as a sitting president is immune from any criminal process, so too is President Trump as President-elect,” the lawyers wrote.
Trump, 78, had been scheduled to be sentenced on Nov. 26, but Merchan last week put all proceedings in the case on pause at the request of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office.
Bragg’s office has said it will oppose Trump’s bid to dismiss the case and suggested it should be paused until Trump completes his four-year presidential term beginning on Jan. 20, though it stopped short of explicitly endorsing that option.
Trump, president from 2017-2021, is hoping to enter office for a second term unencumbered by any of the four criminal cases he has faced and which some opponents had predicted would derail his 2024 candidacy to return to the White House.
The Republican Trump was convicted in May of falsifying business records to cover up a $130,000 payment his former lawyer Michael Cohen made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels for her silence before the 2016 election about a sexual encounter she says she had with Trump, who denies it.
It was the first time a U.S. president – former or sitting – had been convicted of or charged with a criminal offense.
Trump pleaded not guilty in the case, which he has long portrayed as a politically motivated attempt by Bragg, a Democrat, to interfere with his campaign.
In their letter Tuesday, Trump’s lawyers said continuing the case after his election victory would be “uniquely destabilizing” and threaten to “hamstring the operation of the whole governmental apparatus.”
Falsification of business records is punishable by up to four years in prison. Before he was elected, experts said it was unlikely – but not impossible – that Trump would face time behind bars, with punishments such as a fine or probation seen as more likely.
Trump’s victory over Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in the Nov. 5 election made the prospect of imposing a sentence of jail or probation even more politically fraught and impractical, given that a sentence could have impeded his ability to conduct the duties of the presidency.
Trump was charged in three additional state and federal cases in 2023, one involving classified documents he kept after leaving office and two others involving his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss.
A Florida-based federal judge in July dismissed the documents case. The Justice Department is now evaluating how to wind down the federal election-related case. Trump also faces state criminal charges in Georgia over his bid to reverse his 2020 loss in that state, but the case remains in limbo.
As president, Trump would have no power to shut down the New York or Georgia cases because they were filed in state courts. His Justice Department may close the federal cases.
(Reporting by Jack Queen in New York; Additional reporting by Luc Cohen; Editing by Alistair Bell)