New York prosecutors say President-elect Donald Trump's return to the White House should not undermine the verdict of the 12 jurors who found him guilty. dozens of felonies In May, he told the judge overseeing the case that the conviction should stand.
“This Court should reject [Trump’s] “'Promptly' motion to dismiss the indictment and vacate the jury's guilty verdict based on the outcome of the recent presidential election,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's prosecutors wrote in their filing, which was made public Tuesday. relief now, prior to the defendant's inauguration, because immunity does not exist for the President-elect.”
Shortly after Trump's election in November, his defense lawyers promised to urge Justice Juan Merchan to dismiss his indictment and vacate the verdict in the “hush money” case. He made his proposal on 2 December, suppressing their push To dismiss the will of 12 jurors seated for a seven-week trial on an unlikely topic: President Biden's son, Hunter. Trump's lawyers announce Hunter Biden controversial pardon Repeating Trump's complaints about his prosecution, claiming it was politically motivated.
Prosecutors did not mention Biden or the pardon in their response filing.
He hit back at the original effort to throw out Trump's conviction. Trump's lawyers – two of whom are set to take on senior roles at the Justice Department after Trump's inauguration – have argued that it would be unconstitutional for an incoming president to carry the burden of a guilty verdict that came before his election.
,[Trump’s] “The suggestion that his subsequent election 'superseded' the jury's verdict is simply false,” prosecutors wrote. “As this Court carefully and correctly instructed the jury, it was the empaneled jurors who were 'deciding whether the defendant is guilty or not guilty' because only these jurors – not the general voters – Hear all the evidence in this case.”
Mark Peterson/AP
Prosecutors argued that Trump's lawyers were “effectively trying to extend the term [Trump’s] immunity for a period of time before he became President, erasing the effects of impeachment and jury verdicts that occurred even before he was re-elected.”
Trump has been sentenced Adjourned Three times since pleading guilty in May. It was initially scheduled for July 11, but Marchan moved that date up so Trump's lawyers could file a separate motion to dismiss following a landmark Supreme Court decision. The country's highest court concluded in early July that former President Could not be charged with official actsAnd evidence relating to his official function as President could not be used as evidence against him.
Merchan has not ruled on that motion. They postponed the sentencing to another date, September 18, after Trump's lawyers argued that it was too close to the election. Following Trump's election victory on November 5, he sought to postpone the November 26 sentencing date so he could file a new motion to dismiss the case revolving around his return to the White House.
Bragg's office said in its filing that it would be open to postponing sentencing and other proceedings until Trump's term in office, which ends in 2029.
“If [Trump] Given the sentence has not been imposed before his inauguration, there is also no legal impediment to postponing that sentence until the end of his presidency,” he wrote.
The judge's decision would be the latest moment to set a historic precedent in the case. Trump was the first person to be elected president after being convicted of crimes. When the unanimous jury concluded In May he was convicted of 34 counts of falsifying business records, becoming the first former president convicted of the crimes. In March 2023, when the grand jury concluded that Trump should be indicted, he became the first former president to be indicted.
The case centered on concealing payments of “hush money” to an adult film star. Trump authorized a scheme to conceal reimbursements to an attorney, who made the payment days before Trump's first election.
Trump pleaded not guilty in the case and promised to appeal his conviction.