President-elect Donald Trump's attorneys are fighting back against Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's latest filing urging Judge Juan Merchan to treat him as any other defendant, reported NBC News — and took particular issue with prosecutors' logic.
The Trump team is arguing that his election is grounds for throwing out the verdict, which prosecutors have argued is nonsense, writing, "President-elect immunity does not exist."
In turn, Trump's lawyers take umbrage at an analogy used by prosecutors, arguing that preserving the verdict while not immediately meting out a sentence — their preferred resolution — would be the same thing done if Trump had died.
"As a further illustration of DA Bragg’s desperation to avoid legally mandated dismissal, DANY proposes that the Court pretend as if one of the assassination attempts against President Trump had been successful," said the new filing. Trump's team attacked this as "absurd" and a "dark dream scenario."
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"One would expect more from a first-year law student, and this is yet another indication that DANY’s opposition to this motion has not been undertaken in good faith," wrote Trump attorneys Emil Bove and Todd Blanche.
Trump was convicted earlier this year of felony falsification of business records, for his efforts to conceal hush payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Bragg's prosecutors successfully argued that this was effectively a criminal scheme to interfere with the 2016 presidential election.
It's the only one of Trump's four criminal cases that actually went to trial and rendered a verdict; the two federal cases brought by special counsel Jack Smith are winding down in accordance with DOJ policy against criminally prosecuting sitting presidents, with the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case already dismissed based on a controversial legal theory by right-wing Judge Aileen Cannon. The Georgia election racketeering case remains in limbo, and has essentially no chance of going to trial, per experts.
