REUTERS/Jane Rosenberg
Donald Trump's 11th-hour bid to toss his hush-money case prior to Inauguration Day — on presidential immunity grounds — was rejected Monday by a Manhattan judge.
The decision now kicks the ball back to Trump. His lawyers have previously promised to quickly appeal, to the US Supreme Court if necessary, in hopes of voiding his sole criminal conviction.
An attorney for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Merchan's decision.
How the decision will impact Trump's sentencing — which has been delayed three times and currently remains without a scheduled date — remains unclear. Prosecutors have urged that the conviction stand, even if that means Trump is sentenced after his second term.
New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan made no mention of sentencing in Monday's strongly worded, 42-page rebuff, which was centered on presidential immunity.
Presidential immunity does not apply to the hush-money case because the case hinged on "decidedly personal acts," Merchan found, agreeing with arguments by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
"The Trump Court was careful to acknowledge that 'The President, charged with enforcing federal criminal laws, is not above them,'" Merchan wrote, quoting from the landmark June SCOTUS decision granting presidents broad immunity from prosecution.
Lawyers for Trump have repeatedly challenged the case on presidential immunity grounds, without success, since his April 2023 indictment on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
The indictment alleged that Trump conspired throughout 2017, his first year in office, to alter 34 checks, invoices, and vouchers in order to retroactively hide a $130,000 hush-money payment that silenced porn actress Stormy Daniels less than two weeks before the 2016 election. A jury found him guilty on all counts in May.
"This case involves important federal questions," Trump's lawyers argued just one month after his indictment, because the charges related to conduct "committed while he was President of the United States" and acting within "the color of his office."
Last month, his lawyers argued that his new status as president-elect has strengthened their argument for dismissal. The orderly transition of power is at stake, they said in their most recent dismissal motion. They also argued that presidential immunity, as bestowed by SCOTUS in June, extends to presidents-elect.
But Merchan wrote Monday that even in granting presidents broad immunity from prosecution, SCOTUS set some limits.
He rejected Trump's argument that the hush-money indictment and conviction should be tossed because Manhattan prosecutors, in their presentations to both grand jurors and trial jurors, used the kind of official-act evidence now retroactively barred by SCOTUS.
That evidence included trial testimony by Trump's former White House communications director, Hope Hicks, who described to jurors a conversation she had with Trump in the Oval Office in 2018. Trump had told Hicks that he was relieved that news of the hush-money payment only leaked after the election.
Some of Trump's 2018 tweets about the hush-money scandal were also "official," his lawyers had argued.
But the judge found that no official-act evidence entered the case. And even if it had, he wrote, "such error was harmless in light of the overwhelming evidence of guilt."
Also Monday, Merchan left undecided a series of letters between the defense and prosecutors, not yet made public, that he said address defense claims of "juror misconduct."
Prosecutors want these communications sealed in their entirety, and the defense wants them released to the public in redacted form, Merchant wrote.
The judge said he is continuing to review the defense allegations and a related bid by Trump's lawyers to have the case dismissed in the interest of justice.
