New York judge refuses to toss Trump ‘hush money’ verdict

Presidential immunity does not absolve him of guilt, Judge Juan Merchan has ruled

The Manhattan judge who presided over Donald Trump’s ‘hush money’ trial has refused to vacate the guilty verdict against the US president-elect, arguing that a landmark Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity does not apply to the case.

The case is one of Trump’s last remaining legal entanglements, after Special Counsel Jack Smith dropped charges in two federal cases – involving Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents and attempts to block the certification of President Joe Biden’s 2020 election win – and a Georgia judge dismissed eight out of 13 state-level election meddling charges following Trump’s victory in last month’s presidential election.

In a 41-page ruling issued on Monday, Judge Juan Merchan declared that the “defendant’s motion to dismiss the indictment and verdict is denied.”

Trump was charged last year with misreporting “hush money” payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels in 2017, with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg successfully elevating what would normally be a misdemeanor offense to 34 felony counts, one for each mention of the payments in Trump’s records. He was found guilty on all counts in May.

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However, the US Supreme Court ruled in July that official actions taken by a president while in office – as Trump was in 2017 – cannot be prosecuted. Trump’s lawyers argued that some of the evidence used in the trial, such as the then-president’s financial disclosures and social media posts, fell into this category and could not be cited to bolster a case based on his personal conduct.

Merchan rejected this argument. “Even if this court were to deem all of the contested evidence… as official conduct,” he wrote, it would still have found that Trump’s “decidedly personal acts of falsifying business records poses no danger of intrusion on the authority and function of the executive branch.”

Trump spokesman Steven Cheung called the ruling “a direct violation of the Supreme Court’s decision on immunity,” adding that “this lawless case should have never been brought.”

Trump has not commented on the ruling. Before he was smacked with a gag order earlier this year, he referred to Bragg as “fat Alvin,” Merchan as “conflicted,” and claimed that both were doing the bidding of Joe Biden by attempting to derail his campaign.

Merchan postponed Trump’s sentencing date after last month’s election, and is due to hear another motion from the incoming president’s lawyers asking that the case be dismissed in light of his victory. In a letter on Monday, Merchan said he is still reviewing the motion, without saying when he expects to rule on it.