President-elect Donald Trump’s attorneys are continuing their fight against his hush money conviction by arguing that “grave juror misconduct” tainted the verdict, although prosecutors called the allegation “vague.”
Details of the supposed misconduct were redacted from court filings made public on Tuesday.
Trump’s team has been fighting to have the case thrown out entirely by arguing that a US Supreme Court ruling in July on presidential immunity invalidated it.
New York Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan decided on Monday, however, that Trump is not immune to the charges because none of the relevant conduct involved official presidential acts.
Rather, central to the case was an effort to conceal allegations of a sexual encounter with a porn actor from emerging in the days before the 2016 election. Trump denies the sexual encounter and has said he did nothing wrong.
The safety of the jurors in Trump’s trial was of deep concern to prosecutors and Merchan, given how the president-elect has a history of publicly attacking opponents, often prompting his supporters to follow up with threats. Although the panel reached its verdict on May 31 ― guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records ― Trump is still prohibited from sharing information about the jurors that could lead to their identification.
Trump’s team outlined the alleged jury misconduct in a letter to Merchan dated Dec. 3, which was followed by letters from prosecutors in the next several days.
Trump’s team has not asked to hold a hearing on the misconduct claims, as they are permitted to do under law.
Prosecutors told the judge that instead of trying to uncover the truth of the matter, Trump “wants instead to use these unsworn, untested claims by his attorneys to undermine public confidence in the verdict.”
Merchan made a note of the fact Trump has not asked for a hearing in a letter to the parties that was unsealed on Monday. He said that until Trump’s claim was “properly filed,” the court “cannot allow the public filing of unsworn, and admittedly contested statements,” and ordered heavy redactions.
The judge has yet to decide how Trump’s sentencing will proceed ― if it does at all.
Prosecutors proposed several ways of handling the case going forward, including taking jail time off the table, freezing the case until Trump is out of office or closing it with a note, as some judges do when a defendant dies before sentencing.
