Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg opposes Donald Trump’s motion to dismiss his hush money case over his election as president, telling Judge Juan Merchan:[p]“there is no such thing as resident-elect immunity” and that the case could instead be stayed while Trump is in power.
“At most, the suspect should be provided with temporary housing during his presidency to prevent this criminal case from meaningfully interfering with his official decision-making,” Bragg’s office wrote to Merchan in a response Monday, which was made public Tuesday. Trump’s dismissal request, Bragg wrote, “goes well beyond what is necessary to protect the presidency and would undermine the compelling public interest in preserving the jury’s unanimous verdict and upholding the rule of law.”
Trump’s motion cited a long list of complaints against various actors in the legal system and said dismissal is required by presidential immunity, federal law governing presidential transitions and the Constitution’s supremacy clause. In May, a Manhattan jury found Trump guilty of falsifying company records for covering up a hush-money scheme linked to the 2016 presidential election.
Even if Merchan denies this latest motion, which arose after Trump’s election victory last month, there is another pending motion that could prevent a conviction. That is the motion Trump already had pending to overturn his guilty verdicts or dismiss the case, based on the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling. And his lawyers have indicated they would immediately appeal any adverse action by Merchan before sentencing, so even if the judge convicts Trump on both motions, it’s still unclear when Trump will be sentenced.
All of this raises the question of whether the case could be stayed while Trump is in power, something Trump’s lawyers oppose, but Bragg’s office has raised as a possibility. Presidents cannot pardon state cases or get their attorney generals to dismiss them as federal cases, which raises the new issue for state cases in New York and Georgia, with Trump also trying to get the latter dismissed before taking office.
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This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
