NEW YORK (AP) — Donald TrumpAttorneys on Monday asked the New York judge presiding over the silent trial to overturn his conviction and delay his sentencing, scheduled for next week.
The letter to Judge Juan M. Merchan referenced the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling from earlier Monday and asked the judge to delay Trump’s sentencing while he considers the high court’s decision and how it might affect the case in New York, according to the letter, obtained by The Associated Press.
According to the letter, the attorneys said the Supreme Court’s decision affirmed a position the defense made earlier in the case that prosecutors should have been barred from introducing evidence they said involved official presidential actions.
In previous court filings, Trump has claimed immunity from prosecution for conduct that allegedly included official acts while he was in office. His lawyers have not raised that as a defense in the hush-money case, but they have argued that some of the evidence — including Trump’s social media posts about former attorney Michael Cohen — dates from his time as president and should have been excluded from the trial because of immunity protections.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office declined to comment Monday evening.
The Supreme Court ruled Monday for the first time that former presidents enjoy broad immunity from prosecution, extending a delay in Washington’s criminal case against Trump, who is alleged to have been planning to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss.
Trump was convicted in New York on 34 counts of falsifying business records, stemming from what prosecutors said was an attempt to cover up a hush-money payment just before the 2016 presidential election. He is expected to be sentenced in the hush-money case on July 11.
Merchan instituted a policy in the run-up to the trial that required both sides to send him a one-page letter summarizing their arguments before filing longer briefs. He said he did so to better manage the caseload so he wouldn’t be swamped with voluminous paperwork.
When a federal judge last year denied Trump’s request to move the trial from New York state court to federal court, he ruled that the allegations at the heart of the case concerned Trump’s personal life and “in no way reflect the color of the President’s official duties.”
“The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the matter was purely a personal matter for the President — a cover-up of an embarrassing event,” U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein wrote in the ruling.
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Sisak contributed from Fort Pierce, Florida.
