by Steven Richards
Judge Juan Merchan on Tuesday agreed to delay issuing a decision on whether to toss out President-elect Donald Trump’s guilty verdict on state charges of falsifying business records until Nov. 19.
This pause in the proceedings to consider what effects Trump’s victory in the presidential election means for the case moving forward was requested by Trump’s legal team, which wants Merchan to dismiss the guilty verdict.
Trump was found guilty in May after a six-week trial on 34 counts of falsifying business records during the 2016 presidential election to hide a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels so that she would stay quiet about an alleged sexual encounter. The former president pleaded not guilty to the charges. The chargers were brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg last year.
In July, after a landmark Supreme Court ruling outlining presidential immunity, Trump asked Judge Merchan to toss out the guilty verdict. The Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 opinion earlier that month that presidents have presidential immunity for some “official acts,” but not unofficial ones. The high court did not specified what would constitute official versus unofficial acts, leaving Merchan to parse the evidence cited in the case.
Trump attorneys Todd Blanche and Emil Bove argued that the hush money trial was “tainted” by evidence that should be protected under presidential immunity.
“Because of the implications for the institution of the Presidency, the use of official-acts evidence was a structural error under the federal Constitution that tainted [the District Attorney’s] grand jury proceedings as well as the trial,” the lawyers wrote.
The lawyers argued specifically that testimony from former White House Communications Director Hope Hicks and former Special Assistant to the President Madeleine Westerhout as well as other testimony about the inner workings of the executive branch should not have been admitted under the high court’s ruling.
Merchan was originally set to rule in September, but delayed the decision to “avoid any appearance” that he was attempting to influence the election.
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Steven Richards is an investigative reporter at Just the News.
Image “Donald Trump on Trial” by Donald Trump.
