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Former US President Donald Trump leaves court after a jury found him guilty of 34 felony counts in New York State Supreme Court in New York, New York, U.S., May 30, 2024. Trump was charged with 34 counts of business fraud. Records related to payments made to adult movie star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Justin Lane | via Reuters
President-elect Donald Trump on Monday he lost his bid to be a criminal hush money The conviction was overturned in a New York court presidential immunity.
Trump’s lawyers argued that prosecutors’ use of testimony from former White House staffers at his trial should have prompted Judge Juan Merchan to dismiss the case.
The lawyers cited a U.S. Supreme Court decision earlier this year that found Trump — and other U.S. presidents — to have presumed immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts in office.
But Merchan wrote in his ruling Monday, “Even if this Court were to consider all of the evidence at issue, preserved and unpreserved, as official conduct outside the perimeter of the defendant’s presidential authority, the People would still view its use as evidence of personal acts of falsifying business records.” acting does not pose a risk of encroachment on the authority and function of the executive branch, a conclusion strongly supported by evidence related to motivation.”
“Finally, this Court concludes that if error occurred in the presentation of the challenged evidence, that error was harmless in light of the overwhelming evidence of guilt,” Merchan wrote in his ruling.
Trump’s attorney, Todd Blanche, asked Merchan on Monday to delay the president-elect’s sentence in the case until all appeals have been exhausted.
Trump became the first former president to be convicted of a crime in May when a jury in Manhattan Supreme Court — a state-level court — charged him with 34 counts of falsifying business records.
The records relate to a $130,000 payment Trump’s then-personal attorney Michael Cohen made to porn star Stormy Daniels in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. Cohen, who was later paid by Trump, has said the payment was in exchange for a deal to keep quiet about Daniels’ alleged sex license with Trump a decade earlier.
Trump has denied having sex with Daniels.
The payment happened before Trump was first elected president. But some of the evidence at trial was related to Trump’s tenure in the White House.
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