Judge in hush money case refuses to throw out Trump’s conviction despite Supreme Court immunity decision
The president-elect has been trying to get the case nullified before he returns to the White House. His lawyers argue that having the case hanging over his head would be a burden on his ability to govern
A Manhattan district judge on Monday rejected president-elect Donald Trump’s attempt to nullify his conviction in the New York hush money case on the strength of the Supreme Court’s recent ruling granting broad immunity to presidents for official actions. The future of the case — whose sentence was meant to have been made public shortly after Election Day — remains unclear. Prosecutors have recommended that the case be put on hold — not thrown out — precisely because of the Supreme Court’s ruling. Trump’s lawyers have argued that having the case hanging over his presidency would be a burden on his ability to govern.
Judge Juan M. Merchan’s decision eliminates the possibility of definitively ending the case before Trump returns to the White House on January 20. However, his lawyers have raised other arguments for dismissal. The prosecutors’ proposal to freeze the conviction during his presidency does not imply dismissal either. On November 22, the judge indefinitely postponed the sentence, but allowed the president-elect’s defense to again request that the case be dismissed.
Trump was found guilty in May of all 34 charges against him in a case involving payment to a porn actress in 2016 to buy her silence. At the heart of the case is the falsification of accounting records at his company, the Trump Organization, to disguise the payment of $130,000 to Stormy Daniels, an adult film actress, with the aim of keeping her quiet about an extramarital affair that he has always denied, and whose disclosure in the final stretch of that year’s presidential campaign might have damaged his interests.
The so-called hush money case was the only one of the four criminal cases faced by Trump that went to trial before the November election. Aside from his unquestionable victory at the polls — a triple victory, since the Republicans won the presidency but also control of both chambers in the U.S. Congress — it was the decision taken on July 1 by the Supreme Court, now fashioned in his image, that helped clear legal obstacles on Trump’s path to the presidency. The dismissal of the so-called Mar-a-Lago papers case — classified documents that Trump took from the White House in January 2021 — thanks to a judge appointed by Trump during his first term in office, was followed by the decision by Special Counsel Jack Smith to withdraw two criminal charges: the Georgia case for attempted election fraud and the assault on the Capitol.
The judicial forecast for the president-elect was further cleared when the Justice Department concluded that he cannot be tried after having won the elections. But the New York case entailed an added complexity: Trump had already been tried and convicted. That is why Judge Merchan is now dealing a relative setback to the president-elect, even though theoretically the sentence will not be read out for at least four years.
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