Donald Trump’s attorneys have asked the judge who presided over his criminal hush money case to dismiss the indictment and vacate the jury’s guilty verdicts — arguing their client is a victim of the same “raw politics” President Biden cited in pardoning his son, Hunter, according to filings made public Tuesday.
“President Biden argued that ‘raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice,’” Trump lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove wrote in the lengthy and politically-charged filing, referring to Biden’s weekend statement announcing a 10-year pardon for his son.
“Since DA Bragg took office, he has engaged in ‘precisely the type of political theater’ that President Biden condemned.”
Later arguing that the case threatens “the functioning of the federal government,” Bove and Blanche, who Trump has tapped for top roles at the Department of Justice, contended that state Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan was required to throw it out based on the Presidential Immunity doctrine, the Presidential Transition Act, and the Supremacy Clause, arguing not doing so would impact Trump’s ability to govern.
His election victory means the case must be tossed for the good of the country and that “potential incarceration, stigma, and diversions of attention” necessitate “categorical immunity,” Blanche and Bove wrote.
“As President Biden put it yesterday, ‘Enough is enough,’” Blanche and Bove. “This case, which should never have been brought, must now be dismissed.”
The DA’s office, which declined to comment, is due to respond by Dec. 9. Prosecutors have said they plan to fight Trump’s efforts to get the case thrown out but have conceded the judge may need to postpone sentencing until Trump is out of office.
Trump’s lawyers pushed back on the suggestion, writing that prosecutors’ “ridiculous suggestion that they could simply resume proceedings after President Trump leaves Office, more than a decade after they commenced their investigation in 2018, is not an option.”
A jury of 12 Manhattan residents found Trump, 78, guilty of 34 counts of falsification of business records on May 30, stemming from his reimbursement to his ex-fixer Michael Cohen for paying off porn star Stormy Daniels on the eve of the 2016 election. The verdicts marked him as the first U.S. president to be found guilty of committing a crime.
The jury found Cohen’s $130,000 payment to Daniels bought her silence about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump at a 2006 golf tournament. They determined the payoff was one in a scheme carried out before the election intended to bury unflattering information about Trump’s past that could negatively impact his standing with voters. It also encompassed payoffs to former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who alleges she had an affair with Trump, and a doorman at Trump Tower who claimed Trump had fathered a child with a maid out of wedlock.
Last month, Merchan adjourned Trump’s sentencing indefinitely and drew up a new schedule to consider arguments about how to proceed in light of his election win.
The historic case was the only one of four brought against Trump after his first term that made it before a jury. The Department of Justice last week sought to drop the two federal cases he faced, alleging he plotted to subvert democracy after President Biden’s election victory in 2020 and hoarded sensitive classified documents after leaving office, which Blanche and Bove noted in Tuesday’s filing.
Trump is fighting to get the Georgia state case against him thrown out, where a potential conviction could not be pardoned on the federal level. That case has been tied up significantly with appeals, and legal experts say it’s unlikely to see a revival before Trump takes office.
