Judge rejects Trump’s request to overturn conviction for payments in exchange for silence

A judge on Monday rejected President-elect Donald Trump’s request to have his guilty plea to allegations that he falsified records to cover up a sex scandal thrown out following the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling on presidential immunity.

However, the overall future of the case remains uncertain.

The decision by Judge Juan M. Merchan of Manhattan eliminates a possible exit from the case before Trump is president again next month, but his lawyers have presented other arguments for the conviction to be thrown out.

Prosecutors have said there should be some consideration for the fact that he is returning to serve as president of the country, but they insist that the guilty plea should stand.

A jury found Trump guilty in May of 34 counts of falsifying business records related to a $130,000 payment to silence porn actress Stormy Daniels in 2016. Trump denies any wrongdoing.

The allegations involved a scheme to conceal a payment to buy Daniels’ silence during the final days of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign to keep her from talking about her allegations that they had had sexual relations years earlier. , something he denies.

A month after the verdict, the Supreme Court ruled that former presidents cannot be prosecuted for official acts — things they did while running the country — and that prosecutors cannot cite those actions to bolster a case focused on purely personal conduct and not officers.

In Monday’s decision, Merchan rejected most of Trump’s claims that some of the evidence prosecutors presented was related to official acts, and therefore subject to immunity protection.

The judge said that even if he found that some evidence was related to official conduct, he would still consider that prosecutors’ decision to use “these acts as evidence of the decidedly personal acts of falsifying business records does not pose a danger of intrusion into the authority and function of the Executive Branch.”

Trump’s lawyers cited the ruling to argue that the jury in the hush money case received some inappropriate evidence, such as Trump’s presidential financial disclosure form, testimony from some White House aides and social media posts made while was in office.

Prosecutors disagreed, saying the evidence in question was only “a fraction” of their case.

Trump will take office on January 20.

Trump’s communications director, Steven Cheung, said Monday that Merchan’s decision is a “direct violation of the Supreme Court’s decision on immunity and other long-standing case law.”

“This illegal case should never have been filed, and the Constitution requires that it be dismissed immediately,” Cheung said in a statement.

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