Judge will evaluate immunity in hush money case

NEW YORK — A gut punch to most defendants, Donald Trump has turned his criminal conviction into a rallying cry. His supporters wrote “I Vote Guilty” on T-shirts, hats and lawn signs.

“The real decision will be made by the people on November 5th,” Trump said after his conviction last spring in New York on 34 charges of falsifying business records.

Now, just a week after Trump’s resounding election victory, a judge in Manhattan is preparing to decide whether to uphold the hush money order stemming from a July U.S. Supreme Court ruling granting presidents broad immunity from criminal prosecution.

Judge Juan M. Merchan said he would issue a written opinion Tuesday on Trump’s request to vacate the conviction and hold a new trial or dismiss the indictment altogether.

Merchan was expected to come to power in September but was trying to influence the election “to avoid being seen”. His decision could still be overturned if Trump takes further steps to delay or end the case.

If the judge approves the verdict, the case will move forward to sentencing on November 26; but this may change or disappear depending on appeals or other legal maneuvers.

Trump’s lawyers have been fighting for months to overturn the conviction, which includes efforts to conceal a $130,000 payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels, whose affair allegations threatened to disrupt Trump’s 2016 campaign.

Trump denies her allegation, maintains he did nothing wrong and calls the decision a “fraudulent, shameful” result of a politically motivated “witch hunt” aimed at damaging his campaign.

The Supreme Court’s decision gives former presidents immunity from prosecution for official actions they took as part of their duties as president and prohibits prosecutors from using evidence of official actions when trying to prove that purely personal conduct violated the law.

When Trump paid his lawyer, Michael Cohen Daniels, in October 2016, he was a private citizen campaigning for president but neither elected nor sworn in.

However, Trump was president when Cohen was compensated, and Cohen stated that they discussed the repayment arrangement in the Oval Office. Jurors found that those reimbursements were incorrectly recorded in Trump’s records as legal expenses.

Trump’s lawyers claim that the Manhattan district attorney’s office “tainted” the case with evidence that should not have been allowed, including testimony from Trump’s first term as president.

Prosecutors argue that the high court’s decision “provides no basis for overturning the jury’s verdict.” They said Trump’s conviction involved unofficial actions, personal conduct from which he is not immune.

The Supreme Court did not define a formal law and left that to lower courts. It was also unclear how Trump’s ruling, which stems from one of two federal criminal cases, relates to state-level cases such as Trump’s secret money case.

“There are many dark aspects to the court’s decision, but one that is particularly relevant in this case is the issue of what counts as an official action,” said George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin. “And I think it’s extremely difficult to argue that this payment to this woman could qualify as official action, for a number of pretty obvious reasons.”