Earlier this year, Donald Trump was convicted on all 34 counts in his hush money trial in New York, in connection with his scheme years earlier to pay Stormy Daniels. Trump became both the first former president and the first nominee of a major party to be convicted of a crime.
However, various things have happened since then to put the case in doubt. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that presidents have immunity when it comes to official acts. Trump, of course, was elected president, which made the two federal criminal cases against him essentially disappear. As for the New York case, the only one in which Trump has been convicted, sentencing has been postponed repeatedly.
On Monday, the judge in the case, Judge Juan Merchan, per CNN, ruled that the case should not be tossed out, based on the immunity decision. Merchan did not rule on a separate motion that the conviction, based on Trump’s election as president.
Trump chides Justice Merchan and complains about the gag order barring him from commenting on prosecutors on the hush money case, court staff, and families of all involved, including Merchan’s, who he accuses of “disqualifying and illegal conflicts,” in an apparent violation pic.twitter.com/igkKeNctc5
— Molly Crane-Newman (@molcranenewman) December 17, 2024
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“This Court concludes that if error occurred regarding the introduction of the challenged evidence, such error was harmless in light of the overwhelming evidence of guilt,” Merchan wrote in the 41-page decision. “Even if this Court did find that the disputed evidence constitutes official acts under the auspices of the Trump decision, which it does not, Defendant’s motion is still denied as introduction of the disputed evidence constitutes harmless error and no mode of proceedings error has taken place.”
Trump did not react happily to the decision, in a long Truth Social post on Tuesday.
“In a completely illegal, psychotic order, the deeply conflicted, corrupt, biased, and incompetent Acting Justice Juan Merchan has completely disrespected the United States Supreme Court, and its Historic Decision on Immunity,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Trump went on to call the decision a “rigged hoax.”
“Merchan, who is a radical partisan, wrote an opinion that is knowingly unlawful, goes against our Constitution, and, if allowed to stand, would be the end of the Presidency as we know it. Merchan has so little respect for the Constitution that he is keeping in place an illegal gag order on me, your President and President-Elect, just so I cannot expose his and his family’s disqualifying and illegal conflicts….”
Per CNN, Trump’s lawyers are likely to appeal the decision. Prosecutors have agreed that Trump cannot be sentenced while he is in the White House, although the dispute is over whether or not the conviction should continue to stand.
Special Counsel Jack Smith, who has announced plans to resign, has also asked for the dismissals of two Trump’s federal criminal cases, one in Washington related to January 6, and the other in Florida in relation to the Mar-a-Lago documents.
The explicitness of the Kenneth Chesebro memo is striking. He says it plainly: the goal of having Trump’s unelected electors cast fake electoral votes and Pence discard the real ones was to keep Biden from getting to 270, *even if* the courts had not invalidated the results. pic.twitter.com/aMujW3SZzF
— James Surowiecki (@JamesSurowiecki) August 9, 2023
As for the fourth criminal case? The criminal case in Georgia is currently on hold, after an appeals court halted it this past summer. This week, former Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro, one of several Trump associates indicted in the case, was rejected in his attempt to invalidate his previous guilty plea.
Photo courtesy of the Political Tribune media library.
