DOJ Urges NY Appeals Court to Toss Trump Criminal Conviction

(Bloomberg) — The US Justice Department urged a New York state appeals court to reverse Donald Trump’s felony conviction, an extraordinary intervention by federal officials as the president seeks to clear his criminal record.

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Lawyers in the Justice Department filed a friend-of-the-court brief Friday, arguing that his conviction last year was improper. They said the trial judge in the so-called hush money case failed to account for the Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling that gave the president broad immunity.

Trump is appealing a New York jury’s verdict finding him guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal payments to an adult film star on the eve of the 2016 election. Trump, the only president who has been convicted of a felony, is challenging that verdict at a state appeals court in Manhattan and also at the federal level.

The Justice Department argued that some evidence shouldn’t have been considered in the trial because it involved Trump’s time in office.

“The trial court allowed the prosecution to present evidence of President Trump’s official acts to the jury,” the US wrote. “That error requires reversal.”

The Justice Department argued that Judge Juan Merchan, who oversaw the trial, erroneously allowed the jury to consider evidence that related to Trump’s official acts as president. That included conversations he had with former White House aides Hope Hicks and Madeleine Westerhout, they said. That evidence “eviscerated” the immunity granted to presidents by the Supreme Court, the DOJ argued.

Federal lawyers now have “substantial interests in protecting the Office of the President,” as well as its powers and duties, according to the filing, which asks the state appeals court to consider their arguments as they weigh the case.

“This is the first appeal on the merits from a criminal conviction of a President in the Nation’s history,” the Justice Department wrote in the filing. “The United States therefore has a substantial interest in the Court’s resolution of President Trump’s immunity defense.”

A spokesperson for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, whose office prosecuted Trump, declined to comment.

Merchan also improperly allowed Bragg to take a misdemeanor case — falsifying business records — and elevate it to a felony by saying it was done to violate a second law. That law, the Federal Election Campaign Act, can’t be used in this case, according to the filing.

The jury agreed with Manhattan prosecutors that the concealed payments had deprived voters of vital information about Trump’s conduct with women before the election, which Trump won.

“Reversal is also required for the independent reason that the trial court permitted the jury to find President Trump guilty based on a legal theory expressly preempted by federal law,” according to the filing.

In Trump’s separate federal challenge to the case, a US appeals court in Manhattan this week ruled that Trump can get a fresh review of his request to move the state case to federal court. Trump’s legal team has prioritized the federal appeals court as the quickest route to get the case in front of the Supreme Court.

Trump’s lead defense lawyer at the hush-money trial, Todd Blanche, is now the number two official at the Justice Department. He was not listed among the lawyers who signed the letter.

A spokesperson for the Justice Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

(Updates with more context from the filing starting in paragraph 5.)

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