The Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, asked the judge presiding over President Trump’s hush-money case to deny the 45th president’s  request to toss out the guilty verdict and the indictment following the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling on presidential immunity. 

“This Court should reject defendant’s request to vacate his conviction and dismiss the indictment on the basis of the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on presidential immunity,” prosecutor Matthew Colangelo and four of his colleagues wrote in their motion made public on Thursday. “Contrary to defendant’s arguments, that decision has no bearing on this prosecution and would not support vacatur of the jury’s unanimous verdict (let alone dismissal of the indictment) even if its reasoning did apply here.” 

Mr. Bragg successfully charged Trump with falsification of business records in a scheme to interfere with the 2016 election. After a six week long trial at Manhattan criminal court, the jury in May found Trump guilty on all 34 felony counts and Trump became the first former president in the history of America to be convicted of a crime.

On July 1, the Supreme Court released its decision on presidential immunity, which granted some immunity protections to presidents and former presidents from prosecution for actions relating to the core powers of their office, and at least a presumption that they have immunity for their official acts. Within hours after the publication of the historic ruling, Trump’s attorneys sent a letter to the presiding judge in the hush-money case, Juan Merchan, asking him to dismiss the guilty verdict. 

At the time, the district attorney’s office responded that they did not agree with Trump’s claims that the Supreme Court decision impacted their case, but prosecutors agreed to delay the sentencing, which had originally been scheduled for July 11.  

Judge Merchan granted the defense’s request to file a motion to challenge the verdict, and adjourned the sentencing, “if such is still necessary,” to September 18.  

As the Sun reported, Trump’s attorneys then filed a full-fledged motion to vacate the verdict and dismiss the entire indictment, which would prevent prosecutors from charging Trump in a new trial, on July 11 – coincidentally on the same day Trump was originally scheduled to be sentenced.   

The defense argued that the Supreme Court’s ruling shielded Trump with immunity because evidence brought by the prosecution in his trial – such as tweets and phone calls he made while president, as well as testimony by witnesses such as his former communications director Hope Hicks, and his former Oval Office assistant, Madeleine Westerhout – were part of his presidential duties and “official acts.” 

Mr. Bragg had accused Trump of ordering his former personal lawyer and current nemesis, Michael Cohen, of paying $130,000 to the adult film star, Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, on the eve of the 2016 presidential election to buy her silence about her claim that she had a single sexual encounter with Trump at a celebrity golf tournament at Lake Tahoe in 2006. The prosecution further accused Trump of disguising his reimbursement of the hush-money to Cohen as a legal fee. Trump denies the charges and the sexual encounter. During his June 27 debate with President Biden, he said, “I didn’t have sex with a porn star.”

If Trump did in fact repay Cohen the hush-money, as the prosecution alleged, he did so in 2017, when he was president and working from the Oval Office. Therefore, his attorneys argued, any actions he took should be regarded as “official acts.”  

But prosecutors pushed back in their court filing on Thursday, writing that paying hush-money to an adult film star is “entirely personal” and has “no relationship whatsoever to any official duty of the presidency.”

Regarding Trump’s tweets, they found the “challenged Tweets bear no resemblance to the kinds of public comments that the Supreme Court indicated would qualify as official presidential conduct.” The prosecutors argued that, “Defendant’s Tweets conveying his personal opinion about his private attorney do not bear any conceivable relationship to any official duty of the Presidency.” They applied this argument as well to Ms. Hicks’s tearful testimony, which “related solely to unofficial conduct.” 

“[T]he evidence that he claims is affected by the Supreme Court’s ruling constitutes only a sliver of the mountains of testimony and documentary proof that the jury considered in finding him guilty of all 34 felony charges beyond a reasonable doubt,” the district attorney’s office wrote, referring to Trump.  

The defense has challenged the indictment, claiming that the evidence presented to the grand jury was already “tainted” with evidence related to duties Trump had to perform as a result of being the sitting president. But here too, the prosecutors disagreed.         

“The extensive grand jury evidence cited above far exceeds the required prima facie showing of every element of falsifying business records in the first degree,” prosecutors concluded. “And no part of the grand jury record described above relies on any official-acts evidence. Because the indictment is overwhelmingly supported by admissible evidence… defendant’s belated and unpreserved effort to dismiss the indictment should be rejected.” 

Last summer, Trump unsuccessfully attempted to move the case from state to federal court, arguing that Mr. Bragg was submitting official-acts evidence. But a federal judge rejected that argument, writing that the “evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the matter was a purely personal item of the president — a cover-up of an embarrassing event.” 

Citing the Supreme Court’s decision, the prosecution argued that the “Court explained that the scope of a President’s immunity from criminal prosecution depended on whether his acts while in office were official or unofficial. ‘As for a President’s unofficial acts, there is no immunity,’ even if he committed those acts while serving as President.’” 

The essential question boils down to: what actions should be considered official or unofficial acts? Judge Merchan wrote in his July 2 decision that he would review the matter and render his ruling by September 6. 

Trump and his team have already stated that they will appeal the verdict, if the judge should decide to keep it intact.