Judge Denies Trump’s Bid to Throw Out Conviction Over Immunity Ruling - The New York Times

Judge Denies Trump’s Bid to Throw Out Conviction Over Immunity Ruling

"Justice Juan M. Merchan thwarted one of several attempts by Donald J. Trump to clear his record of 34 felonies before returning to the White House.

Dec. 16, 2024, 6:33 p.m. ET

President-elect Donald J. Trump had argued that the Supreme Court’s decision to grant presidents broad immunity for official actions should nullify his criminal case in New York.Jefferson Siegel for The New York Times

A judge on Monday rejected Donald J. Trump’s argument that a recent Supreme Court ruling had nullified his criminal case in New York, upholding the former and future president’s felony conviction for falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal.

The judge’s ruling preserves, at least for now, the stain of Mr. Trump’s criminal conviction. And if it withstands Mr. Trump’s appeal, it will make him the first felon to serve as president.

The ruling, which addressed the Supreme Court’s decision to grant presidents broad immunity for their official actions, thwarted only the first of several legal maneuvers Mr. Trump has concocted to clear his record of 34 felonies before returning to the White House.

Prosecutors had argued that the Supreme Court’s decision had “no bearing on this prosecution,” noting that Mr. Trump was convicted of orchestrating a scheme involving a personal and political crisis that predated his presidency.

But Mr. Trump’s lawyers seized on a particularly contentious portion of the high court’s ruling, which prohibited prosecutors from introducing evidence involving a president’s official acts even in a case about private misconduct. They argued that testimony from former White House employees had contaminated the verdict.

In the first significant interpretation of that polarizing opinion, the New York judge who oversaw the trial sided with prosecutors, concluding that the testimony centered on Mr. Trump’s unofficial conduct.

“The People’s use of these acts as evidence of the decidedly personal acts of falsifying business records poses no danger of intrusion on the authority and function of the Executive Branch,” the judge, Juan M. Merchan, wrote in a 41-page decision.

And even if the evidence was “admitted in error, such error was harmless,” he added, noting the “overwhelming evidence of guilt” introduced at trial.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Ben Protess is an investigative reporter at The Times, writing about public corruption. He has been covering the various criminal investigations into former President Trump and his allies."

Judge Denies Trump’s Bid to Throw Out Conviction Over Immunity Ruling - The New York Times