A filing on Thursday by former President Donald Trump’s attorneys requested that the judge overseeing his criminal case dismiss it completely based on the recent Supreme Court ruling over presidential immunity.
Thursday also happened to be the original sentencing date for Trump in the “hush money” case, in which he was found guilty in May. The Manhattan criminal case made history, as the jury found him guilty on all 34 counts, making Trump the first U.S. president to be convicted of a felony. Last week, Judge Juan Merchan delayed Trump’s sentencing after both parties agreed, following the 6-3 Supreme Court ruling that protects former presidents from being prosecuted with evidence regarding official acts they made as president.
The new sentencing date is set for Sept. 18, which comes after the Republican National Convention, where Trump is expected to become the GOP’s presidential nominee.
On Thursday, Trump’s legal team told Merchan that the “hush money” case should be disregarded because the prosecution used official acts Trump made as president as evidence against him, noting that they had warned about this prior to the start of the trial.
“In order to vindicate the presidential immunity doctrine, and protect the interests implicated by its underpinnings, the jury’s verdicts must be vacated and the indictment dismissed,” the filing said, according to CNN. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and his prosecution team in the case “violated the presidential immunity doctrine and the Supremacy Clause by relying on evidence relating to President Trump’s official acts in 2017 and 2018 to unfairly prejudice President Trump in this unprecedented and unfounded prosecution relating to purported business records.”
Attorneys Todd Blanche and Emil Bove led Trump’s defense in the case, where he was found guilty of falsifying business records to apparently hide a $130,000 payment made by his then-attorney Michael Cohen to adult film actress Stormy Daniels leading up to the 2016 presidential election.
Trump’s defense said in the filing that multiple witnesses should have never testified in the criminal case against him, including Hope Hicks, his former White House communications director, and Madeleine Westerhout, former director of Oval Office operations, as well as his social media posts.
“‘Because of the implications for the institution of the presidency, the use of official-acts evidence was a structural error under the federal Constitution that tainted’ the case,” the filing added, per The New York Times. “These transgressions resulted in the type of deeply prejudicial error that strikes at the core of the government’s function.”
Some legal experts are skeptical of the credibility of using the Supreme Court’s ruling as a reason to dismiss the criminal case.
“The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the matter was purely a personal item of the president — a cover-up of an embarrassing event,” Judge Alvin Hellerstein said to ABC News. “Hush money paid to an adult film star is not related to a president’s official acts. It does not reflect in any way the color of the President’s official duties.”
Bragg’s office has not yet commented on the actions made by Trump’s defense and has until July 24 to respond.