The NY Judge Overturned this Guilty Verdict Indictment After SCOTUS Immunity Ruling

NY Judge OVERTURNED Guilty Verdict

Following the Supreme Court’s ruling that presidents are immune from prosecution for official activities, the former president of the United States publicly asked Judge Merchan to reverse his guilty decision in New York v. Trump on Thursday night.

 

After a six-week trial resulting from Bragg’s investigation, Trump was found guilty last month in an unprecedented criminal prosecution on all counts of falsifying business documents in the first degree.

 

On Thursday evening, the official motion was submitted. Todd Blanche, the Trump defense attorney, stated in the motion that “the Court should dismiss the indictment and vacate the jury’s verdicts based on violations of the Presidential immunity doctrine and the Supremacy Clause.” Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last week that a former president has considerable immunity for official activities performed while in office, Trump hinted that he will attempt to reverse his criminal conviction in the Manhattan case.

 

Blanche cited the Supreme Court’s ruling on immunity in her formal motion filed on Thursday night, contending that specific evidence of “official acts” should not have been allowed to be introduced into evidence.

 

Blanche specifically contended that testimony from former Special Assistant to the President Madeleine Westerhout, former White House Communications Director Hope Hicks, testimony about the Special Counsel’s Office, Congressional Investigations, and the pardon power, as well as testimony about President Trump’s response to FEC inquiries, his tweets, and other related testimony, were improperly admitted during the trial. Additionally, Trump’s attorneys cited his presidential disclosures to the Office of Government Ethics.

The motion states that Blanche claimed that the grand jury was presented with “official-acts evidence” by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg that “contravened the holding in Trump because Presidents ‘cannot be indicted based on conduct for which they are immune from prosecution.” “The Presidential immunity doctrine recognized in Trump pertains to all ‘criminal proceedings,’ including grand jury proceedings when a prosecutor ‘seeks to charge’ a former President using evidence of official acts.” Blanche said that Bragg “violated the Presidential immunity doctrine by using similar official-acts evidence in the grand jury proceedings that gave rise to the politically motivated charges in this case.” “Because an Indictment so tainted cannot stand, the charges must be dismissed,” Blanche said.

 

The Supreme Court’s ruling, Blanche added, does not permit an exception for “overwhelming evidence” or “harmless error” to “the profound institutional interests at stake.”

 

“Indeed, Trump contemplates a pretrial interlocutory appeal of an adverse Presidential immunity determination precisely because even the prospect of such a trial is constitutionally unacceptable,” Blanche stated. “It necessarily follows that the results of a trial conducted in breach of these holdings is invalid.”

 

Just a few days before he is expected to be formally selected as the Republican Party’s presidential nominee for 2024 at the Republican National Convention, Trump was scheduled to be sentenced on Thursday.