(Bloomberg) -- Donald Trump’s falsification of business records to conceal a $130,000 payment to a porn star before the 2016 election was purely personal conduct and isn’t protected by the US Supreme Court’s landmark decision on presidential immunity, Manhattan prosecutors told a judge.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg urged the judge to reject Trump’s argument that his felony conviction and indictment should be tossed after the high court’s decision granting presidents broad immunity from criminal charges. The Supreme Court’s decision “has no bearing on this prosecution,” the DA’s office said in a filing released Thursday.
“The Supreme Court has long recognized that a president can act in an unofficial, personal capacity,” Bragg’s office wrote. “Nothing in the court’s recent immunity decision changes that basic fact. This case involved evidence of defendant’s personal conduct, not his official acts.”
The clash over whether to uphold Trump’s guilty verdict comes as his likely opponent in the November election, Vice President Kamala Harris, seeks to frame the race as a choice between a prosecutor and a felon. A reversal of the verdict would instantly deprive her of a powerful line of attack and largely vindicate the former president.
Trump said earlier this month that the guilty verdict was tainted by testimony and other evidence that wouldn’t have been allowed under the Supreme Court’s July 1 ruling. The sweeping decision, in addition to giving presidents immunity for many official actions, also said that evidence about their conduct or public statements couldn’t be used at trials.
‘Harmless’ Errors
But in their response, prosecutors said the immunity didn’t extend to the hush money case because the conviction was supported by overwhelming evidence. Even if Justice Juan Merchan concludes that some evidence of presidential acts was erroneously shown to jurors, the errors were “harmless” and wouldn’t have changed the outcome.
Trump’s “arguments are meritless in any event, since the evidence at issue either concerned unofficial conduct that is not subject to any immunity, or is a matter of public record,” prosecutors said.
A Manhattan jury on May 30 found Trump guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to conceal a $130,000 payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Prosecutors argued that the payment on the eve of the 2016 presidential election was intended to keep her quiet about an alleged sexual encounter with the former president a decade earlier.
The 78-year-old Trump was due to be sentenced July 11. Merchan, who is presiding over the case, rescheduled it for Sept. 18 to allow time to consider Trump’s request to toss the conviction in light of the Supreme Court decision.
Trump argued his conviction was tainted by testimony and other evidence from his time at the White House that he says should have been excluded from the trial.
“The United States Supreme Court’s immunity decision mandates that the sham Manhattan DA witch hunt be summarily dismissed,” Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Trump’s campaign, said in a statement. “The entire case is irreparably tainted, leaving dismissal as the only lawful option.”
Bragg’s team also said that Trump’s lawyers failed to raise objections during the trial about most of the evidence they now say was wrongfully admitted. The former president’s lawyers had “no conceivable excuse” for failing to raise objections, prosecutors argued.
Trump’s lawyers argued the verdict was called into question by extensive evidence related to his official duties, including social media posts and statements about the scandal he issued from the White House. They also argued jurors shouldn’t have heard testimony by former White House aides Hope Hicks and Madeleine Westerhout about his alleged motive as the scandal was unfolding.
Prosecutors also cited a Manhattan federal judge’s decision last year rejecting Trump’s claims that the hush-money charges were related to actions he took while in the White House.
The New York case was the only one of four prosecutions against Trump to make it to trial. The proceedings were closely followed by the national media with live blogs on websites and wall-to-wall coverage on cable news.
Separately on Thursday, the New York judge who in February found Trump liable for inflating the value of his assets in a civil fraud trial denied a long-shot request by the former president to remove himself from the case while he appeals the verdict.
Trump had argued that Justice Arthur Engoron should step down from the case because a lawyer who wasn’t involved with the matter gave the jurist unsolicited advice on the law as he walked to his car, potentially influencing the verdict and Trump’s $454 million penalty.
But Engoron said the “tirade” by the attorney who “accosted” him in the courthouse was legally incorrect and that his advice was unnecessary because the judge had been studying the relevant law in depth for more than three years.
“I certainly did not need a landlord-tenant lawyer ranting about it,” Engoron wrote in a brief decision. “I did not initiate, welcome or encourage, engage in, or learn from, much less enjoy” the encounter.
(Adds decision in separate case in final four paragraphs)
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