Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has issued a response to Donald Trump’s audacious bid to overturn his conviction in the Stormy Daniels hush money scandal.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Trump is immune from criminal prosecution for acts performed during his presidency. However, the Court left it to lower courts to define what constitutes an “official act.”
Seizing on this ruling, Trump’s legal team demanded the dismissal of the guilty verdict from the jury in the so-called “hush money case.” They requested Judge Juan Merchan to set aside the verdict and grant a hearing, claiming the Supreme Court’s decision should nullify the trial’s outcome.
In his rebuttal, Bragg sharply rebuked Trump’s maneuver. He asserted that the New York case, rooted in criminal acts predating Trump’s presidency, had nothing to do with “official acts” performed while in office.
Bragg’s brief condemned Trump’s arguments as “largely unpreserved,” emphasizing that Trump failed to raise these claims during or before the trial. “The court should see these arguments for what they are: a desperate ploy,” Bragg’s filing contends.
Former ethics czar and impeachment attorney Norm Eisen described Bragg’s response as “devastating” for Trump.
“The Supreme Court official acts immunity decision in Trump v. US is bad enough,” Eisen declared on X. “But as the DA points out, Trump’s efforts to stretch it to cover this UNOFFICIAL acts case is even worse.”
Eisen further criticized Trump’s objections to six categories of evidence, noting that Trump only contested two of them during the trial.
“You can’t say he didn’t know about the issue bc he DID object to the other two!” Eisen pointed out.
Commenting on the Supreme Court’s ruling, former DOJ official Chuck Rosenberg expressed skepticism about Trump’s appeal prospects. “I mean, if you look at the Supreme Court’s decision from yesterday, … the conduct that underlined in the New York case seems to me to be purely private,” he said. “So perhaps Judge Merchan grants them a hearing, but I have a hard time imagining that they would prevail on it.”
In May, jurors convicted Trump on 34 counts of falsifying business records related to hush money payments made to actress and director Stormy Daniels. Trump has denied the affair but paid Daniels to keep it quiet before the 2016 election.
BREAKING: DA Bragg just launched his opposition to Trump’s effort to overturn his 34 felony convictions & get a new trial in the Manhattan case
This matters even more now that the election is about a prosecutor vs. a perpetrator
And the DA brief is DEVASTATING
A thread… pic.twitter.com/Kfw5oTFIqf
— Norm Eisen (#TryingTrump out now!) (@NormEisen) July 25, 2024
Trump now raises objections as to 6 categories of evidence that he says should be excluded under the SCOTUS decision
But he failed to object during trial to 4/6. Ya can't say he didn't know about the issue bc he DID object to the other 2! 4/x
— Norm Eisen (#TryingTrump out now!) (@NormEisen) July 25, 2024
