Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is urging Judge Juan Merchan to reject Donald Trump's appeal of his hush money conviction, arguing that the former president's conduct is not protected by the Supreme Court granting him immunity for his official duties.
"The criminal charges here, by contrast, exclusively stem from defendant's 'unofficial acts' — conduct for which 'there is no immunity," he wrote in a 69-page brief filed Thursday. Bragg, who brought the hush money case to court and secured convictions on 34 felony counts, recommended that the court "reject defendant's request to vacate his conviction and dismiss the indictment on the basis of the Supreme Court's recent ruling on presidential immunity.”
Trump’s appeal of his felony convictions hinged heavily on the Supreme Court decision in his federal election interference case, which afforded him presidential immunity for "official acts" in office. His legal team has argued the convictions should be thrown out because Bragg, at trial, introduced evidence from a White House meeting while Trump was president.
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,” Bragg wrote, as Bloomberg reported. “Even if some of this evidence were improperly admitted, any error was harmless in light of other overwhelming evidence of defendant’s guilt."
Norm Eisen, a legal analyst for CNN, said Bragg's response to Trump's claims is "devastating."
"The SCOTUS official acts immunity decision in Trump v. US is bad enough," Eisen wrote on social media. "But as the DA points out, Trump's efforts to stretch it to cover this UNOFFICIAL acts case is even worse."
According to Eisen, one of the big missteps by Trump's legal team is that it never raised such an argument at trial. The case, which concerned Trump buying the silence of adult film star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election, also did not hinge on evidence from Trump's time as president.
Eisen argued that Bragg successfully highlighted "major flaws" in Trump's legal arguments, providing reason to believe the convictions will be upheld. That, in turn, will help the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris, who previously served as the attorney general of California.
"This matters even more now that the election is about a prosecutor vs. a perpetrator," Eisen wrote on X.
