Judge denies Trump motion to dismiss hush money suit over immunity claims | Donald Trump

A judge ruled Monday that Donald Trump’s conviction for falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal should stand, rejecting the president-elect’s argument that it should be thrown out because of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling on presidential immunity, a lawsuit showed .

Manhattan Judge Juan Merchan’s decision eliminates one potential exit from the case ahead of Trump’s return to office next month. However, his lawyers have raised other arguments for dismissal.

In a 41-page decision, Merchan said Trump’s “certainly personal actions of falsifying business records pose no danger of intrusion into the authority and function of the executive branch.”

Trump’s lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Prosecutors have said there should be room for his future presidency, but they insist the verdict should stand.

A jury convicted Trump in May of 34 counts of falsifying business records related to a $130,000 payment to adult film actor Stormy Daniels in 2016. The payment was for her silence before the 2016 election about a sexual encounter she has said she had a decade earlier with Trump, who denies it.

It was the first time that a US president – ​​former or sitting – had been convicted of or charged with a crime.

The charges involved a scheme to conceal the payment to Daniels in the final days of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign to prevent her from going public — and keeping voters from hearing — her allegation of a sexual encounter. He says nothing sexual happened between them.

Trump pleaded not guilty and called the case an attempt by Bragg, a Democrat, to damage his 2024 campaign.

A month after the ruling, the Supreme Court ruled that former presidents cannot be prosecuted for official acts — things they did while running the country — and that prosecutors cannot cite those acts to bolster a case centered on purely personal, unofficial conduct .

Trump’s lawyers then cited the Supreme Court’s ruling to argue that the hush money jury was given some improper evidence, such as Trump’s presidential financial disclosure form, testimony from some White House aides and social media posts while he was in office.

In his ruling, Merchan denied the bulk of Trump’s claims that some of the prosecutors’ evidence related to official acts and implicated immunity protections.

The judge said that even if he found that some evidence related to official conduct, he would still find that prosecutors’ decision to use “those acts as evidence of the decidedly personal acts of falsifying business documents does not constitute any danger of intrusion into the authority and functioning of the executive power”.

Even if prosecutors had erroneously introduced evidence that could be challenged under an immunity claim, Merchan continued, “such error was harmless in light of the overwhelming evidence of guilt.”

Prosecutors had said the evidence in question was only “a sliver” of their case.

Steven Cheung, Trump’s communications director, called Merchan’s decision a “direct violation of the Supreme Court ruling on immunity and other longstanding case law.”

“This lawless case should never have been filed and the Constitution requires that it be dismissed immediately,” Cheung said in a statement.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, which prosecuted the case, declined to comment.

Trump takes office on January 20, 2025.