President Donald Trump appealed his conviction Monday night in the case Democratic Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg prosecuted in the middle of the 2024 election.
Improper charges, lack of evidence, presidential immunity, incorrect jury instructions and judicial bias should be enough to set aside a conviction secured in “the most politically charged prosecution in our Nation’s history,” Trump’s attorneys argued in a 96-page filing with a New York appeals court.
“This case should never have seen the inside of a courtroom, let alone resulted in a conviction,” his attorneys from the firm Sullivan & Cromwell LLP wrote. (RELATED: ‘Trial By Ambush’: Former Federal Prosecutors Say Alvin Bragg’s Strategy Is Unlike Anything They’ve Seen Before)
Judge Juan Merchan, who oversaw the trial, declined to toss Trump’s conviction based on presidential immunity in December. Merchan sentenced Trump to an “unconditional discharge,” a term without prison, fines or probation, just over a week before his inauguration in January.
While serving as a judge, Merchan earmarked a $15 donation for the Biden for President campaign in 2020, while his daughter owns an advertising firm paid millions by Democrats, Trump’s attorneys noted in the filing.
Former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump (C), sitting with attorneys Todd Blanche (L) and Emil Bove (R), awaits the start of proceedings in his criminal trial at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York City, on May 29, 2024. (Photo by JABIN BOTSFORD/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
Trump was convicted in May 2024 on 34 counts for falsifying business records related to reimbursing his attorney for a nondisclosure agreement with porn star Stormy Daniels. Bragg used a “convoluted legal theory” to circumvent the expired statute of limitations and elevate the charges to felonies, alleging the documents were falsified to conceal or commit another crime — violating a New York election law against conspiring to influence an election through “unlawful” means.
Merchan’s jury instructions did not require jurors to agree on the “unlawful” means Trump apparently used to influence the 2016 election, giving them three options.
“After years of fruitless investigation into decade-old, baseless allegations— and under immense political pressure to criminally charge President Donald J. Trump for something—New York’s district attorney (DANY) manufactured felony charges against a once-former and now-sitting President of the United States,” his attorneys wrote. “Targeting alleged conduct that has never been found to violate any New York law, the DA concocted a purported felony by stacking time barred misdemeanors under a convoluted legal theory, which the DA then improperly obscured until the charge conference.”
Trump’s attorneys sought a transfer of the case to federal court in June.
Two of Trump’s top defense attorneys during the trial, Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, have now been appointed to prominent positions. Blanche is second-in-charge at the Department of Justice (DOJ), and Bove was confirmed in July as a federal judge on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.
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