Manhattan DA challenges Trump’s appeal of his 2024 hush money conviction

The Manhattan district attorney’s office is urging an intermediate appellate court in New York to reject President Donald Trump’s challenges to his 2024 criminal hush money conviction that made him the first American president to be convicted of a crime and then to take office as a felon.

A jury in Manhattan convicted Trump of 34 counts of falsifying business records after Manhattan prosecutors alleged that he engaged in a “scheme” to boost his chances during the 2016 presidential election through a series of hush money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, then falsified New York business records to cover up that alleged criminal conduct.

Trump has argued the Supreme Court’s controversial 2024 presidential immunity decision, which established sweeping protection from prosecution for “official acts,” made some of the evidence and testimony from the prosecution’s case off-limits.

In its new filing, the district attorney’s office argued there is nothing official about paying off an adult film star to keep quiet about a long-denied affair with Trump.

“The criminal charges here arose from defendant’s unofficial, nonpresidential conduct — as multiple courts have already found, and defendant now concedes. Defendant complains that the immunity doctrine was violated because the People introduced evidence of official acts during the trial, but he is wrong,” the district attorney’s filing said, arguing that “a mountain of evidence unaffected by any claim of official presidential immunity overwhelmingly established defendant’s guilt.”

Prosecutors also took aim at Trump’s claim the trial judge, Justice Juan Merchan, should have recused himself over $35 in Democratic political donations.

“[T]here was no basis for the trial judge to recuse himself due to his years-old and de minimis ($35 in aggregate) contributions to candidates and organizations affiliated with the Democratic Party. The Advisory Committee on Judicial Ethics has already found that recusal was not required, and basic principles of judicial ethics support this conclusion,” prosecutors wrote in their filing to the Appellate Division’s First Department. 

Trump’s conviction carried the possibility of prison time, but Merchan sentenced Trump to an unconditional discharge, noting the extraordinary circumstances of handing down a sentence to the then-president-elect.