New York prosecutors have urged a state judge to adopt a plan that would keep intact the 34 guilty verdicts against Donald Trump, and allow him to be sentenced after he leaves office in the future, maybe in January 2029 at the end of his new term as President. They did not ask for prison time, however.
As part of that plan, the judge also was asked to keep on record the sweeping charges of crime against Trump, based on personal actions he took during his initial, successful campaign for the Presidency eight years ago.
Those were the key points made by District Attorney Alvin J. Bragg, Jr., and his local prosecution team in an 82-page filing, backed up by 247 pages of exhibits. They seek to counter the claim last week by Trump’s lawyers that his reelection last month and the sweeping grant of legal immunity he won from the Supreme Court mean that the verdicts must be wiped out “immediately,” that the charges themselves must be completely erased, and that he can never be given any sentence for the convictions.
Bragg’s filing contended that Trump is seeking far more legal immunity than the Supreme Court created. He has no immunity for any actions that led the jury to convict, since none of the accusations had anything to do with his presidential duties after he won the 2016 election, according to the new brief, filed Monday and made public Tuesday.
The dueling arguments complete the filing of legal papers on Trump’s latest challenge to his only guilty verdicts, thus setting the stage for the jurist in charge of the case, State Judge Juan M. Merchan of New York City, to make a historic ruling on presidential accountability through the criminal justice system.
Although Trump’s attorneys had been claiming immunity to criminal prosecution for months before the Supreme Court established it in a July 1 decision, neither the Supreme Court in that ruling nor any lower court has decided how far that new immunity will actually extend in this or any other case. Judge Merchan will be the first to do so.
While Trump’s team also claimed immunity in two cases in which he faced federal criminal charges, those two cases have been dismissed by federal prosecutors without any ruling on that claim; the cases were dismissed because Trump won election and Justice Department policy forbids prosecution of a sitting President. A fourth criminal case against Trump, on state charges in Georgia, has also drawn an immunity plea by the former President, but that has not yet been decided.
While the New York prosecutors’ wide-ranging new brief covered much ground, its high point was probably the pointed argument against clearing Trump because he won last month’s election to a new term.
Trump’s “suggestion that his subsequent election ‘superseded’ the jury verdict is deeply misguided….Only these jurors – not the general electorate – heard all the evidence in this trial, were instructed on the relevant principles of law, and were charged with the solemn responsibility of determining whether the People [the prosecution] had satisfied their burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.”
It added: “His election to public office and his future inauguration…have nothing to do with his guilt or innocence; the fairness of the trial; or the strength of the evidence against him….Legal trials are not like elections, to be won through the meeting-hall, the radio and the newspaper.” (This last sentence was a quotation from a 1966 Supreme Court decision.)
The prosecutors also made a vigorous effort to keep intact the charges on which Trump was convicted. They argued that doing so would “serve to remind the public that no one is above the law. This is particularly so when the crimes [Trump] was convicted of committing relate to his illegal efforts to promote his own election in 2016.”
In challenging the very broad sweep of the Trump immunity claim, the prosecutors contended that the protection would only apply while he actually serves as President, that it would end when he is out of office, and that he would have none at all anyway because no part of the evidence against him in the New York case involved any official action as President.
The document also noted that a federal judge, handling one of the side issues related to the state case, had already ruled that all of the actions leading to the state charges were unofficial.
Moreover, the filing argued that Trump has no immunity at all as President-elect, and that while he awaits inauguration to become President, he must meet all of his legal obligations in the still-active New York case.
Countering the argument of Trump’s legal team that his election and his immunity completely bar the imposition of any sentence for the New York convictions, the prosecutors contended that there are “multiple accommodations” that Judge Merchan could adopt to avoid interfering with Trump’s preparations to become President and actually serving in office.
They suggested that the judge could delay any further proceedings in the case – including imposing a sentence – until after Trump is no longer President. If Judge Merchan were to decide that such a postponement would not be enough to show respect for presidential immunity, the prosecutors said, the judge could end the case now but make a formal notation on the record that the verdicts still stand and that the charges remain on the books.
Further, they suggested, the judge could minimize the sentence when one is imposed. The filing suggested that the judge could formally declare that nothing Trump does while in office – official or personal – would be taken into account at sentencing in order to assure immunity while in office. That would be broader than the limited immunity the prosecutors prefer.
The prosecutors went on to say that, because the verdicts against Trump were his first convictions, the judge need not give him any prison or jail time at all and could go even further and give Trump “an unconditional discharge” from any actual punishment.
But, if the judge were to take any of those options, the document contended, the judge should refuse entirely any request to vacate the verdicts and erase the charges. “Dismissing this indictment notwithstanding the jury’s verdict of guilt would undermine the jury’s fundamental role in the criminal justice system,” the brief asserted.
Aside from page after page of legal arguments, the prosecutors’ brief mounted a withering attack on Trump’s personal misconduct, a series of threats he made to most of the participants in the case – the judge, the judge’s daughter, the prosecutors, the witnesses. This began, the filing said, even before Trump was formally charged, continued throughout the trial, and did not let up after his convictions. He also repeatedly violated the judge’s orders to stop such attacks, the brief added. Moreover, it said that Trump aimed his invective at other court cases involving him, his family or his businesses.
These actions, the brief asserted, “had an immediate impact on public safety in the city and the personal safety of the participants” in the Manhattan trial.
Those accounts clearly intended to demonstrate to Judge Merchan that, beyond any legal issues before him, he would have every reason to conclude that Trump deserved no favorable treatment as a former or future President.