Trump formally appeals his New York hush money conviction

(NEW YORK) — New York’s intermediate appellate court should overturn President Donald Trump’s criminal hush money convictions because his trial was “fatally marred” by faulty evidence and overseen by a judge who should have recused himself, his attorneys argued in a court filing late Monday.

Trump’s formal appeal, 17 months after a Manhattan jury found him guilty of 34 felony counts, asks the Appellate Division’s First Department to reverse what his lawyers call the “most politically charged prosecution in our Nation’s history.”

Trump was found guilty in May 2024 after a six-week trial over a scheme to conceal a $130,000 payment his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels to keep her from talking about a long-denied affair ahead of the 2016 presidential election.  Trump reimbursed Cohen in monthly installments that prosecutors said amounted to falsified records.

“The DA, a Democrat, brought those charges in the middle of a contentious Presidential election in which President Trump was the leading Republican candidate. These charges against President Trump were as unprecedented as their political context,” Trump’s attorneys at the white shoe law firm Sullivan & Cromwell wrote in their appeal.

Under New York state law, falsifying business records becomes a felony if the records were falsified to commit or conceal another crime.  The appeal accused Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg of trying to “twist New York law” to persuade the jury that Trump violated election statutes.

“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. This case should never have seen the inside of a courtroom, let alone resulted in a conviction,” the appeal argued.

Leaning into a decision by the Supreme Court made after the trial that limited the use of evidence related to a president’s “official acts,” Trump’s lawyers also argued the New York Judge Juan Merchan erred by allowing evidence protected by presidential immunity. According to Trump’s lawyers, testimony from Trump’s former communications director Hope Hicks — later described by prosecutors as “devastating” for Trump — as well as evidence taken from his Twitter account and other protected conversations were improperly considered by the jury.

“The trial was fatally marred by the introduction of official Presidential acts that the Supreme Court has made clear cannot be used as evidence against a President,” the appeal said.

The appeal also took aim at Judge Merchan, arguing that a $15 donation he made to President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign and another $20 in donations to Democratic-aligned organizations demonstrated political bias.  Before the trial, the New York State Advisory Committee on Judicial Ethics concluded that those donations — as well as Merchan’s daughter’s work for a digital ad agency that worked with Democratic officials — did not create a conflict for Merchan.  

Following Trump’s conviction, Judge Merchan, on the eve of Trump’s inauguration, sentenced him to an unconditional discharge — the lightest possible punishment allowed under New York state law — saying it was the “only lawful sentence” to prevent “encroaching upon the highest office in the land.”