A judge on Monday rejected US president Donald Trump's bid to dismiss his money laundering conviction because of the Supreme Court's recent ruling on presidential immunity. But the future of the issue in general remains unclear.
Manhattan Judge Juan M. Merchan's ruling eliminates one possible off-ramp from the case before Trump takes office next month. His lawyers have raised other arguments for dismissal, however.
Prosecutors have said there should be accommodation for the incoming president, but they want the conviction to stand.
Jury Trump to be sentenced in May of 34 counts of falsifying business records related to a US$130,000 hush money payment to porn actress Stormy Daniels in 2016. Trump denies wrongdoing.
The charges included a scheme to conceal a payment to Daniels in the final days of Trump's 2016 presidential campaign to keep her from publishing — and vote to keep from hearing – his claim about a sexual encounter with the businessman married years before. He says nothing sexual happened between them.
Supreme Court decision after decision
A week after the verdict, Supreme Court ruling that vice presidents cannot be impeached for official acts – things they did during the running of the country – and that prosecutors cannot cite those acts to support a case based on personal conduct , unofficial only.
Trump's lawyers then cited the Supreme Court's opinion to argue that the hush money jury received irrelevant evidence, such as Trump's presidential financial disclosure form, testimony from some White House aides and social media posts made while in office.
In Monday's decision, Merchan denied most of Trump's allegations that some of the prosecutors' testimony was related to official activities and that immunity was involved.
The judge said that even if he found that some of the evidence involved official conduct, he would still find that the prosecution's decision to use “the -these acts as evidence of personal decision-making actions regarding the concealment of business records endangering the authority and the role of the executive branch.”
Even if prosecutors had mistakenly introduced evidence that could have been challenged under an immunity claim, Merchan continued, “such error was harmless in light of the overwhelming evidence of guilt.”
Prosecutors had said that evidence was only “the tip” of their case.
Trump communications director Steven Cheung said Monday that Merchan's decision was “a direct violation of the Supreme Court's decision on immunity, and other long-standing jurisprudence.”
“This lawless case should never have been introduced, and the Constitution demands that it be abolished immediately,” Cheung said in a statement.
The Manhattan district attorney's office, which prosecuted the case, declined to comment.
Trump, 78 years old, is won the US presidential election on November 5takes office on January 20.
