The Manhattan district attorney's office said Tuesday it does not oppose a delay request by former President Donald Trump 's legal team in its efforts to throw out his felony conviction after the Supreme Court ruled that presidents have immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts in office.
Trump is set to be sentenced on July 11, just four days before the Republican National Convention, where he will officially become the GOP's presidential nominee. Prosecutors told Judge Juan Merchan that if the former president files a motion on July 10 stating his conviction in the hush money case should be overturned due to the high court's decision, then District Attorney Alvin Bragg 's office should have until July 24 to respond.
"Although we believe defendant's arguments to be without merit, we do not oppose his request for leave to file and his putative request to adjourn sentencing pending determination of his motion," the prosecutors wrote.
Trump's legal team filed a motion to overturn the former president's recent felony conviction in light of the Supreme Court ruling in Trump v. United States. The court ruled that official acts performed while president cannot be criminally prosecuted, while unofficial acts can be.
The motion from Trump attorney Todd Blanche pointed to a March 7 motion that asked the prosecutors to preclude evidence related to Trump's "official acts" based on the presidential immunity doctrine. In that filing, the defense objected to the use of certain evidence at trial, including testimony from possible witnesses and Trump's social media posts and public statements, in addition to a 2018 filing from the Office of Government Ethics.
Under the new Supreme Court precedent, "this official-acts evidence should never have been put before the jury," Blanche wrote.
"Consistent with arguments that we made before and during the trial, the Supreme Court held in Trump that President Trump 'may not be prosecuted for exercising his core constitutional powers, and he is entitled, at a minimum, to a presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts,'" Blanche added.
Finally, Blanche stated that the guilty verdict from May 30 against Trump violates the presidential immunity doctrine and creates a grave risk of “an Executive Branch that cannibalizes itself," quoting from the high court's presidential immunity decision.
"After further briefing on these issues beginning on July 10, 2024, it will be manifest that the trial result cannot stand," Blanche said.
It is not immediately clear whether Merchan will decide to postpone the sentencing of Trump, which could result in punishments ranging from jail time or fines for the guilty verdict on 34 felony counts for falsifying business records to conceal a hush money payment to Stormy Daniels in the weeks before the 2016 presidential election.
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If Trump's sentencing is delayed, it would put to bed fears by Republican allies that the former president's appearance at the GOP convention, beginning July 15, could be hampered.
The high court's ruling pertained to Trump's indictment for his role in the Jan 6, 2021, riot, but his legal team believes his hush money conviction can be thrown out as well.
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