Attorneys forDonald Trump once again urged a New York judge to overturn the hush money conviction against his client, calling the prosecutors’ proposal that he be treated like a deceased defendant a “dark dream scenario” and “irresponsible.”
The office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg had recommended that Judge Juan Merchan conclude the case by using a procedure called “abatement,” which is what courts in a few other states outside of New York have done when a criminal defendant passes away before to being sentenced.
“As a further illustration of DA Bragg s desperation to avoid legally mandated dismissal, DANY proposes that the Court pretend as if one of the assassination attempts against President Trump had been successful,” the attorneys for Trump stated in a court filing Friday.
The analogy was described as “extremely troubling and irresponsible.”
“That unhinged contention demonstrates conclusively that DA Bragg and DANY cannot be trusted to separate their political motivations and careerist ambitions from their obligations to seek justice,” the lawsuit stated, calling the proposal “absurd” and a “dark dream.”
Additionally, they claimed that Trump’s fundamental right to an appeal would be violated by such an order. “One would expect more from a first-year law student, and this is yet another indication that DANY’s opposition to this motion has not been undertaken in good faith,” according to the brief of attorneys Emil Bove and Todd Blanche.
The office of the DA chose not to comment.
In a court filing earlier this week, Bragg’s office made the idea, one of several regarding how the case should proceed despite Trump’s role as president-elect, and recognized that it was “novel.”
When a defendant passes away before being sentenced, Alabama and several other states employ abatement, which is referred to as the “Alabama rule.”
According to the DA, if a defendant passes away after being found guilty but before the conviction is finalized through the appellate process, the court records in the case file that the conviction eliminated the presumption of innocence but was neither upheld nor overturned on appeal due to the defendant’s passing.
According to the DA, that effectively ends the criminal process without nullifying the underlying conviction or rejecting the indictment.
In addition, prosecutors provided Merchan with additional options for handling the criminal case in which Trump was found guilty on 34 felony charges of fabricating company documents. In order to give Trump’s lawyers more time to argue that the indictment should be dropped since a sitting president cannot be sentenced criminally because it would interfere with his duties, the judge postponed the sentencing, which was originally set for last month, indefinitely.
The DA proposed that Trump either be punished before to his inauguration or that the sentencing be postponed until after his departure, with the court declaring that he would not be imposing any jail time on Trump at the time of sentencing.
In the recent document, Trump’s lawyers resisted all of those suggestions.
“President Trump cannot face any more criminal charges because he is the president-elect and the incoming president. Since special counsel Jack Smith has already closed his two federal criminal cases against their client, they wrote, “such proceedings interfere with the ongoing transition process, including preparations that are necessary for President Trump to ‘effectively’ carry out ‘constitutionally designated functions.”
Smith, according to the DA’s office, relied on federal case advice, which is not legally binding on its case. While requesting financial records from Trump during his first term in office, Blanche and Bove, whom Trump has nominated for high positions at the Justice Department, said the DA acknowledged otherwise.
“We cannot prosecute a president while in office,” the DA stated in a filing in that case.
“Sitting-president immunity requires that President Trump not be subjected to any criminal proceedings,” according to Trump’s lawyers.
They argued that in order to stop further constitutional and legal infractions, the matter ought to be closed right away.
When Merchan will rule is unknown.
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