New York prosecutors say evidence in Trump trial was “overwhelming” and conviction should stand

 

Manhattan prosecutors say there is no basis to overturn Donald Trump’s conviction in the silence case after the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity.

Any errors, they argued in a document filed Thursday, are “harmless” when compared to the “overwhelming evidence” of the former president’s guilt.

Trump’s lawyers have argued that his conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records should be overturned after the Supreme Court ruled that evidence of a president’s official acts should not be used in a trial.

They particularly highlighted testimony from former White House aide Hope Hicks and tweets from Trump’s Twitter account.

His sentencing is scheduled for September. The sentencing was postponed to allow for discussions on the immunity issue.

Prosecutors with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office said the conviction should stand.

The district attorney’s office argued that the crimes Trump was convicted of (falsifying business records to interfere in the 2016 presidential election) were not part of his “official acts” and that the Supreme Court’s ruling on the evidence did not apply to this case.

They also noted that Trump’s lawyers did not raise objections during the trial to most of the evidence they now question, arguing that they cannot challenge it after the trial.

“Despite all the pages the defendant devotes to his current motion, the evidence he claims is influenced by the Supreme Court’s ruling constitutes only a small portion of the mountains of testimony and documentary evidence the jury considered in finding him guilty of all 34 felony charges beyond a reasonable doubt,” prosecutors wrote.

“To the extent the Court concludes that any evidence of official presidential acts was improperly admitted at trial, defendant’s motion to vacate the verdict should be denied on the grounds of harmless error because the trial record contains overwhelming evidence of defendant’s guilt,” prosecutors wrote.

The district attorney’s office argued that Trump’s tweets presented at trial did not constitute official records because their subject matter “consists exclusively of ‘unofficial records’ for which ‘there is no immunity.'”

“Defendant is wrong to argue that the Supreme Court’s recent decision would apply ‘absolute immunity with respect to these Tweets,'” the prosecutors wrote. “To the contrary, the Supreme Court specifically recognized that defendant could make public statements, including the Tweets, ‘in an unofficial capacity,’ as if speaking ‘as a candidate for office or party leader,’ rather than as the President exercising his Article II powers.”

They also downplayed the testimony of Hicks, who reminded the jury of a conversation she had with Trump in 2018. According to Hicks, Trump said it would be bad if Stormy Daniels’ allegations came out before the election.

Prosecutors said her testimony “was simply corroboration of a mountain of other evidence that demonstrates beyond a shadow of a doubt that the defendant sought to conceal both the fact of his sexual encounter with Daniels and the broader Trump Tower conspiracy.”

The district attorney’s office further argued that the indictment should not have been dismissed because the jury did not rely on “official records” evidence.

Trump’s lawyers have asked the judge overseeing the case for permission to file a response to the district attorney’s complaint. [CNN]

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