Donald Trump’s lawyers have filed paperwork pushing for dismissal of his Manhattan criminal hush-money case – and have invoked Joe Biden’s decision to pardon his son, Hunter, in their argument.
“Yesterday, in issuing a 10-year pardon to Hunter Biden that covers any and all crimes whether charged or uncharged, President Biden asserted that his son was ‘selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted’ and ‘treated differently’,” Trump’s lawyers wrote in papers filed on Monday but which were not made public until Tuesday afternoon.
“President Biden argued that ‘raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice’,” the Trump team added.
Since the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, who helmed the state case against Trump, assumed office, they claimed, he has conducted “precisely the type of political theater that President Biden condemned” in the case against Trump. Biden’s pardon of his son, for convictions on federal gun and tax charges, came days before sentencing in those cases.
“As President Biden put it yesterday,” they wrote, “Enough is enough.”
The dismissal pitch came after Judge Juan Merchan’s decision on 22 November to indefinitely postpone the president-elect’s sentencing so lawyers on both sides can argue over its future, given Trump’s victory in the recent presidential election.
The request is to dismiss the criminal case stems from Trump’sconviction in May of 34 felony counts over hush-money paid to adult film actor and producer Stormy Daniels to prevent her from going public in the run-up to the 2016 election about a purported sexual liaison years before. The president-elect’s then lawyer, Michael Cohen, carried out a $130,000 payment to Daniels and, prosecutors said, Trump falsified business records by describing his repayments to Cohen as legal services.
Trump’s team is now arguing that the case should be thrown out given the presidential election.
Trump’s lawyers contend that if the case continues, the proceedings present “disruptions to the institution of the Presidency” that violate principles of “the Presidential immunity doctrine because they threaten the functioning of the federal government”.
They also contended that the US constitution bars state judges and prosecutors from interfering with a president’s official duties.
Many of Trump’s renewed arguments for dismissal echo his prior claims that the case was politically motivated, describing the proceedings as an “unconstitutional crusade”.
They had repeatedly pushed for dismissal to no avail, but his impending return to the presidency had presented an avenue to make this case once again.
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Merchan said in his postponement decision that Trump’s lawyers had a 2 December deadline to file their argument for dismissal. Prosecutors had a week to submit their response.
Trump’s lawyers have been calling on Merchan to toss the case outright after he defeated Kamala Harris on 5 November. In previous papers seeking permission to file a formal dismissal request, Trump’s attorneys said that dismissal was required “in order to facilitate the orderly transition of executive power”.
Todd Blanche, Trump’s main attorney and selection for deputy US attorney general, as well as Emil Bove, his choice for principal associate deputy attorney general, said that Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg’s office “appears to not yet be ready to dismiss this politically motivated and fatally flawed case, which is what is mandated by the law and will happen as justice takes its course”.
They had noted that the US justice department was poised to abandon Trump’s federal cases and referred to a departmental memo that bars prosecution of sitting presidents.
“As in those cases, dismissal is necessary here,” their filing argued. “Just as a sitting president is completely immune from any criminal process, so too is President Trump as president-elect.”
Special counsel prosecutors who were pursuing the federal cases against Trump indeed filed paperwork on 25 November asking for their dismissal – citing justice department policy that his team has repeatedly invoked.
“It has long been the position of the Department of Justice that the United States constitution forbids the federal indictment and subsequent criminal prosecution of a sitting president,” wrote Molly Gaston, the top deputy for special counsel Jack Smith.
“That prohibition is categorical and does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the government’s proof, or the merits of the prosecution, which the government stands fully behind.”
Manhattan prosecutors have argued against dismissal in prior court papers and have suggested a solution that would obviate any concerns about interrupting his presidency – including “deferral of all remaining criminal proceedings until after the end of defendant’s upcoming presidential term”.
In their argument for dismissal this week, Trump’s lawyers said that delaying proceedings for four years would not be a workable solution. “With respect to Presidential immunity, it would be egregious and unlawful for this Court to hold the prospect of a 2029 sentencing over President Trump’s head while he continues his service to this Country.”
