Judge rules Trump does not have presidential immunity protections in hush money conviction

Judge Juan Merchan wrote Monday that Donald Trump’s hush money conviction should not be dismissed because of the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity decision, ruling that the evidence presented by the Manhattan district attorney’s office was not related to Trump’s official actions as president.

Judge Juan Merchan wrote Monday that Donald Trump’s hush money conviction should not be dismissed because of the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity decision, ruling that the evidence presented by the Manhattan district attorney’s office was not related to Trump’s official actions as president. The judge did not, however, rule Monday on a motion from Trump’s attorneys to dismiss the conviction because Trump has now been elected president. Instead, his 41-page decision focused on the question of presidential immunity. Merchan wrote that the evidence contested by Trump’s lawyers related “entirely to unofficial conduct” and should receive no immunity protections. “This Court concludes that if error occurred regarding the introduction of the challenged evidence, such error was harmless in light of the overwhelming evidence of guilt,” Merchan wrote. “Even if this Court did find that the disputed evidence constitutes official acts under the auspices of the Trump decision, which it does not, Defendant’s motion is still denied as introduction of the disputed evidence constitutes harmless error and no mode of proceedings error has taken place.” In his decision, Merchan walked through several pieces of testimony that Trump’s lawyers claimed should not have been heard at trial because of the immunity decision, including from Hope Hicks, Madeleine Westerhout and Michael Cohen. Merchan wrote that it was “logical and reasonable to conclude that if the act of falsifying records to cover up the payments so that the public would not be made aware is decidedly an unofficial act, so too should the communications to further that same cover-up be unofficial.”