Prosecutors with the Manhattan DA’s office made clear in a Tuesday letter: they want to see Donald Trump sentenced over the hush money scheme, even if means waiting until he leaves the White House.
But in the letter to Judge Juan Merchan, prosecutors with Alvin Bragg’s office admitted that through they will oppose Trump’s requests to dismiss the case on grounds of presidential immunity, they’re deep in uncharted legal territory. A jury found Trump guilty before his re-election, an unprecedented circumstance.
“The People deeply respect the Office of the President, are mindful of the demands and obligations of the presidency, and acknowledge that Defendant’s inauguration will raise unprecedented legal questions,” prosecutors with Alvin Bragg’s office wrote in a letter to Judge Juan Merchan.
Prosecutors added pointedly that they also “deeply respect the fundamental role of the jury in our constitutional system.”
Judge Merchan now faces two unresolved requests from Trump to dismiss the case: one that Trump filed before the election, asserting that the Supreme Court’s July immunity ruling obviates the jury’s verdict, and a second request from Trump saying that his victory in the November election should force dismissal of the case.
Merchan has yet to rule on either request. Bragg indicated in the letter that he would oppose the requests, but agreed to pause Trump’s sentencing pending resolution.
Trump spokesman Steven Cheung portrayed Bragg’s agreement to pause deadlines in the case as a “total and definitive victory.”
“The lawless case is now stayed, and President Trump’s legal team is moving to get it dismissed once and for all,” Cheung said.
Trump had said in an email released last week that allowing the case to continue would present “unconstitutional impediments to President Trump’s ability to govern.”
Bragg obliquely hit back against that in the Tuesday letter to Merchan. There’s nothing in current law to establish that presidential immunity from prosecution “requires dismissal of a post-trial criminal proceeding,” he wrote. The case was brought before the Supreme Court’s ruling, Bragg added, and was “based on unofficial conduct for which the defendant is also not immune.”
In conceding that sentencing can be delayed while opposing Trump’s requests for dismissal, Bragg leaves the case hanging in a tricky place. On the one hand, he’s clearly against the case being thrown out. But on the other, he recognizes the strangeness of the situation: it’s not clear what should happen to Trump, though the case should not be dismissed.
A jury found Trump guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection with the hush money scheme in a May verdict. It marks the furthest that any prosecutor got toward holding the former and future President accountable for wrongdoing.
Read the letter here:
I simply want God to come get his creature & take him home.
We all are in the zoo, with him, until God does.
All of those jurists, all of that time, the death threats, the fear…
Let the chips fall where they may.
I don’t think it’s God coming for him.
Oh, God’s coming for him. We’ve just made some terrible mistakes about what God thinks is funny.