Trump uses Supreme Court immunity ruling in latest effort to challenge hush money conviction
New York, New York - Donald Trump is already taking full advantage of the seismic Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity by attempting to put sentencing in his New York hush money case on hold.
In a letter obtained by the Associated Press, Trump's legal team is asking presiding Judge Juan Merchan to scrap the July 11 sentencing date and set his conviction aside so that the implications of Monday's Supreme Court decision can be analyzed.
In May, a New York court convicted Trump on 34 felony charges of falsifying business records to cover up his sex scandal with porn star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential campaign, making him the first former US president ever convicted of a crime.
But when the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the commander-in-chief can never be prosecuted for acts that are part of the executive's "core constitutional powers," it also said that a president's official communications or records are inadmissible in court.
The Republican's lawyers now say that at least some of the evidence introduced by prosecutors in the hush money case, such as social media posts, should be classified as an official presidential act and tossed out.
Trump's other criminal trials, which all revolve around election subversion and attempts to overturn his loss to Joe Biden in 2020, are in serious doubt after the Supreme Court's intervention, which has been slammed as "a dangerous precedent" with devastating impacts on democracy.
Cover photo: SPENCER PLATT / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / Getty Images via AFP