Donald Trump’s lawyers filed a motion to dismiss the president-elect’s New York hush money case, invoking President Joe Biden’s pardon for his son Hunter in making their argument to toss the state criminal case.
The 69-page motion cited a long list of complaints against various actors in the legal system and said that dismissal is required due to presidential immunity; federal law regarding the presidential transition; and the Constitution’s supremacy clause, which prioritizes federal interests over states.
Judge Juan Merchan previously granted Trump permission to file the dismissal motion and has postponed sentencing in the meantime. If Merchan rejects Trump’s dismissal motion, the judge will still need to reject another pending motion of Trump’s before sentencing can happen. Before Trump won the presidential election and filed this latest motion, he already had a pending bid to overturn his guilty verdicts or dismiss the case based on the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling.
Trump’s lawyers have signaled that they will seek to appeal any adverse rulings before sentencing can happen, making it even less likely that Trump is sentenced before he takes office in the only one of his four criminal cases that went to trial. While it’s unclear how this all plays out over the next several weeks, it raises questions about what to do with the case if it isn’t fully resolved before Trump returns to the White House next month.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, whose response to Trump’s motion is due Dec. 9, previously signaled that he thought the case could be paused while Trump is in office. Trump’s lawyers argue in their dismissal motion filed Monday that doing so “is not an option.” Among other things in the lengthy filing, they cited special counsel Jack Smith’s motion to dismiss Trump’s federal election interference case, which pointed to Justice Department policy against charging and prosecuting sitting presidents. The applicability of that federal policy — or, perhaps more importantly, its constitutional persuasiveness in Merchan’s view — when it comes to state cases could play a role in how the state court judge handles the case going forward.
Citing Biden’s recent pardon of his son Hunter, Trump’s lawyers attempted to harness Biden’s criticism of his son being mistreated to say that the same is true of Trump’s prosecution. The motion was filed by defense lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, whom Trump has named to top Justice Department posts in his incoming administration.
Trump’s motion comes after his federal charges were dismissed, while his Georgia state case, which hasn’t gone to trial yet and has been paused due to a pretrial appeal, raises its own open questions that, like in the New York case, may have to be addressed in some fashion before Trump takes office. Presidents can’t pardon state cases or get them dismissed.
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