Despite the fact that Donald Trump has a 34 felony count conviction against him in New York, that hasn't stopped his lawyers from just filing just now in New York State Supreme Court, a letter demand to the judge, Judge Mershan, to immediately dismiss the case.
and not go to sentencing for the crimes that Donald Trump was convicted by a jury 12-0 of committing just this past May. They're relying, and I'll read to you from the letter, they're relying on the Constitution, their interpretation of it, of the Presidential Transition Act and of quote-unquote justice so that Donald Trump's powers and authorities as the president-elect won't be impeded by a November 26 sentencing.
They're dead wrong. I don't think this is going to work. And I'm going to cover it right here. I might as touch and legal AF just yesterday. We reported on the position taken by the Manhattan district attorney to tell Judge Mershan what they should do, what he should do.
in balancing the competing interests between the fact that Donald Trump got elected president again, starting in January, even though he's already been convicted in May for conduct and behavior before he was president the first time. And their recommendation to the judges to do a balancing, balancing between the justice
uh, requirement that the public needs to know the outcome and have its rulings through the jury upheld and respected on one side and the office of the president on the other. And the only balancing that the, uh, prosecutors are recommending the right one is for judge bershaun to just play this out over time, give the parties proper briefing, let it go up on appeal and hold off on sentencing.
until after the appeals are done, and then once the appeals are done, go to sentencing, but suspend the sentence and defer it until 2029, when Donald Trump comes out of being office and stops being temporarily immune as the Manhattan DA has framed it. But that's not good enough for Donald Trump and his lawyers. Here's what they have to say in their filing that we just got our hands on from today.
Dear Justice Mershan, immediate dismissal of this case is mandated by the Federal Constitution, the Presidential Transition Act, and the interest of justice in order to facilitate the orderly transition of executive power following his overwhelming victory in the 2024 election.
We respectfully submit this pre-motion letter because we want to file a motion by the 20th of December in the meantime. In the second paragraph, they make it about political motivation again, except without referring to the actual criminal acts that their client was convicted of by a jury not named Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan DA.
as D.A. Bragg engages in his own election campaign. He's not up for election for another year. The office appears to not be ready to dismiss this politically motivated and fatally flawed case. I mean, let's talk about that dismissal. This is already post-conviction. The judge can't dismiss the case. He'd have to have grounds to vacate the jury verdict.
Take away the jury's findings and the role of the jury in the process. And then also vacate and refuse to go forward with sentencing. Justice doesn't allow that. That's the problem. They make it sound like the case is instilling its indictment stage. We'll just dismiss the indictment and close the case. We're well beyond that. We're into post-conviction stage.
They continue to say that dismissal is necessary. The constitution forbids placing into the hands of a single prosecutor in grand jury the practical power to interfere with the ability of a popularly elected president to carry out his constitutional functions. We're not talking about a grand jury anymore. We're talking about a petit, a petit jury, a jury.
of Donald Trump's peers, 12-0, they convicted him of 34 felony counts. That's the first case they lead with in their letter brief. It goes downhill from there. They go on to say the bottom of page one, continuing with this case would be uniquely destabilizing and threatened to hamstring the operation of the whole government apparatus, both in foreign and domestic affairs. It's as if they did not read.
the filing by the Manhattan DA's office just yesterday, where they said the way to balance these competing interests, public justice, and the office of the presidency is to just use time to ameliorate the issue.
have full briefing, let things go up on appeal, postpone the sentencing, then once the sentencing happens, let's say in another month or two, then defer the actual imposition of the sentence or the start of the sentence until 2029. Everything's resolved. Why does it have to be dismissed permanently a conviction that already happened? And that's not even the vehicle. You don't dismiss convictions. You move to vacate them on proper grounds, which don't exist here.
when this is only a temporary condition, which the Manhattan DA said, and they don't properly respond to in the Trump world. He only has a temporary immunity. Any of the things they're talking about here is just temporary. He's not forever the president-elect. It's for a short period of time, another 60 days or so. He's not permanently the president, even if he thinks he can be. It's for four years, and then he comes out, and then he returns to the mass of the public as one of our founding fathers said.
And he can be put in jail at that time. They continue on page two of this two page letter brief that they say indeed in Trump versus Vance at the top of page two, a Supreme Court case that this prosecutor conceded at oral argument before the United States Supreme Court that the courts are empowered to impose a wide variety of limitations, including if necessary to shut an investigation or a litigation where the matter presents a real burden to the president.
A. There's no investigation here. Or litigation here. This is post-conviction sentencing. That's not what Vance was about. Nor is it give us any guidance as to what the Supreme Court would do in this situation. Oh, the stores have already moved on from Halloween. And the holiday season is now officially upon us. Just look at the stores and supermarket parking lots. If you don't own a calendar,
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and why they don't ever address why waiting for years to put Donald Trump in jail isn't a resolution and for the problem, doesn't solve for the problem. Instead, they asked for, whereas the Manhattan DA yesterday asked for the briefing to be complete by the 9th of December, they want to stick it out till December 20th to file their motion, making sure that the actual issue doesn't get resolved likely before the inauguration, which is their goal.
It said, we requested December 20th deadline to file the brief so that President Trump has the opportunity to address in that submission the positions taken by the Department of Justice in federal cases. We all know their positions. The reason they're picking that is by December
the second or so. Jack Smith's going to be telling Judge Chutkin what he's doing with the federal cases. They want to get the benefit of that. The court must address these new issues and dismiss the case prior to issuing a decision on the immunity motion.
That's odd. They don't want a decision on the immunity motion. They just think because this guy's the president elect that that alone is enough to vacate a jury's finding and conviction on 34 felony counts. Not happening. Not through Judge Mershan. Not through the courts of appeal of New York. He'll have to try to take it to the US Supreme Court for that. That bizarre strategy. They go on to say that
even if the court were to wrongly deny the new interest of justice motion. So now they're saying, forget our immunity motion. We're going to do a new interest of justice motion, which it should not do, the appropriate forum for any additional proceedings must first be resolved in President Trump's removal appeal. So they're still trying to get the federal court.
The removal appeal reference is that we don't even want to be with you, Judge Mershan. Back in October, we said we should take this case over to the feds in federal court. I don't know how they get to the federal court. The United States Supreme Court, about two weeks ago, just said to Mark Meadows, who was a federal officer at one point, you don't get to use federal removal. So I don't know how a former president is a federal officer for federal officer removal.
And it's already been rejected once at the beginning of the case. So why wouldn't it be rejected now at the end in post-conviction in the post-conviction world? So that's where we are, again, ending the letter, the exact same way they started it. This case must be immediately dismissed, respectfully submitted with a typo, Todd Blanche, Emil Bovet,
They currently are with Blanche Law, but they've been nominated to be the Deputy Attorney General, the number two position in the Attorney General's office, and maybe the Attorney General of Matt Gaetz doesn't survive this confirmation process, and Emil Beauvais being his right-hand person.
I mean, at some point, after Jan 20, Emil Bovey and Todd Blanch are going to have to stop writing in this case because they can no longer have a private practice when they're representing the president, the office of the presidency and the Department of Justice. But the update here on this hot take is as expected, Trump has vehemently opposed the proposal, doesn't even mention the proposal, that all you have to do is wait a sufficient amount of time for the problem to clear itself up
when Trump steps out of the presidency in four years and then send them to jail. Of course they don't like that. So they come up with this two pronged attack or three pronged attack. Shouldn't be here, should be in federal court. Okay, well, there's an appeal on that, which is likely to lose.
Two, don't even deal with the immunity motion that we already filed about the Supreme Court's immunity decision over July, which was probably a loser since everything about the payoff cover up related to Stormy Daniels was done before he was president, right? The payoff was done before he was president. The payback to Michael Cohen was after, but the crime was before.
And so that should lose. So they were like, interest of justice motion coming December 20th. And the judge would be like, OK, so what's the final word here? The judge, Judge Mershan, who makes good decisions. He's now got the two things. I mean, you'll come back here on legal AF for the Midas Touch Network to get the full reporting when the judge rules. Here's my prediction. The judge is going to set a briefing schedule. It may be somewhere between the 9th and the 20th for full briefing. He's going to make his decision. He's going to suspend the
sentencing date. He's going to take it off the calendar for the 26th of November. He's going to let the parties work through the issue with him. He makes a ruling. That goes up on appeal. It'll be two levels of appeal in New York. It'll take a lot of months, six months to get through that process.
Donald Trump will already be in the presidency by that point. And the appeal may sort of die or be put on hold while he's the president. And therefore, the sentencing itself won't really be happening while he's the president, while it stays alive until he comes out in 2029 and then is sentenced for one to five years in prison. That's sort of what I think is going to happen. We'll continue to follow it on Midas Touch Network and on LegalAF
including on our podcast, LegalAF. So until my next contribution and my next reporting, this is Michael Popok signing off. In collaboration with the Midas Touch Network, we just launched the LegalAF YouTube channel. Help us build this pro-democracy channel where I'll be curating the top stories, the intersection of law and politics. Go to YouTube now and free subscribe at LegalAFMTN. That's at LegalAFMTN.
