Left: Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (Brendan McDermid/Pool Photo via AP). Right: Former President Donald Trump speaks during news conference (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II).
After failing, for the third time, to convince his hush-money trial judge to recuse himself from the case based on “appearances of impropriety,” namely his daughter’s political consulting work for the Democratic presidential campaign of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz and criticisms of Donald Trump’s use of the microblogging site formerly known as Twitter, lawyers for the former president asserted that pushing sentencing past the 2024 election would serve to “prospectively mitigate the asserted conflicts.”
In a Wednesday letter to Acting New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan obtained by Law&Crime, defense attorneys Todd Blanche and Emil Bove made the case that, even as a motion to set aside the guilty verdicts on 34 falsification of business record counts on presidential immunity grounds remains pending, Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg (D) is in a baseless “rush” to proceed to sentencing to further “naked election-interference objectives.”
“The Court should adjourn any sentencing in this case, though one should not be necessary because dismissal and vacatur of the jury’s verdicts are required based on Presidential immunity, until after the 2024 Presidential election,” the letter began.
While Merchan on Wednesday again rejected renewed defense arguments that the “long-standing” professional ties and “beneficial working relationship” between Democrats and the judge’s daughter, Authentic Campaigns President Loren Merchan, reasonably called into question the jurist’s ability to be fair and impartial, Trump lawyers still regard the “recusal issue” as “disputed.”
Merchan, the letter said, has the power to “mitigate the asserted conflicts and appearances of impropriety,” which include 2019 “conversations with Your Honor’s daughter criticizing President Trump’s use of Twitter,” if he adjourns the Sept. 18 sentencing until after the election.
“By adjourning the sentencing until after that election—which is of paramount importance to the entire Nation, including tens of millions of people who do not share the views of Authentic, its executives, and its clients—the Court would reduce, even if not eliminate, issues regarding the integrity of any future proceedings,” the letter stated, pointing out that the judge himself has framed sentencing as an “if” depending on how the motion to set aside the verdict shakes out on Sept. 16, the day the judge forecast for handing down a decision.
“There is no basis for continuing to rush,” the defense argued, calling the immunity issue a case of “first-impression” and of weighty importance.
On Wednesday, the judge said it “should already be clear” that “innuendo and mischaracterizations do not a conflict create,” and that the defense “provided nothing new” for him to consider when arguing that his daughter’s political consulting work for Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president and Trump’s election opponent, had changed the calculus.
The Trump team, which has been unsuccessful lifting the part of the gag order barring the former president from publicly criticizing Merchan’s daughter, insisted that the political consultant’s past “discussion” with her father about Trump’s Twitter use was relevant to both recusal and the pending motion to set aside the verdict.
“She has obtained–and stands to obtain in the future–extensive financial, professional, and personal benefits from her relationship with Harris,” the defense has said. “Your Honor’s daughter was publicly critical of President Trump’s use of Twitter–a central issue in the pending Presidential immunity motion–and described a discussion on that topic with Your Honor that evidences prejudgment of President Trump’s official-acts arguments.”
A blurb under Loren Merchan’s name on the Authentic Campaigns website says that she has “managed paid media campaigns for substantial organizations such as UltraViolet, the American Civil Liberties Union, and Voto Latino as well as for venerable candidates” like Harris, among others.
Trump’s team, noting the current Sept. 18 sentencing date is set for “after the commencement of early voting in the Presidential election,” argued that pushing back the date will give the defense plenty of time to “pursue state and federal appellate options in response to any adverse ruling.”
The fast-track schedule Bragg has sought, the letter continued, makes little sense considering that even special counsel Jack Smith requested a delay to further “assess” the impact of the Trump v. United States immunity decision on the Jan. 6 case.
“In that case, the schedule for litigating Presidential immunity will not even be determined until at least a September 5, 2024 status conference,” the letter said. “That timing illustrates just how unreasonable it is to have the potential for only a single day between a decision on first-impression Presidential immunity issues and an unprecedented and unwarranted sentencing.”
Read the letter here.
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