Donald J. Trump’s lawyers have moved in recent days to throw out his criminal case in Manhattan, underscoring his expansive view of presidential power and its supremacy over the rule of law.
President-elect Donald J. Trump is mounting a resurgent bid to dismiss his criminal conviction in New York in the wake of his electoral victory, hoping to clear his record of 34 felonies before returning to the White House, court records unsealed on Tuesday show.
Emboldened by the election results, Mr. Trump’s lawyers moved in recent days to throw out the case against the former and future president, who was convicted in May of falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office, which prosecuted Mr. Trump, asked to pause decisions in the case until Nov. 19 so it could weigh how to respond. And the judge overseeing the case, Juan M. Merchan, promptly granted the pause, effectively freezing any progress for the next week.
Justice Merchan was set to rule on several crucial issues this month, including Mr. Trump’s sentence, but that schedule is now on hold.
In requesting the pause, one of the Manhattan prosecutors emailed the judge on Sunday to acknowledge the “unprecedented circumstances” and the need to weigh the competing interests of the jury’s verdict against “the office of the president,” a copy of the email posted publicly on Tuesday shows.
In reply, one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Emil Bove, wrote that “the stay, and dismissal, are necessary to avoid unconstitutional impediments to President Trump’s ability to govern.”
Mr. Trump — the nation’s first former president to become a felon, and its first felon to become a president-elect — has his election to thank for this reversal in his legal fortunes. After his victory, a judge paused all filing deadlines in his federal criminal case in Washington while prosecutors weighed whether to drop the charges now that Mr. Trump was returning to the White House.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
Source: Elections - nytimes.com
