Alvin Bragg Responds to Donald Trump

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg filed a brief on Thursday in response to former President Donald Trump‘s attempt to throw out his 34 felony convictions.

In late May, Trump was found guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records related to hush money paid to adult film actress Stormy Daniels before the 2016 presidential election. Daniels alleges she had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006, which he denies. The former president has maintained his innocence, claiming the case was politically motivated.

After the U.S. Supreme Court’s bombshell ruling on July 1, which stated that former presidents have immunity for official acts conducted while in office, but not for unofficial acts, Trump’s legal team moved to dismiss the indictment and vacate the jury’s verdicts in the hush-money case.

Trump’s lawyers argued in a July 10 filing addressed to the New York court where the case was tried that the prosecution used evidence and testimony that the Supreme Court‘s July 1 ruling made off-limits, writing: “Because of the implications for the institution of the Presidency, the use of official-acts evidence was a structural error under the federal Constitution that tainted [Bragg’s] grand jury proceedings as well as the trial.”

Bragg asked the court to reject Trump’s request in his own brief on Thursday, arguing that the criminal charges relate to unofficial acts by Trump, which are not immune from prosecution.

He also argued that while the Supreme Court ruled that certain types of evidence related to presidents’ official actions cannot be used against them, it does not apply to Trump’s hush money case.

“For one thing, [Trump] failed to preserve an objection on immunity grounds to most of the evidence that is the subject of his current motion,” Bragg wrote. “And, in any event, all of the evidence that he complains of either concerned wholly unofficial conduct or, at most, official conduct for which any presumption of immunity has been rebutted.”

Moreover, Bragg wrote that even if all the evidence that Trump’s team claims is now invalid had to be excluded, “there would still need be no basis for disturbing the verdict because of the other overwhelming evidence of defendant’s guilt,” adding that the evidence in question is “only a sliver of the mountains of testimony and documentary proof that the jury considered in finding him guilty of all 34 felony charges beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Newsweek reached out to Trump’s lawyer on the case and Bragg’s office via email for comment on Thursday afternoon.

CNN legal analyst Norm Eisen, who served as a special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during Trump’s first impeachment, called Bragg’s brief “devastating” for Trump on X, formerly Twitter, on Thursday afternoon.

Eisen previously argued on X that Trump’s attempts to overturn his 34 felony convictions “won’t work,” noting that the former president’s lawyers already tried and failed to use the presidential immunity argument during pre-trial proceedings.