Attorneys for Donald Trump and New York prosecutors will face off before a federal judge Tuesday over the former president’s contention that their criminal case against him should be heard in federal and not state court.
Trump’s lawyers argue in court papers that the case should be moved because their client was president during the time period that the Manhattan district attorney’s office alleges he signed off on falsified business records.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office “made the decision to wrongfully prosecute President Trump for lawful conduct that took place while the President was in office,” Trump lawyers Todd Blanche and Susan Necheles argued in a filing ahead of Tuesday’s court appearance before U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein.
The lawyers allege the change in jurisdiction to federal court — which would potentially open up additional defenses to Trump — is necessary in part because the case is “politically motivated.”
The DA’s office says Trump was charged in state court because he broke state law.
Trump pleaded not guilty in state criminal court in April to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to his alleged role in hush money payments toward the end of his 2016 presidential campaign.
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In court filings, prosecutors said Trump “repeatedly and fraudulently falsified New York business records to conceal criminal conduct that hid damaging information from the voting public during the 2016 presidential election.”
The conduct Trump was allegedly covering up included a $130,000 hush money payment his then-lawyer Michael Cohen made to adult film star Stormy Daniels in the closing days of the campaign to keep her quiet about an alleged affair with Trump. The former president has denied any affair with Daniels.
Cohen has said he made the payment at Trump’s direction, and Trump had acknowledged repaying Cohen through payments that were labeled as legal expenses.
In their federal court filings, Trump’s lawyers contended their client had only hired Cohen to “handle his personal affairs” because he’d been elected president, so his actions relating to Cohen were “connected or associated” his official duties.
Prosecutors called that argument a “concession” that Trump’s actions in the case were personal, not presidential.
“Nothing about this conduct touches, relates to, has a nexus or causal connection between, is associated with, or has any other connection to any official responsibility or authority of the President,” their filing said.
They added that “no presidential duty or responsibility obligated defendant to have Cohen make the $130,000 payment to an adult film actress in October 2016, to agree to reimburse Cohen for that payment before his inauguration in January 2017, and then to make regular payments in 2017 to satisfy his pre-existing and pre-presidential debt.”
Hellerstein, 89, is presiding over the hearing after both sides agreed they did not have an issue with him despite the fact that he performed legal work for a Trump entity, Trump Equitable Fifth Avenue, in the 1990’s while he was in private practice.
He was appointed to the bench in 1998 by Bill Clinton.
The matter was originally assigned to Judge Ronnie Abrams, but she recused herself because her husband Greg Andres investigated ties between the Trump 2016 campaign and Russia.
The district attorney’s indictment of Trump was the first ever against a former president. Trump has since been charged in a separate case in Florida on 37 federal felony counts related to his alleged mishandling of classified documents, including willful retention of national defense information, making false statements and representations, and conspiracy to obstruct justice.
He pleaded not guilty in that case earlier this month.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
