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. A decision he was expected to issue Tuesday, relating to an earlier effort to dismiss the case, is indefinitely delayed.
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 released 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.
The president-elect’s effort to unravel all four of his criminal cases encapsulates his expansive view of presidential power and its supremacy over the rule of law.
In Manhattan, his lawyers cited the recent Supreme Court decision granting broad immunity to official presidential acts, as well as a 1963 law that enshrined the importance of a smooth transition into the office.
Mr. Trump’s lawyers may also rely on a longstanding Justice Department policy that a president cannot face federal criminal prosecution. That policy undoubtedly applies to both of Mr. Trump’s federal criminal cases, but its authority over the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, is an open question.
Unlike in the federal case in Washington, which never made it to trial, Mr. Trump was convicted in Manhattan. Mr. Bragg could argue that because his prosecutors already obtained the conviction, he is not in jeopardy of violating the Justice Department policy.
Facing a dilemma without any historical precedent, Mr. Bragg, a career prosecutor and an elected Democrat, has a no-win decision to make. He can either drop the case and alienate his Democratic base, or he can seek to preserve the conviction and risk intensifying the ire of the incoming administration.
Yet Mr. Trump’s fate will ultimately rest not with Mr. Bragg, but with the courts. Justice Merchan will decide whether to overturn the conviction, a ruling the president-elect could then appeal in either state or federal court. If all else fails, Mr. Trump has another valuable card to play: an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the 6-3 conservative majority includes three justices he appointed in his first term.
For now, the temporary pause ensures only that Justice Merchan will postpone his ruling on another of Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn his conviction.
The judge had planned on Tuesday to decide on Mr. Trump’s request to throw out the case in light of the Supreme Court decision granting former presidents broad immunity for official acts they took in the White House.
Mr. Bragg’s prosecutors had argued that the high court ruling had “no bearing on this prosecution,” noting that Mr. Trump was convicted of covering up a personal and political crisis that predated his presidency.
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