Donald Trump’s lawyers are paving their way to appeal his conviction after the ex-president was found guilty in his historic hush-money trial.
A New York jury on Thursday found Trump guilty of all 34 charges of falsifying hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels. He will be sentenced on July 11.
Trump’s legal team is expected to appeal, but the unprecedented conviction sets in motion a process that all convicted criminals within Manhattan’s criminal justice system face.
The conviction begins a 30-day period during which the former president can appeal — a lengthy process that some legal experts say will be an uphill battle for Trump.
“This is all uncharted territory, as far as an appeal goes. I certainly don’t think there has been a prosecution against falsifying corporate documents like this,” Barry Kamins, a retired judge and professor at Brooklyn Law School, told me. The New York Times.
Donald Trump’s lawyers are paving their way to appeal his conviction after the ex-president was found guilty on Thursday
Trump vowed Friday to challenge his conviction and outlined two areas his team will address on appeal: the location of the trial and the judge.
“We wanted a change of venue where we could get a fair trial. We didn’t understand it. We wanted a judge who had no conflicts,” he said.
Mark Zauderer, a New York attorney and member of a committee that reviews appeals, told the Times that it would be difficult for Trump’s team to successfully appeal based on the judge.
“This case has none of the usual red flags for restitution on appeal. The judge’s attitude was impeccable,” Zauderer said.
During the five-week trial, prosecutors detailed a plot by Trump to “corrupt” the 2016 election by concealing a $130,000 hush money payment by his “fixer” Michael Cohen to porn star Stormy Daniels.
Daniels claimed she and Trump had sex a decade earlier, which he has denied.
The case featured explosive evidence from Daniels and exposed the “catch and kill” practices of the tabloid National Enquirer, which bought and suppressed stories that could be damaging to Trump.
But the actual criminal complaint concerns something more prosaic: the reimbursements that Trump signed for Cohen for the payment.
The fees, paid by Trump in monthly installments, were recorded as legal fees.
Prosecutors say this was a fraudulent label intended to conceal the purpose of the hush money transaction and illegally interfere with the 2016 election.
Defense lawyers argued that Cohen actually did substantial legal work for Trump and his family and was paid for it.
Another path Trump’s lawyers could take is to challenge the idea that Trump caused a false entry in the records of “a corporation.”
A New York jury has found Trump guilty of all 34 counts of forging hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels
His lawyers could argue that they were Trump’s personal documents and not those of his company.
Another option would be to challenge the prosecution’s legal theory of conspiracy crime under the Elections Act, which would require the judge to give the jury complex instructions.
“The more complex the jury’s instructions, the more likely they are to tolerate appellate issues,” Nathaniel Z. Marmur, a New York attorney, told The Times. “And these are some of the most complex instructions you can imagine.”
Trump’s next step will be to turn to the Appellate Division, First Department, to try to overturn his 34-count conviction.
After their ruling, Trump’s team or the prosecutor could ask the state’s highest court, the New York Court of Appeals, to review the decision.
The final option would be for the former president’s team to ask the United States Supreme Court to review the case.
“This is a conviction in state court, I see no plausible path to the Supreme Court,” Zauderer said.
Still, Trump’s team has not ruled out trying to take the case to the US Supreme Court, which decided to intervene in his case on election interference in Washington, DC, by hearing his claims of presidential immunity.
It’s unlikely there will be any appeal before the 2024 election, where Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, will rematch President Joe Biden.
Biden even addressed Trump’s right to appeal during remarks at the White House, where he defended the jury trial and condemned Trump’s “reckless” decision to call the trial “rigged just because you don’t like the verdict.”
He said Trump has the opportunity to appeal that decision, just like anyone else does. That’s how the American system works,” he said.