Manhattan prosecutors on Tuesday said they will oppose President-elect Trump’s demand to dismiss his New York criminal conviction following the election, instead floating the judge could freeze the case until Trump leaves office.
In a new letter, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) said he won’t resist adjourning Trump’s hush money sentencing next week so the judge can receive further briefing on whether to toss the case.
Though Bragg staked out firm opposition to that request, he did suggest “non-dismissal options” like halting all proceedings at least until Trump’s departure from office in 2029.
“The People deeply respect Office of the President, are mindful of the demands and obligations of the presidency, and acknowledge that Defendant’s inauguration will raise unprecedented legal questions,” Bragg wrote. “We also deeply respect the fundamental role of the jury in our constitutional system.”
Bragg signed the filing himself – a departure from the office’s typical practice.
Trump’s team celebrated the development.
“This is a total and definitive victory for President Trump and the American People who elected him in a landslide. The Manhattan DA has conceded that this Witch Hunt cannot continue,” Steven Cheung, Trump’s campaign spokesperson and incoming White House communications director, said in a statement.
Judge Juan Merchan, who oversees the case, must decide whether to push back the Nov. 26 sentencing, toss Trump’s conviction altogether or move forward despite his election victory.
In May, Trump was convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records tied to a hush money payment made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels to conceal an alleged affair, which he denies, ahead of the 2016 presidential election. Prosecutors said the payments fit into an intended unlawful scheme to sway the election’s outcome.
It made Trump the first former president convicted of a felony. Though the charges could carry prison time, many first-time defendants convicted on such charges receive a lesser sentence.
When he returns to the White House, Trump will become the first person to assume the nation’s highest office with such a criminal record — if the conviction stands.
Merchan has yet to decide whether the verdict can withstand the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity decision. At Trump’s request, he pushed back his ruling and the sentencing until after the election.
Now that voters put Trump back in the White House, his attorneys have newly demanded the judge dismiss the case entirely, citing the Presidential Transition Act and the immunity decision.
“There are strong reasons for the requested stay, and eventual dismissal of the case in the interests of justice,” Trump’s attorneys wrote in an email to the judge after the election.
The former president’s legal strategy long rested on delaying until after the election. Trump successfully staved off trial in his other three criminal prosecutions and was able to punt his New York sentencing until after voters cast their ballots for president.
Trump decisively won the election, sweeping all seven battleground states and making significant gains in places that had been reliably blue in previous years.
Since the election, the president-elect’s other criminal prosecutions have been put on ice, at least temporarily.
A federal judge granted special counsel Jack Smith’s office request to suspend all deadlines in Trump’s federal election subversion case, and another court similarly agreed to pause Smith’s appeal seeking to revive his documents prosecution in Florida.
And in Georgia, the Dec. 5 oral arguments in Trump’s appeal to disqualify Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D) were canceled without explanation on Monday. Willis had also asked the court to dismiss the appeal.
Updated 1:45 p.m.
