Soros-backed Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg got the shock of a lifetime.
Bragg’s conviction against Donald Trump is now in big trouble.
And Alvin Bragg will hate what the Supreme Court just did to him.
Supreme Court immunity decision imperils Manhattan conviction
The Supreme Court’s six to three ruling granting Presidential immunity from prosecution for official acts in office didn’t just drive a dagger into the heart of Jack Smith’s political persecution of Donald Trump on January 6.
The decision also led Trump’s team to request Judge Juan Merchan vacate the verdict in Bragg’s falsification of business records case.
That’s because, in the landmark ruling, the Supreme Court didn’t just say the President couldn’t be prosecuted for official acts in office; the court also said that official acts couldn’t be entered as evidence against him.
That immediately led to Trump’s lawyers contesting the Manhattan verdict on the grounds that Merchan allowed into evidence testimony and communications from Trump that would fit under the outer perimeter of Trump’s official acts.
“The Supreme Court was very clear that for acts that fall within the outer perimeter of the president’s official responsibilities, acts that are presumptively immune from prosecution, that evidence of those acts cannot be used to try essentially private acts,” Trump attorney Will Scharf said on CNN.
Scharf explained that Bragg utilized “substantial number of official acts of the Presidency” as evidence, such as testimony from Hope Hicks when she was a White House advisor.
Trump’s lawyer argued that “we believe that corrupts that trial, that that indicates that that jury verdict needs to be overturned and, at the very least, we deserve a new trial where those immune acts will not come into evidence, as the Supreme Court dictated today.”
Those communications – Scharf added – fall “neatly within the outer perimeter of a President’s official responsibilities and duties,” and thus “not admissible as evidence in that New York trial.”
Trump’s chances on appeal
The New York State Supreme Court already voted to vacate a conviction against disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein after the trial judge allowed what should have been inadmissible evidence.
This Supreme Court decision opens the door to an appeals court tossing the Manhattan conviction on the grounds of Bragg using inadmissible testimony and evidence at trial.
It’s also the second blow to Bragg that the Supreme Court handed down.
In a little-discussed ruling, the court held that juries need to reach unanimous verdicts on every aspect of a criminal case.
In Trump’s trial, Judge Merchan instructed the jury they could pick and choose what secondary crime Trump supposedly intended to cover up or commit when he allegedly falsified business records.
Bragg’s case was a house of cards that was always likely to get overturned on appeal.
The verdict faced serious challenges on the statute of limitations, just instructions, and Bragg enforcing federal law in state court.
Trump’s lawyers now have a new avenue of appeal to pursue.
And the courts will have a wide variety of options to pick from on why they want to throw out this verdict.
