Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg still refuses to drop his case against President-elect Donald Trump, as an 82-page brief filed on Tuesday, titled the "PEOPLE'S MEMORANDUM OF LAW IN OPPOSITION TO DEFENDANT'S MOTION TO DISMISS," lays out. While Trump's legal team has argued that his election means Judge Juan Merchan has to toss out the case, Bragg's office argues that this doesn't kick in until Trump is inaugurated on January 20. Last month, Merchan indefinitely delayed sentencing.
Not only is there such a section in the brief about how Trump does not have immunity as the president-elect, but there's also a section claiming, "Defendant’s forthcoming presidential immunity does not require dismissal."
The brief signals Bragg remains opposed to tossing the case, and lays out several alternatives that Merchan can consider. As The Hill summarized:
Bragg previously signaled he would oppose Trump’s effort to outright toss the case, and the new filing provides prosecutors’ most extensive arguments yet about how Trump’s return to the White House should impact the first criminal prosecution of a former president.
The 82-page brief does not plainly spell out the state’s preference for what should happen, instead walking through several options. Prosecutors left the door open to sentencing Trump before his inauguration but acknowledged Trump’s vows to stop it.
“The extreme remedy of dismissing the indictment and vacating the jury verdict is not warranted in light of multiple alternative accommodations that would fully address the concerns raised by presidential immunity,” wrote Assistant District Attorney Christopher Conroy.
No further briefs are expected from either side. Next, New York Judge Juan Merchan, who oversaw Trump’s trial, will rule on the future of the case, which could come at any time.
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But the district attorney’s office did not dispute that once Trump returns to the White House, the judge would be justified in halting the case or taking additional other steps.
That would leave open the possibility that Trump could still proceed to sentencing in 2029 after he leaves office.
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It's worth noting that Special Counsel Jack Smith, although he moved to dismiss all of the charges he brought against Trump, did so without prejudice, so that such cases could also be brought back against Trump when he is no longer in office.
As the reporting continued to note in summarizing the brief:
Alternatively, state prosecutors said the judge could terminate the case without tossing Trump’s conviction, noting that a jury verdict removed the presumption of innocence, he was never sentenced and his conviction was “neither affirmed nor reversed” on appeal because of presidential immunity.
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“On the one hand, this remedy would prevent defendant from being burdened during his presidency by an ongoing criminal proceeding,” prosecutors wrote.
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“On the other hand, this remedy would not precipitously discard aspects of this criminal proceeding that predated defendant’s presidency, including the meaningful fact that defendant was indicted and found guilty by a jury of his peers, while also acknowledging that the proceedings were not subject to appellate review before defendant’s immunity arose,” the brief continued.
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“Wrongly continuing proceedings in this failed lawfare case disrupts President Trump’s transition efforts and his preparations to wield the full Article II executive power authorized by the Constitution pursuant to the overwhelming national mandate granted to him by the American people on November 5, 2024,” Trump’s attorneys wrote last week.
Prosecutors pushed back in their new filing, noting that the trial court proceedings are still pending because of Trump’s own request for delay.
“Having filed those motions to dismiss and then sought repeated adjournments of sentencing to permit their determination by this Court, it is particularly brazen for defendant to argue that the Supremacy Clause bars the Court from taking any action on the motions defendant himself filed,” prosecutors wrote.
In looking to dismiss the case last week, Trump's attorneys argued last week that Bragg's office ought to focus on a "renewed opportunity to put an end to deteriorating conditions in the City and to protect its residents from violent crime." It looks like Bragg's office has done anything but, though. There's been a rise of hate crimes in New York State, especially New York City, and Bragg's office relentlessly went after Daniel Penny, who was charged in the death of Jordan Neely, a homeless man who was terrorizing people on the subway. Penny was just found "not guilty" of criminally negligent homicide on Monday, after the judge dropped the manslaughter charge last Friday. As Bob Hoge at our sister site of RedState covered, Bragg has been receiving plenty of heat for that case.
The prosecuting attorney, Dafna Yoran, meanwhile secured a lighter sentence for a man who killed an 87-year-old professor at an ATM, doing so in the name of "restorative justice."
Such details make it even more ironic, then, that the brief contains a section on "Public confidence in the criminal justice system." As the section claimed in part, "Dismissing an indictment after a trial and guilty verdict because the defendant later wins an election would undermine the public’s perception of fairness in the criminal justice system."
Of all the criminal cases brought against Trump, this was the first and arguably the most problematic.
Trump was indicted by a grand jury in late March of last year and arraigned last April on 34 charges. Bragg charged Trump with felonies in the case when he could have brought the charges as misdemeanors, was using an untested legal theory, and went after Trump after the statute of limitations had expired. Trump was later found "guilty" on all 34 counts in the sham of a "trial" on May 30.
This isn't the only news of the day to do with lawfare by New York officials. Earlier on Tuesday, as Katie covered, New York Attorney General Letitia James also refused to drop her civil case against Trump.
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