Donald Trump judge rejects bid to toss hush money conviction before entering White House

A judge refused to throw out President-elect Donald Trump’s hush money conviction because of the US Supreme Court’s recent ruling on presidential immunity

Donald Trump will enter the White House a convicted criminal after a judge refused to throw out his porn star hush money guilty verdict.

The president-elect’s legal team had moved to have the case dismissed due to the US Supreme Court’s recent ruling on presidential immunity. But trial judge Juan Merchan refused to quash the conviction, saying Trump paid off adult actress Stormy Daniels, who claims she bedded the businessman before he became US leader.

In May, a New York jury convicted him of 34 counts of falsifying business records related to a $130,000 (£102,400) payment in 2016. Trump denies wrongdoing. The allegations involved a scheme to hide the payout to Daniels during the final days of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign to keep her from publicising - and keep voters from hearing - her claim of a sexual encounter with the married then-businessman years earlier.

He says nothing sexual happened between them. A month after the verdict, the Supreme Court ruled that ex-presidents can’t be prosecuted for official acts - things they did in the course of running the country - and that prosecutors can’t cite those actions to bolster a case centred on purely personal, unofficial conduct.

Trump’s lawyers then cited the Supreme Court opinion to argue that the hush money jury got some improper evidence, such as Trump’s presidential financial disclosure form, testimony from some White House aides and social media posts made while he was in office.

In his ruling, Merchan denied the bulk of Trump’s claims that some of the prosecutors’ evidence related to official acts and implicated immunity protections. The judge said that even if he found that some evidence related to official conduct, he’d still conclude that prosecutors’ decision to use “these acts as evidence of the decidedly personal acts of falsifying business records poses no danger of intrusion on the authority and function of the Executive Branch.”

Even if prosecutors had wrongly introduced evidence that could be challenged under an immunity claim, Merchan continued, “such error was harmless in light of the overwhelming evidence of guilt.” Prosecutors had said the evidence in question was only “a sliver” of their case.

Trump communications director Steven Cheung called Merchan’s decision a “direct violation of the Supreme Court’s decision on immunity and other longstanding jurisprudence.” “This lawless case should have never been brought, and the Constitution demands that it be immediately dismissed,” Cheung said in a statement.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office, which prosecuted the case, declined to comment. Merchan’s decision noted that part of the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling declared that “not everything the president does is official.”

For example, Trump’s social media posts were personal, the judge wrote. He also pointed to a prior federal court ruling that concluded that the hush money payment and subsequent reimbursements pertained to Trump’s private life, not official duties.

Trump, a Republican, reenters the White House on January 20. He’s the first former president to be convicted of a felony and the first convicted criminal to be elected to the office. Over the last six months, his lawyers have made numerous efforts to get the conviction and the overall case dismissed.

After Trump won last month’s election, Merchan indefinitely postponed his sentencing - scheduled for late November - so defence lawyers and prosecutors could suggest the next steps.