{"id":19886,"date":"2025-10-28T14:44:22","date_gmt":"2025-10-28T14:44:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/19886\/"},"modified":"2025-10-28T14:44:22","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T14:44:22","slug":"trump-appeals-manhattan-hush-money-conviction-that-branded-him-a-felon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/19886\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump appeals Manhattan hush money conviction that branded him a felon"},"content":{"rendered":"

President Trump is seeking to reverse\u00a0the historic Manhattan hush money conviction<\/a>\u00a0that branded him a felon as he campaigned for a second White House term last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis case should never have seen the inside of a courtroom, let alone resulted in a conviction,\u201d the 79-year-old president\u2019s lawyers wrote to a New York appeals court in a filing late Monday.<\/p>\n

The appeal is Trump\u2019s latest bid to overturn his guilty verdict on 34 counts of business fraud for covering up a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels in the runup to his 2016 presidential campaign.<\/p>\n

Lawyers for President Trump \u2014 found guilty of 34 counts of business fraud \u2014 wrote that the \u201ccase should never have seen the inside of a courtroom, let alone resulted in a conviction.\u201d Getty Images<\/p>\n

The commander-in-chief\u2019s attorneys blasted Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, for using a \u201cconvoluted legal theory\u201d to prosecute the \u201cleading Republican candidate\u201d just months before Election Day 2024.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese charges against President Trump were as unprecedented as their political context,\u201d the lawyers from white-shoe Manhattan-based firm Sullivan & Cromwell wrote.<\/p>\n

The filing rehashes several arguments that Trump made during and after the 2024 trial, including that he should have been immune from prosecution because he was president at the time of the hush money coverup.<\/p>\n

The president\u2019s lawyers also argued that Judge Juan Merchan, who oversaw the trial, should have recused himself from the case because of his small-dollar donations to Democrat causes, and his daughter\u2019s advertising work for prominent members of the party.<\/p>\n

Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg prosecuted the Trump months before Election Day 2024. Gregory P. Mango<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s lawyers argued that Judge Juan Merchan should have recused himself from the case because of his small-dollar donations to Democrat causes. Steven Hirsch<\/p>\n

Trump has separately asked a federal appeals court to move the case from state to federal court \u2014 a legal gambit that could lead to the US Supreme Court having a chance to weigh whether to overturn the verdict.<\/p>\n

Trump was\u00a0given a no-penalty sentence in January<\/a>, freeing him of the threat of jail or fines as he readied to re-enter the White House.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Trump is seeking to reverse\u00a0the historic Manhattan hush money conviction\u00a0that branded him a felon as he campaigned…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19887,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[3015,13595,153,396,75,84,83,57,9,24,63,87,58],"class_list":{"0":"post-19886","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-manhattan","8":"tag-alvin-bragg","9":"tag-convictions","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-fraud","12":"tag-manhattan","13":"tag-manhattan-headlines","14":"tag-manhattan-news","15":"tag-metro","16":"tag-new-york","17":"tag-new-york-city","18":"tag-nyc","19":"tag-politics","20":"tag-us-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19886\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}