Defense lawyers for President-elect Donald Trump are invoking President Joe Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter to argue that Trump’s Manhattan hush money conviction should be overturned.
“Yesterday in issuing a 10 year pardon to Hunter Biden that covers any and all crimes whether charged or uncharged, President Biden asserted that his son was ‘selectively, and unfairly prosecuted’ and ‘treated differently,'” according to a motion filed by Trump lawyers on Monday.
Trump’s lawyers, Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, whom he has appointed to top Justice Department positions in his new administration, argue that these remarks are a condemnation of Biden’s own Justice Department, and that New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg has engaged in the same type of “political theatre.”
Bragg’s office successfully prosecuted Trump earlier this year for falsifying company documents about hush money payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels in 2016. Following Trump’s reelection, Judge Juan Merchan postponed his punishment indefinitely. Trump’s lawyers also want the conviction overturned, but the DA’s office said it would fight any attempt to dismiss the case.
In addition to the pardon argument, Trump’s attorneys argued the judge that his lawsuit should be dismissed since he was re-elected last month.
“President Trump’s status as President-elect and the soon-to-be sitting President is a ‘legal impediment’ to further criminal proceedings based on the Presidential immunity doctrine (established by the Supreme Court last summer) and the Supremacy Clause,” according to their letter.
They cited special counsel Jack Smith’s decision to drop the two federal criminal cases he had filed against Trump last year, which Smith claimed was based on longstanding Justice Department precedent prohibiting the department from prosecuting a sitting president.
“Even (Smith) has been forced to concede, by DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel (‘OLC’), that President Trump’s status as President-elect mandates dismissal of the unjust prosecutions pending against him,” according to their statement.
Last month, Bragg’s office told the New York court that Trump is unlikely to be punished “until after the end of Defendant’s upcoming presidential term,” but urged that his felony conviction should stand.
A source close to the district attorney’s office stated that the case could be paused for four years.