New York’s intermediate appellate court docket ought to overturn President Donald Trump’s criminal hush money convictions as a result of his trial was “fatally marred” by defective proof and overseen by a choose who ought to have recused himself, his attorneys argued in a court docket submitting late Monday.
Trump’s formal enchantment, 17 months after a Manhattan jury discovered him responsible of 34 felony counts, asks the Appellate Division’s First Division to reverse what his legal professionals name the “most politically charged prosecution in our Nation’s historical past.”
Trump was found guilty in Might 2024 after a six-week trial over what prosecutors referred to as a scheme to hide a $130,000 fee his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, made to grownup movie actress Stormy Daniels to maintain her from speaking a few long-denied affair forward of the 2016 presidential election. Trump reimbursed Cohen in month-to-month installments that prosecutors stated amounted to falsified data.
“The DA, a Democrat, introduced these prices in the course of a contentious Presidential election by which President Trump was the main Republican candidate. These prices towards President Trump had been as unprecedented as their political context,” Trump’s attorneys on the white shoe law firm Sullivan & Cromwell wrote of their enchantment.
Below New York state legislation, falsifying enterprise data turns into a felony if the data had been falsified to commit or conceal one other crime. The enchantment accused Manhattan District Legal professional Alvin Bragg of making an attempt to “twist New York legislation” to steer the jury that Trump violated election statutes.
“Focusing on alleged conduct that has by no means been discovered to violate any New York legislation, the DA concocted a purported felony by stacking time-barred misdemeanors below a convoluted authorized principle, which the DA then improperly obscured till the cost convention. This case ought to by no means have seen the within of a courtroom, not to mention resulted in a conviction,” the enchantment argued.
President Donald Trump delivers remarks on the U.S. Ambassador’s Residence in Tokyo, Japan, October 28, 2025.
Andrew Harnik/Getty Photographs
Leaning into a call by the Supreme Court docket made after the trial that limited the use of evidence associated to a president’s “official acts,” Trump’s legal professionals additionally argued that New York Choose Juan Merchan erred by permitting proof protected by presidential immunity. In keeping with Trump’s legal professionals, testimony from Trump’s former communications director Hope Hicks — later described by prosecutors as “devastating” for Trump — in addition to proof taken from his Twitter account and different protected conversations had been improperly thought-about by the jury.
“The trial was fatally marred by the introduction of official Presidential acts that the Supreme Court docket has made clear can’t be used as proof towards a President,” the enchantment stated.
The enchantment additionally took goal at Choose Merchan, arguing {that a} $15 donation he made to President Joe Biden’s 2020 marketing campaign and one other $20 in donations to Democratic-aligned organizations demonstrated political bias.
Earlier than the trial, the New York State Advisory Committee on Judicial Ethics concluded that these donations — in addition to Merchan’s daughter’s work for a digital advert company that labored with Democratic officers — didn’t create a battle for Merchan.
Following Trump’s conviction, Merchan, on the eve of Trump’s inauguration, sentenced him to an unconditional discharge — the lightest attainable punishment allowed below New York state legislation — saying it was the “solely lawful sentence” to forestall “encroaching upon the very best workplace within the land.”
