NEW YORK — President Donald Trump's lawyers tried Thursday to persuade a New York appeals court to throw out his hush money conviction, two years after it made history.
The conviction, on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to obscure a $130,000 payment to adult film performer Stormy Daniels, continues to nettle Trump enough that he denounced it on social media as recently as September. The president denies any wrongdoing, and he has turned to state and federal courts in hopes of unwinding the verdict.
He didn't attend Thursday's court session, where a panel of five appellate judges peppered prosecutors and his lawyer with questions but didn't immediately rule.
Much of the back-and-forth focused on prosecutors' legal theory that the hush money was meant to keep unflattering information about Trump away from the electorate before the 2016 vote, and that it amounted to an illegal campaign contribution under the Federal Election Campaign Act.
Trump lawyer Robert Giuffra Jr. told the judges that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office has no place tying a case to a federal election law.
“We think it’s the most obvious ground for reversal,” he said.
Prosecutors argued that they weren’t prosecuting an alleged federal campaign finance offense, but rather presenting it as a fact underlying what they claim was a conspiracy that led to phony records.
“So are you relying upon FECA in order to prove your falsifying business records (charge)?” Justice Troy Webber asked.
“Only partially,” replied Bragg's appeals chief, Steven Wu, adding that it was “important only to show that the purpose for the falsifying business records here was to conceal that conspiracy.”
Judges drill down on question about White House conversations
The appeal also concerns whether jurors should have been allowed to hear testimony about supposed White House workflow and conversations — some with then-Communications Director Hope Hicks — and even Trump social media posts during his first term. His lawyers cite presidential immunity for official acts, and they argue his official conduct included responding to the Daniels drama once it became public in 2018.
“Ms. Hicks was serving as a White House official,” talking with the president about how to respond to press inquiries that implicitly concerned his fitness for office, Giuffra told the appeals judges.
Wu countered later: “In this conversation, they were not speaking about a press response. ... The president was talking to her about his private opinion.”
The appeals judges pressed both sides about the matter and the specifics of Hicks' testimony. She told jurors that she asked Trump how he wanted to respond, but as for what he said, she testified only that he expressed relief that the Daniels story hadn't emerged during the campaign.
Bragg's office contends that all the White House-related evidence was fair game. The conversations were “unofficial conduct,” some of the other evidence was public record, and some was a general description of office practices, prosecutors say. They maintain that even if some of the evidence should have been excluded, its admission was a “harmless error” that doesn't warrant overturning a conviction that rested on “a mountain” of other proof against Trump.
Justice Bahaati E. Pitt-Burke wondered aloud about that.
“If you take all of those things cumulatively, right, and there’s a problem with this evidence, there’s a problem with this evidence, at what point ... does it stop being harmless error and turn into something else?” she asked.
“It would have to be a lot more than there was in this case,” Wu responded.
Trump's lawyers also have argued the case was political
While the appeal turns on complex legal disputes, political overtones aren’t hard to find. The very first paragraph of one of the Trump team’s court filings contended that the case was the flimsy product of “immense political pressure” on a Democratic prosecutor to go after Trump — rhetoric that echoes the Republican president’s own oft-repeated claims in the court of public opinion.
The May 2024 verdict made Trump the first former — and now current — U.S. president with a criminal conviction. While historic, it didn't impede his return to the White House or subject him to any punishment.
The trial involved $130,000 that Daniels got from Trump's then-fixer and lawyer, Michael Cohen, weeks before the 2016 election. The money bought, for a time, her silence about an alleged sexual encounter with the married Trump a decade earlier. He says that nothing sexual happened between them.
Trump's company reimbursed Cohen in 2017, logging those payments as legal expenses.
Trump's lawyers argue there’s only “weak” evidence that he even knew about Cohen’s dealings at the time. His trial attorneys also said that payments to Cohen were indeed legal expenses, and that any hush money expended on Trump's behalf wasn't hidden campaign spending, just an effort to avoid embarrassing his family.
The distinction matters because, under New York law, falsifying business records isn't a felony unless it's done with an intent to commit or conceal a separate crime.
While pursuing his state appeal, Trump also has been trying to shift the case to federal court and have it dismissed on immunity grounds. A federal judge said no — for the third time — in August. Trump's attorneys are appealing that decision, with arguments set for Nov. 16.