Trump’s lawyers appear before appeals court as he fights hush money conviction

President Donald Trump (Alex Brandon/AP)

President Donald Trump’s lawyers are trying 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 dollars payment to adult film performer Stormy Daniels, continues to nettle Mr 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 did not attend Thursday’s court session.

The appeal turns on complex legal disputes, but political overtones are not hard to find. The very first paragraph of one of the Trump team’s court filings contends the case was the flimsy product of “immense political pressure” on a Democratic prosecutor to go after Mr Trump — rhetoric that echoes the Republican president’s own oft-repeated claims in the court of public opinion.

In court papers, M Trump’s attorneys have assailed prosecutors’ legal theory as “a house of cards” built on a shaky combination of alleged state and federal offences, with “clearly insufficient” evidence and problematic jury instructions.

The appeal also concerns whether jurors should have been allowed to hear testimony about supposed White House conversations, workflow 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.

“When a president addresses the nation to defend himself from allegations of personal misconduct (as all presidents do), or discusses such communications with his aides, he is carrying out his constitutional duties and is protected by immunity,” lawyer Robert Giuffra Jr wrote in a filing this October.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office counters that the legal theory and jury instructions were legitimate and that the White House-related evidence was fair game.

Some was public record, some was a general description of office practices, and the conversations were “unofficial conduct,” prosecutors say.

“A president’s discussions about a purely private matter, even with a White House adviser, do not constitute ‘official acts for which the president is immune’,” Mr Bragg’s appeals chief, Steven Wu, wrote in a filing in July. Besides, he said, there was “a mountain” of other evidence against Mr Trump.

The May 2024 verdict made Mr Trump the first former — and now current — US president with a criminal conviction. While historic, it did not impede his return to the White House or subject him to any punishment.

The trial involved 130,000 dollars that Ms Daniels got from Mr 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 Mr Trump a decade earlier. He says that nothing sexual happened between them.

Mr Trump’s company reimbursed Mr Cohen in 2017, logging those payments as legal expenses.

Saying the transactions all were meant to keep unflattering information about Mr Trump away from the electorate, prosecutors argue that he “orchestrated a conspiracy” that violated federal campaign finance laws, among others.

Mr Trump’s lawyers argue there’s only “weak” evidence that he even knew about Mr Cohen’s dealings at the time. His trial attorneys also said that payments to Mr Cohen were indeed legal expenses, and that any hush money expended on Mr Trump’s behalf was not hidden campaign spending, just an effort to avoid embarrassing his family.

The distinction matters because, under New York law, falsifying business records is not a felony unless it is done with an intent to commit or conceal a separate crime.

While pursuing his state appeal, Mr 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.

Mr Trump’s attorneys are appealing against that decision, and arguments on that appeal are set for November 16.