Former President Donald Trump should go to trial in New York City in the 2016 election payment case, said Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg in court papers filed Thursday.
In March, Mr. Bragg’s office charged the former president with 34 counts of falsifying business records stemming from payments that he made during the 2016 election. While the case is currently scheduled to go to trial on March 25, 2024, and a court hearing was set for Feb. 15 of next year, few updates have come in the case—at least compared to the three other state and federal cases the former president is facing.
According to the brief, prosecutors’ “evidence showed that defendant and others were aware of the tax consequences of the reimbursement” to former lawyer Michael Cohen, who has publicly said that he transmitted a $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels. Prosecutors again said that the payment was illegal.
“They sought to manipulate those consequences by altering the amount and manner in which he was paid and by falsely characterizing the nature of the payments; and that the business records at issue here perpetuated these falsifications and thus concealed the nature of the underlying scheme,” the district attorney’s brief said.
About a month ago, President Trump’s lawyers sought the dismissal of the case, arguing that it’s tantamount to election interference. Their court motion noted that he is currently the leading Republican presidential candidate for the 2024 election.
But the office of Mr. Bragg, a Democrat, pushed back on claims that President Trump should not be charged in the case.
“Defendant repeatedly suggests that because he is a current presidential candidate, the ordinary rules for criminal law and procedure should be applied differently here,” the brief said. “This argument is essentially an attempt to evade criminal responsibility because defendant is politically powerful. Courts have repeatedly rejected defendant’s demands for special treatment and instead have adhered to the core principle that the rule of law applies equally to the powerful as to the powerless.”
The memo stipulated that there is “no basis” for the dismissal of the case, adding that President Trump’s motions should be denied by the judge and should proceed to trial.
Mr. Blanche and Ms. Necheles have also argued that President Trump has been “selectively targeted” by Mr. Bragg’s office, saying that the district attorney caved into public pressure to prosecute the former president. They noted that a former prosecutor who had worked in Mr. Bragg’s office, Mark Pomerantz, quit his job before writing a book that laid out his frustration over the district attorney’s resistance to bringing charges against the former president
In the latest court filing, Mr. Bragg’s counsel denied those claims “because the evidence shows both that he was not singled out and that this prosecution is based exclusively on the neutral application of the facts to the law.”
“Defendant has not met his heavy burden to justify an evidentiary hearing on his allegations of selective prosecution or grand jury secrecy violations,” the brief added.
President Trump has pleaded not guilty in the case. He also faces state and federal charges in Georgia, Washington, and Florida, and he’s pleaded not guilty to those charges, too.
Some legal experts have said that Mr. Bragg’s case against the former president is on shaky ground because in New York, falsifying business records can be charged as a misdemeanor—a lower-level crime that would not normally result in prison time. It rises to a felony—which carries up to four years behind bars—if there was an intent to commit or conceal a second crime. Mr. Bragg previously said his office routinely brings felony false business records cases.
