Former President Donald Trump has filed a motion asking a New York state judge to dismiss a criminal case brought against him by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
His attorneys argue that the case is election interference, pointing to the fact that a grand jury was only seated weeks after President Trump announced last fall that he would be running for office once again.
The indictment ultimately came six years after the alleged crime, the attorneys note, and almost five years after Mr. Bragg first began to investigate.
“The delay has prejudiced President Trump, interfered with his ongoing presidential campaign, and violated his due process rights,” they wrote.
Manhattan Case
In March, President Trump was indicted for the first time on 34 felony counts for allegedly falsifying business records.The case emerged from allegations made by Michael Cohen, who once served as President Trump’s personal attorney before publicly turning on him in 2019 when he testified before Congress about alleged connections between the Trump Organization and Russia. He was later convicted of perjury, a point that President Trump’s attorneys have brought up in court to refute Mr. Cohen’s testimony.
Mr. Cohen spoke publicly about how adult performer Stephanie Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels, threatened to go public, right before the 2016 presidential elections, with claims she'd had an affair with the Republican front-runner a decade prior. Mr. Cohen made a $130,000 hush-money payment to Ms. Clifford, which he said was on behalf of his boss. President Trump has denied that the affair occurred.
Mr. Bragg’s case against the former president alleges he falsified business invoices to hide how payments to Mr. Cohen were made with corporate funds.
President Trump’s legal team says the indictment is charging him with falsifying personal records to pay Mr. Cohen with personal funds, and that Mr. Bragg never presented evidence that President Trump was aware financial records were false.
‘Election Interference’
President Trump is facing a total of 91 criminal charges in four separate cases against him. Besides the case Mr. Bragg is prosecuting, he is facing charges of conspiracy over his challenge of the 2020 election results in both federal and state cases, as well as allegedly mishandling classified documents in another federal case.His attorneys argue that Mr. Bragg has shown an “unequal hand” in prosecuting the former president but not investigating allegations that Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign used campaign funds to fuel false claims that President Trump was colluding with Russia to sway the 2016 elections in his favor.
Publicly, President Trump denounces the four indictments as “election interference” whenever he speaks about them. He maintains that he has done nothing wrong in all four cases, which he says were brought against him by his political opponents, citing the fact that the charges only arose after he announced he was running for office.
In addition to the four criminal cases, a trial is underway in a civil suit against him, brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James. She is accusing him of defrauding the state by inflating his net worth in the multimillion-dollar lawsuit.
On Oct. 2 through Oct. 4, the former president made an unprecedented court appearance and spoke with reporters at length, asserting his innocence and accusing his prosecutors of “fraud” in bringing the suit against him.
The New York case that began on Oct. 2 is only the first in what promises to be a busy court schedule for President Trump amid his 2024 presidential campaign.
On Jan. 15, 2024, Iowa kicks off the presidential nominating caucus for the Republican Party. That same day, trial begins in a civil suit against President Trump by writer E. Jean Carroll, who is alleging defamation.
On March 4, one day before more than a dozen states stage their Republican primaries on “Super Tuesday,” President Trump goes to trial in federal court on charges that he illegally tried to overturn the 2020 election results. The Fulton County prosecutor bringing a similar case against him in Georgia state court had previously also requested a March 4 date, which may yet be scheduled in the same month.
‘Bad’ Cases?
President Trump isn’t alone in claiming these cases are “election interference.”Attorney Alan Dershowitz, a Democrat who represented President Trump when he was indicted, is an emeritus professor of Harvard Law School who has studied the politicized cases against the 45th president.
He has predicted that President Trump will be convicted, likely even before the elections, but that these “bad” cases will quickly be overturned on appeal. He has criticized the cases as poorly construed and politically motivated, saying the one in Manhattan is the worst of all.
“The New York case is not even worth discussing. It’s intellectually not even worth a minute of time,” he said. “It is the worst indictment I’ve ever seen in 60 years of practicing law, and virtually everyone admits that now.”
