Todd
Blanche
and
Donald
Trump
(Photo
by
Brendan
McDermid-Pool/Getty
Images)
Yesterday
Justice
Juan
Merchan
tossed
Trump’s
motion
to
dismiss
his
New
York
criminal
convictions
on
grounds
of
presidential
immunity.
Perhaps
inadvertently,
the
Supreme
Court’s
conservatives
left
the
narrowest
of
paths
for
a
prosecution
to
survive,
and
the
trial
judge
threaded
it.
The
motion
to
dismiss
was
packed
with
the
usual
hyperbole
and
ad
hominem
attacks
from
attorneys
Todd
Blanche
and
Emil
Bove,
who
will
soon
be
running
the
Justice
Department.
“No
President
of
the
United
States
has
ever
been
treated
as
unfairly
and
unlawfully
as
District
Attorney
Bragg
has
acted
towards
President
Trump
in
connection
with
the
biased
investigation,
extraordinarily
delayed
charging
decision,
and
baseless
prosecution
that
give
rise
to
this
motion,”
they
bloviated.
At
bottom,
they
objected
to
testimony
by
Trump’s
White
House
aides,
Hope
Hicks
and
Madeleine
Westerhout,
along
with
the
introduction
of
a
federally
mandatory
financial
disclosure
and
several
tweets
issued
while
Trump
was
in
office.
These
violate
the
Supreme
Court’s
ruling
in
Trump
v.
US
that
evidence
of
official
acts
must
be
excluded
to
ensure
that
the
president
acts
boldly
and
without
fear
that
he’ll
go
to
jail
for
doing
crimes,
they
insist.
They
largely
failed
to
lodge
these
objections
at
trial,
however,
suggesting
that
they
did
not
anticipate
the
Supreme
Court
being
crazy
enough
to
buy
what
they
were
selling.
(Oh
ye
of
little
faith!)
But
Blanche
and
Bove
aren’t
just
nasty.
They’re
creative,
too!
So
they
had
several
interesting
theories
why
their
untimely
objections
should
carry
the
day.
Maybe Trump
v.
US
required
a
special
hearing
on
immunity
claims,
and
the
lack
of
one
constitutes
a
mode
of
proceedings
error
that
does
not
require
preservation.
Maybe
they
refrained
from
objecting
too
much
“to
avoid
antagonizing
the
court
or
testing
its
patience,”
and
so
Justice
Merchan
should
be
a
pal
and
treat
those
objections
as
if
they’d
been
timely
lodged.
Maybe
presidential
immunity
is
a
superpower
that
Trumps
trumps
all
others.
Justice
Merchan
was
not
persuaded,
and
he
noted
that
“the
Trump
Court”
(cough)
took
pain
to
affirm
that
it
wasn’t
murdering
all
prosecutions
of
former
presidents
in
their
cribs,
but
rather
setting
out
a
rubric
to
separate
official
from
unofficial
conduct:
In
attempting
to
assuage
the
concerns
expressed
by
the
dissent,
Chief
Justice
Roberts
succinctly
clarified
the
majority’s
holding.
“As
for
the
dissent,
they
strike
a
tone
of
chilling
doom
that
is
wholly
disproportionate
to
what
the
Court
actually
does
today
–
conclude
that
immunity
extends
to
official
discussions
between
the
President
and
his
Attorney
General,
and
then
remand
to
the
lower
courts
to
determine
‘in
the
first
instance
whether
and
to
what
extent
Trump’s
remaining
alleged
conduct
is
entitled
to
immunity;”
the
Trump
Court
expressly
indicating
that
its
holding
is
no
broader
than
that.
And
so
Justice
Merchan
took
the
Court
at
its
word,
finding
that
“the
evidence
related
to
the
preserved
claims
relate
entirely
to
unofficial
conduct
and
thus,
receive
no
immunity
protections.”
Rejecting
the
mode
of
proceedings
argument,
Justice
Merchan
noted
that
US
District
Judge
Alvin
Hellerstein
conducted
a
fact-based
review
pursuant
to
Trump’s
first
federal
removal
petition
and
concluded
that
covering
up
a
hush
money
payment
to
a
porn
star
by
dummying
up
fraudulent
invoices
to
your
lawyer
was
not
official
conduct.
And
so,
Justice
Merchan
reasoned,
“It
is
therefore
logical
and
reasonable
to
conclude
that
if
the
act
of
falsifying
records
to
cover
up
the
payments
so
that
the
public
would
not
be
made
aware
is
decidedly
an
unofficial
act,
so
too
should
the
communications
to
further
that
same
cover-up
be
unofficial.”
The
court
added
that,
even
if
the
evidence
adduced
at
trial were
official
in
nature,
their
introduction
“poses
no
danger
of
intrusion
on
the
authority
and
function
of
the
Executive
Branch.”
And
finally,
if
all
the
above
was wrong,
then
it
was
harmless
error
since
there
was
so
damn
much
evidence
against
Trump
that
it
wouldn’t
have
made
any
difference.
As
of
this
writing,
there
is
still
a
pending
Motion
to
Dismiss
Based
on
Various
Previously
Rejected
Theories
and
Also
I
WON
THE
ELECTION.
There’s
also
some
rumbling
from
the
defense
about
juror
misconduct.
It’s
not
clear
what
that
involves,
although
the
judge
characterized
it
as
a
letter
from
the
defense
which
“consists
entirely
of
unsworn
allegations.”
That
should
appear
on
the
docket
in
the
next
few
days,
if
only
in
redacted
form.
This
case
is
hanging
on
by
a
thread.
But
it
is
hanging
on.
Liz
Dye lives
in
Baltimore
where
she
produces
the
Law
and
Chaos substack and podcast.