Trump legal team demands NYC guilty conviction to be overturned

Former President Donald Trump and his legal team are calling for his guilty conviction to be thrown out. 

Their essential argument, according to Fox News, is that the conviction ought to be overturned in light of the Supreme Court's recent ruling regarding presidential immunity.

This is all part of the criminal case that the George Soros-backed Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) has brought against Trump. This has become known as the "hush-money" case.

Bragg managed to get a New York City jury to convict Trump on ambiguous charges regarding Trump's alleged payment of "hush money" to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Legal experts on both sides of the political aisle have condemned the verdict, which they say was blatantly political.

The latest

On Thursday, Trump's legal team submitted a filing with the court in which they argued that Trump's guilty conviction ought to be thrown out in light of the Supreme Court's recent ruling on presidential immunity.

"The Supreme Court of the United States ruled conclusively and unequivocally that President Trump is protected by immunity for his official acts," Trump's legal team wrote.

They added, "In this case, a politically motivated district attorney violated that immunity by using official-acts evidence in grand jury proceedings and at trial. Therefore, the case must be dismissed, and the jury’s verdicts must be vacated."

As suggested, the members of the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that U.S. presidents have immunity from prosecution for official acts while taken as president.

The court, however, left open the question of which of Trump's acts were official and which were unofficial (and thus not protected).

Looking forward

Trump's legal team, in their filing, argued that Bragg obtained a conviction of Trump for "official" acts, violating the doctrine of presidential immunity.

"President Trump was subjected to fundamentally unfair proceedings that invited jurors to examine official-acts evidence based on ‘their views of the President’s policies and performance while in office,'" Trump attorneys argued.

The question now is whether this is true, and, thus, whether Trump's guilty conviction ought to be thrown out.

We should now expect Bragg to argue that Trump's actions - the ones that led to the guilty conviction - were "unofficial" and thus not protected by the doctrine of presidential immunity.

Ultimately, it will be up to the judge - Judge Juan Merchan - to decide which side is correct. Given what we have already seen from Merchan, chances are that he is going to side with Bragg, but time will tell.