By MICHAEL R. SISAK
NEW YORK (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump’s lawyers are raising a new claim in their fight to overturn his hush money conviction, alleging that the historic verdict was tainted by juror misconduct.
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But prosecutors contend that the allegations in a defense court filing made public Tuesday are “unsworn, unsupported” hearsay and part of a last-ditch effort to undermine public confidence in the case.
Trump’s lawyers claimed in a letter to Manhattan Judge Juan M. Merchan that they had “evidence of grave juror misconduct during the trial.”
Details of the allegations were redacted and hidden from public view.
The defense letter, dated Dec. 3, was added to the public court docket on Tuesday along with two partially redacted responses from the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which prosecuted the hush money case, dated Dec. 5 and 9.
“Partisan political motivations infected nearly every aspect of this Witch Hunt, including the jury room,” Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung said.
He accused Bragg and Merchan of allowing “their own personal political biases to fuel this charade” and said “they should be ashamed of their inaction in refusing to investigate this serious matter, and allowing the grievous misconduct to occur.”
“It is clear that there is more information that should come to light regarding misconduct, and those with knowledge of such information should come forward and do what is right,” Cheung said, calling on the judge to dismiss the case immediately.
The development comes as Merchan is weighing a pending defense request to throw out the case in light of his impending return to the White House.
In their written responses, Manhattan prosecutors argued that Trump’s lawyers were trying to muddy the verdict by airing their claims in a letter to the judge rather than a formal motion to dismiss the case. Prosecutors also questioned the defense’s resistance to having Merchan hold a court hearing where their juror misconduct claims could be examined more thoroughly.
Trump’s lawyers, Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, argued in their letter that such a hearing would involve “extensive, time-consuming, and invasive fact finding” and would interfere with the president-elect’s transition into office. Prosecutors wrote that by opposing a hearing, the defense was trying to force Merchan “to accept their untested, unsworn allegations as true.”
Merchan said in a separate letter Monday that he ordered the redactions both to preserve the integrity of the case and to ensure the safety of jurors, whose names have been kept private. Three of the letter’s seven pages were entirely covered in black ink.
Blanche and Bove’s letter “consists entirely of unsworn allegations,” Merchan wrote.
Allowing them to be filed publicly without redactions “would only serve to undermine the integrity of these proceedings while simultaneously placing the safety of the jurors at grave risk,” he wrote.
“Allegations of juror misconduct should be thoroughly investigated,” Merchan wrote. “However, this Court is prohibited from deciding such claims on the basis of mere hearsay and conjecture.”
Trump has been fighting for months to reverse his May 30 conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal a $130,000 hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels to suppress her claim that they had sex a decade earlier, which he denies. The payment was made shortly before the 2016 election.
On Monday, Merchan rejected Trump’s request to throw out the case on presidential immunity grounds, finding that the U.S. Supreme Court’s July 1 ruling granting the former president broad protection from prosecution did not require upending the case.
Trump’s immunity claim was just one of several efforts he and his lawyers have made to get his conviction overturned and the case dismissed.
After Trump won last month’s election, Merchan indefinitely postponed his late November sentencing so both sides could suggest next steps. Trump’s lawyers argued that anything other than immediate dismissal would undermine the transfer of power and cause unconstitutional “disruptions” to the presidency.
Prosecutors, seeking to preserve the verdict, proposed several alternatives.
They included: freezing the case until Trump leaves office in 2029; agreeing that any future sentence won’t include jail time; or treating the case the way some courts do when a defendant dies.
In the last scenario, borrowed from what some states do in such an occurrence, the case would be closed by noting that Trump was convicted but that he wasn’t sentenced and his appeal wasn’t resolved because he took office. Trump’s lawyers branded the concept “absurd.” They also objected to the other suggestions.
Trump, a Republican, takes office Jan. 20. He’s the first former president to be convicted of a felony and the first convicted criminal to be elected to the office.
