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Lawyers for Donald Trump called prosecutors’ suggestion that he be treated like a defendant who’s died a “dark dream scenario” and “irresponsible,” while again urging a New York judge to make the hush money conviction against their client go away.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office had suggested Judge Juan Merchan apply a process known as “abatement” to wrap up the case, which courts in some other states outside of New York have used when a criminal defendant dies before sentencing.
“As a further illustration of DA Bragg’s desperation to avoid legally mandated dismissal, DANY proposes that the Court pretend as if one of the assassination attempts against President Trump had been successful,” Trump’s attorneys said in a court filing Friday.
They called the analogy “extremely troubling and irresponsible.”
“That unhinged contention demonstrates conclusively that DA Bragg and DANY cannot be trusted to separate their political motivations and careerist ambitions from their obligations to seek justice,” their filing said, characterizing the suggestion as “absurd” and a “dark dream.”
They also said such an order would violate Trump’s “fundamental right to an appeal.” “One would expect more from a first-year law student, and this is yet another indication that DANY’s opposition to this motion has not been undertaken in good faith,” lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove’s filing said.
The DA’s office declined to comment.
Bragg’s office made the suggestion – one of several about how the case could proceed despite Trump’s status as president-elect – in a court filing earlier this week, and acknowledged it was “novel.”
Abatement is practiced in Alabama and some other states when defendants die before sentencing and is known as the “Alabama rule.”
The DA said that under the rule, “when a defendant dies after he is found guilty, but before the conviction becomes final through the appellate process, the court places in the record of the case a notation to the effect that the conviction removed the presumption of innocence but was neither affirmed nor reversed on appeal because the defendant died.”
That essentially “abates the criminal proceedings without vacating the underlying conviction or dismissing the indictment,” the DA said.
Prosecutors also offered other ways Merchan could proceed with the criminal case in which Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. Trump was scheduled to be sentenced last month, but the judge postponed the proceeding indefinitely to allow his attorneys more time to argue that the indictment should be dismissed because a sitting president can’t be sentenced criminally because it would interfere with his duties.
The DA’s suggestions included that Trump could be sentenced before he takes office, or that the sentencing could be delayed until after he leaves office, with the judge announcing he would not be sentencing Trump to any jail time when he does hand down his sentence.
Trump’s attorneys pushed back on all of those recommendations in the new filing.
“As President-elect and the soon-to-be President, there can be no further criminal proceedings against President Trump. Such proceedings interfere with the ongoing transition process, including preparations that are necessary for President Trump to ‘effectively’ carry out ‘constitutionally designated functions,’” they wrote, noting that special counsel Jack Smith has already ended his two federal criminal cases against their client.
The DA’s office said Smith relied on guidance regarding federal cases, which is not binding on its case. Blanche and Bove, whom Trump has nominated for top jobs at the Justice Department, said the DA acknowledged otherwise while seeking financial documents from Trump during his first term in office.
In a filing in that case, the DA said, “we cannot prosecute a president while in office.”
Trump’s attorneys argued that, “Sitting-president immunity requires that President Trump not be subjected to any criminal proceedings.”
The case “must be terminated immediately to prevent additional constitutional and legal violations,” they said.
It’s unclear when Merchan will rule.
Adam Reiss is a reporter and producer for NBC and MSNBC.
Laura Jarrett is a senior legal correspondent for NBC News.
Dareh Gregorian is a politics reporter for NBC News.
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