A grace for another? Donald Trump officially requested from the New York justice system, via his lawyers, the annulment of his historic criminal conviction in the Stormy Daniels affair, according to a court document unveiled on Tuesday.
The 45th and soon to be 47th President of the United States was found criminally guilty in May of concealed payments, before the 2016 presidential election, to an adult film actress so that she would keep quiet about a sexual encounter ten years earlier. A relationship that Donald Trump has always denied. Describing the case as “bogus”, the Republican accused the justice system of being exploited by his Democratic adversaries. The pronouncement of his sentence has been postponed many times and remains in abeyance, his defense using all recourses.
In a 70-page court document made public on Tuesday, Donald Trump’s lawyers, Todd Blanche and Emil Bove – whom he also named future numbers two and three of the next Department of Justice – demand that “the court immediately cancel the ‘indictment and jury verdict’.
Hunter Biden’s pardon as an argument
In their appeal dated Monday, the councils do not fail to invoke a political-legal event that occurred the previous evening: making an about-face on his ideals, President Joe Biden on Sunday pardoned his son Hunter, convicted in two cases distinct from illegal possession of a firearm and tax evasion. This presidential pardon for a period of ten years, even before the sentences against Hunter Biden were handed down, provoked indignation among Republicans and unease among Democrats.
“In deciding yesterday (Sunday) on a ten-year pardon for Hunter Biden covering any of his crimes or offenses, whether or not they are prosecuted, President Biden affirmed that his son had been singled out and unfairly accused et treated differently », argue Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, quoting the outgoing president who spoke of a “judicial error”.
The lawyers see these “remarks as a condemnation of President Biden’s own Justice Department, the same one that coordinated and oversaw the political witch hunt and election interference against President Trump.”
Convicted once criminally and twice civilly by the courts, Donald Trump saw his federal judicial horizon completely cleared by the abandonment of at least two criminal proceedings thanks to his re-election and the historic judgment of the Supreme Court which expanded the scope of presidential immunity on July 1.