Donald Trump on Monday launched a legal bid to overturn his criminal conviction in his Manhattan hush money trial following the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling giving former presidents immunity for official acts. Trump’s lawyers sent a letter to the judge overseeing the hush money case, Juan Merchan, asking him to set aside Trump’s history-making conviction and delay sentencing while Merchan considers how the high court’s ruling will affect the New York case, according to the Associated Press. The attorneys claimed the SCOTUS decision backed up the defense’s position earlier in the proceedings that some evidence in the case should not have been introduced as it constituted official presidential acts. Trump was found guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records connected to a scheme to hide a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels to protect his 2016 presidential campaign. He is currently scheduled to be sentenced on July 11. His lawyers’ move comes amid uproar over the Supreme Court ruling. President Joe Biden said it “undermines the rule of law,” while Trump, on the other hand, called the decision a big “win for our constitution and democracy.”
