President-elect Donald Trump’s criminal conviction in state court remains on the books Monday, after a New York judge rejected an effort by Trump to have the case tossed based on a landmark Supreme Court ruling.
Justice Juan Merchan found that a July Supreme Court ruling granting Trump presidential immunity for official acts did not preclude a jury from finding him guilty after a criminal trial this spring.
Merchan wrote that evidence shown at trial pertained “entirely to unofficial conduct.”
“If error occurred regarding the introduction of the challenged evidence, such error was harmless in light of the overwhelming evidence of guilt,” Merchan wrote.
Merchan had been slated to rule on Nov. 12 on whether presidential immunity should have prevented jurors from seeing certain evidence at Trump’s trial this spring, but he postponed his decision. Merchan said at the time he wanted to hear from prosecutors about how to proceed with the case, which entered uncharted terrain when Trump was reelected president.