President-elect Donald Trump’s lawyers are raising a new claim in their fight to overturn his hush money conviction, alleging the verdict was tainted by juror misconduct.
But prosecutors contend the allegations in a defence court filing made public on Tuesday are “unsworn, unsupported” hearsay and part of a last-ditch effort to undermine public confidence in the case.
Mr 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 defence letter, dated December 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 December 5 and 9.
“Partisan political motivations infected nearly every aspect of this Witch Hunt, including the jury room,” Mr Trump’s spokesman Steven Cheung said.
He accused Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg and the judge 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,” Mr Cheung said, calling on the judge to dismiss the case immediately.
Judge Merchan is weighing a pending defence request to throw out the case in light of Mr Trump’s impending return to the White House.
In their written responses, Manhattan prosecutors argued Mr 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 defence’s resistance to having the judge hold a court hearing where their juror misconduct claims could be examined more thoroughly.
Mr 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 defence was trying to force the judge “to accept their untested, unsworn allegations as true”.
In a separate letter on Monday, the judge said 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.
Mr Blanche and Mr Bove’s letter “consists entirely of unsworn allegations”, he 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”.
“Allegations of juror misconduct should be thoroughly investigated,” he wrote. “However, this Court is prohibited from deciding such claims on the basis of mere hearsay and conjecture.”
Mr Trump has been fighting for months to reverse his May 30 conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal a 130,000 dollar (£102,000) 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, Mr Merchan rejected Mr Trump’s request to throw out the case on presidential immunity grounds, finding that the US Supreme Court’s July 1 ruling granting the former president broad protection from prosecution did not require upending the case.
Mr 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 Mr Trump won last month’s election, the judge indefinitely postponed his late November sentencing so both sides could suggest next steps. Mr 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 Mr Trump leaves office in 2029, agreeing that any future sentence will not 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 Mr Trump was convicted but that he was not sentenced and his appeal was not resolved because he took office. Mr Trump’s lawyers branded the concept “absurd” and objected to the other suggestions.
Mr Trump, who takes office on January 20, is the first former president to be convicted of a felony and the first convicted criminal to be elected to the office.
