Lawyers for President Donald Trump late on Oct. 27 asked an appeals court in New York state to throw out Trump’s criminal conviction for falsifying business records.
Evidence in the case was insufficient to convict Trump, his lawyers told the New York State Supreme Court Appellate Division in a brief. They also said the court had wrongly ruled against the theory that presidential immunity means that official acts cannot be used against a president.
“In addition to all this overwhelming error, the trial was conducted by a judge who refused to recuse himself despite having made political contributions to President Trump’s electoral opponents and despite having disqualifying family conflicts,” the lawyers wrote. “For each of these independent reasons, President Trump’s conviction must be set aside.”
Trump, at the time a candidate for president, was convicted in 2024 of falsifying business records.
After Trump won the 2024 election, Justice Juan Merchan of the New York State Supreme Court handed down a sentence with no jail time or fines, citing “legal protections afforded to the office of the president of the United States.”
Merchan, who was overseeing the case, had previously turned away Trump’s arguments against evidence in the case and assertions that the president was protected by presidential immunity.
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