Judge Shuts Down Trump’s Latest Attempt To Skate On Hush Money Conviction

INSIDE: Donald Trump ... Ann Selzer ... Pete Hegseth

Dec 17, 2024

(Photo by Jabin Botsford-Pool/Getty Images)

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.

Holding The Line

I want to be clear up front that the “wins,” such as they are, in the coming months are likely to be small, incremental, and not very dramatic. Morning Memo is going to refrain from pumping them up into more than they are. But ignoring them entirely would be a disservice to the folks grinding to preserve the rule of law, fight off MAGA’s destructive impulses, expose Trump corruption, and otherwise hold the line against further erosion.

Which brings us to a long-awaited ruling yesterday in the Trump’s hush money case.

Judge Juan Merchan didn’t just deny Trump’s move to overturn his conviction on the grounds that some of the evidence introduced at trial was in violation of the Supreme Court’s subsequent ruling on presidential immunity. Merchan eviscerated Trump’s arguments and ruled in such a way that makes Trump’s expected appeal quite a bit more difficult.

In his 41-page opinion, the judge foreclosed every manner and form of argument that Trump had made. Merchan ruled that Trump had failed to preserve most of his arguments by not raising them in a timely fashion, but the judge considered those arguments anyway – then rejected all of them as not meeting the Supreme Court’s standard for official conduct. Merchan then went a step further and concluded that even if Trump’s argument satisfied the standard for official conduct, prosecutors had not intruded on the function and authority of the presidency and thus sidestepped the Supreme Court’s immunity protections.

As a final flourish, Merchan concluded that even if he was wrong on all of the above, the introduction of the challenged evidence was a harmless error in light of the “overwhelming evidence” of Trump’s guilt.

It was a belt-and-suspenders-and-garter-and-braces decision by Merchan, shoring up every angle of attack that Trump might launch on appeal.

Will it matter in the end?

Merchan is still considering a separate Trump motion that the case should be dismissed since he won re-election. Sentencing is forestalled for now. It still seems unlikely that this case ever produces any meaningful punishment for Trump. But let the record show Merchan is still holding the line where he can.

MUST READ

TPM’s Hunter Walker and Josh Kovensky, reporting from the New York Young Republicans Club’s annual gala:

Sunday night offered a sneak preview of what life might be like in President-elect Donald Trump’s second term at the annual black tie gala of Manhattan’s most MAGA political club. It’s a world where fringe media outlets are ascendant, a new wave of religious leaders are mixing politics and prayer, the global right-wing is rejoicing, and more established press are being subjected to a new level of restrictions and derision.

More Reaction To ABC News Settling The Trump Case

TPM’s Josh Marshall: “The key here is that it is almost absurd to expect that these big diversified corporations are going to operate in the interests of or run major risks on behalf of their very small news divisions. These are in almost every case liabilities in the context of a Trump administration.”
Eric Wemple: “ABC News will never live down this capitulation. Never.”
Parker Molloy: “This is how press freedom erodes—not through dramatic crackdowns, but through corporate calculation. When news organizations are owned by massive conglomerates, journalism becomes just another business interest to be traded away when convenient.”

Trump Sues Iowa Pollster Over Outlier Poll

In an absurd legal move, Donald Trump has filed a state lawsuit in Iowa against Gannett, the Des Moines Register and pollster Ann Selzer over a poll they published the weekend before Election Day showing Trump trailing Kamala Harris in the state, according to Fox News Digital. The shock poll showed Harris up 3 points; Trump won the state by 13 points.

The Era Of Grandiose Feelings

Quote Of The Day

Brian Beutler:

Democrats have, by contrast, affirmatively decided not to treat anything Trump’s doing as untoward unless and until it pertains to things like health-care and tax policy. And in their terribly narrowcast conception of politics, other potential bulwarks against mafia-style government are collapsing.

Pete Hegseth Continues To Be Awesome

CNN: Pete Hegseth spread baseless conspiracy theories that January 6 attack was carried out by leftist groups
NYT: Hegseth’s Security Guard During His Confirmation Process Left the Army After the Beating of a Civilian During Training

For Your Radar

House Democrats will vote this morning on who will serve as ranking committee members, in what has been a low-key changing of the guard post-election.

The most-watched race the bid by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY) bid to leapfrog the more senior Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) to replace Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) as the ranking member on Oversight.

The House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, which effectively makes these decisions most of the time, voted yesterday 34-27 in favor of elevating Connolly over AOC. But’s it not unheard of for the full Democratic caucus to yield a different result.

EXCLUSIVE

NYT: Giant Companies Took Secret Payments to Allow Free Flow of Opioids

Black Enrollment At Harvard Law Plummets

The first entering class at Harvard Law School since the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard outlawing affirmative action in college admissions had less than half as many Black students as last year’s entering class.