A former Justice Department official stated on Tuesday that the Supreme Court’s decision on presidential immunity could affect Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s business documents case against former President Donald Trump.
The Supreme Court decided in favor of Trump’s claims of immunity claim over “official acts” as president in a case arising from an indictment secured by special counsel Jack Smith regarding the former president’s efforts to contest the 2020 election. The decision, authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, was a 6-3 ruling. CNN legal analyst Elliot Williams told “CNN This Morning” host Kasie Hunt that some of the evidence introduced in the trial, including the testimony of former White House Communications Director Hope Hicks, might now be in question.
“Let’s talk about what the Supreme Court decided,” Williams said. “What they‘d said was that evidence of official acts cannot even be used to help support prosecuting someone for unofficial acts of the presidency. So case in point, let’s use Donald Trump’s New York trial. Obviously, it‘s personal conduct, private behavior, sleeping with porn stars, cooking the books of your corporation, whatever else, right? However, it relied on the testimony of Hope Hicks, a former White House aide, and other evidence that is tied to his time in the White House. Now, Trump’s team can plausibly claim some of these were official acts that can’t even be used as evidence.”
Bragg’s team summoned Hicks to testify about the Trump campaign’s reaction to the 2016 tape of a conversation between Trump and “Access Hollywood” host Billy Bush. On May 30, a Manhattan jury comprising seven men and five women found Trump guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
“It‘s no surprise, we talked about it on air yesterday, that Trump‘s team would move to upend the New York case,” Williams said. “Now this whole idea of calling a new trial is sort of silly. I think what they can just do is let the appeal play out and have them raise that issue on appeal, but yes, it‘s going to change some aspect of the New York trial.”
