Former President Donald Trump’s attorney Jim Trusty said that the former president’s legal team is focusing on dismissing the indictment after he was arrested and charged late last month by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
“I think the motions to dismiss have to be a priority because they amputate this miscarriage of justice early on,” Trusty told ABC “This Week” on Sunday morning. Trusty is representing Trump in connection to the Department of Justice’s probe into his handling of government records after leaving office.
“When you get down to kind of the trial tactics lane, then maybe you start thinking about venue. And, look, the issue with venue is that Manhattan was like 87 percent pro-Joe Biden the last election. It’s a — it’s a real stronghold of liberalism, of activism, and that infects the whole process,” he remarked, adding that the Trump legal team is a “long way” from considering moving venues to a more Republican-friendly district like Staten Island.
Trusty added that “you don’t typically win as a defense attorney by filing a pretrial motion that says, ‘Hey, judge, they’ve got the worst witness imaginable, they’ve got a convicted perjurer with an ax to grind.’”
Trump was charged in New York last Tuesday with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records over allegations he orchestrated hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels and former model Karen McDougal before the 2016 U.S. election. The former president has denied the allegations against him, pleading not guilty.
Trump, 76, also faces investigations in Washington, D.C., for his activity after the 2020 election and for how he handled government documents. The former commander-in-chief, who was seen ringside at UFC 287 in Miami on Saturday night, is also facing a criminal probe in Georgia in connection to that year’s election.
Prosecutors in Manhattan accused Trump, the first sitting or former U.S. president to face criminal charges, of trying to conceal a violation of election laws during his successful 2016 campaign. The next hearing in the case is set for Dec. 4, while legal experts said a trial may not even get underway for a year, and that an indictment or even a conviction would not legally prevent Trump from running for president.
Bragg prosecutor Chris Conroy stated, “The defendant Donald J. Trump falsified New York business records in order to conceal an illegal conspiracy to undermine the integrity of the 2016 presidential election and other violations of election laws.”
Last week, another of Trump’s lawyers, Joe Tacopina, predicted that the case won’t make it to trial.
“This case is going to fall on its merits, on legal challenges, well before we get to a jury, if we get to a jury,” Tacopina told NBC’s “Today” show on Wednesday morning. In another interview with CBS News, Tacopina described the unsealed indictment as “very vanilla” and that the indictment “did not list the underlying crimes he allegedly intended to cover up with false business records.” He then asked: “What’s to hide?”
“Understand, these false business record entries, which are not even false, are misdemeanor counts” for which “the statute of limitations is long gone,” Tacopina also stated on the show. “The only way to make this a felony is to cobble together a couple of misdemeanors—the false business records and the attempt to cover up another crime. But the indictment doesn’t even list what the crime is.”
However, longtime lawyer Alan Dershowitz warned that if it does make it to trial, Trump would likely be convicted by a Manhattan jury. He suggested that the social pressure in Democrat-dominated Manhattan would force members of the Trump jury to convict Trump regardless of whether Bragg’s case has any merit.
“There’s no way he can get a fair trial,” he told Fox News. “I don’t care if Jesus, Muhammad, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and Thurgood Marshall defended Trump in New York, he wouldn’t win this case. Hung jury? Maybe. Acquittal? Never.”
Reuters contributed to this report.
