NEW YORK – Eager to preserve President-elect Donald Trump ’s hush money conviction even as he returns to office, prosecutors are suggesting various ways forward — including one based on how some courts handle criminal cases when defendants die.
Trump’s spokesperson called the ideas “pathetic.”
In court papers made public Tuesday, the Manhattan district attorney’s office proposed an array of options for keeping the historic conviction on the books.
The proposals include freezing the case until Trump is out of office, or agreeing that any future sentence wouldn’t include jail time. Another idea: closing the case with a notation that acknowledges his conviction but says that he was never sentenced and that his appeal wasn’t resolved because of presidential immunity.
The last is adopted from what some states do when a criminal defendant dies after being convicted but before appeals are exhausted. It is unclear whether that option is viable under New York law, but prosecutors suggested that Judge …