'Unfairly prosecuted': Trump quotes Biden's pardon arguments in bid to quash hush money case

Donald Trump’s legal team has sought for dismissal of his Manhattan criminal hush-money case arguing President Joe Biden used similar reasoning to pardon his son, Hunter Biden

Donald Trump's legal team is now arguing that the hush money case should be thrown out given his win in the US presidential election. Source: AFP | File.

Lawyers of Donald Trump have invoked Joe Biden’s decision to pardon his son Hunter Biden in argument as they filed paperwork pushing dismissal of the US President-elect’s hush-money case.

In papers filed on Monday but were made public on Tuesday afternoon, Trump lawyers cited the arguments used by Biden to make their own case to presiding judge Juan Merchan

“Yesterday, in issuing a 10-year pardon to Hunter Biden that covers any and all crimes whether charged or uncharged, President Biden asserted that his son was ‘selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted’ and ‘treated differently’,” the team of lawyers representing Trump further said.

“President Biden argued that ‘raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice’,” they further said.

“As President Biden put it yesterday,” they wrote, “Enough is enough.”

The dismissal pitch came after the November 22 decision of Judge Juan Merchan to indefinitely postpone Trump’s sentencing so lawyers on both sides can argue over its future, given his victory in the 2024 presidential election.

Trump’s lawyers have been making requests to dismiss the criminal case where in May he was convicted of 34 felony counts over hush-money paid to adult film actor and producer Stormy Daniels to prevent her from going public in the run-up to the 2016 election about a purported sexual liaison years before.

Trump, 78, has consistently denied having an affair with Daniels.

Merchan, the judge in the only criminal case against Trump that has gone to trial, indefinitely postponed his sentencing at a hearing on November 22, given his win in the November 5 presidential election.

The legal team of Trump now is arguing that the case should be thrown out given the presidential election, saying that if the case continues, the proceedings present “disruptions to the institution of the Presidency” that violate principles of “the Presidential immunity doctrine because they threaten the functioning of the federal government”.

Trump’s legal team also pointed out that the US constitution bars state judges and prosecutors from interfering with a president’s official duties.

With Trump’s defence team filing to dismiss the case, Merchan will now have to decide whether to throw out the case entirely, or to suspend any legal consequences until after the end of Trump’s upcoming term in office, which begins on January 20.

Manhattan prosecutor Alvin Bragg has supported the latter in light of the “unprecedented circumstances” caused by Trump’s electoral victory.

Bragg had argued during the hush money trial that Trump’s payments were made to cover up a scandal that would have tarnished his campaign in the 2016 election that Trump ended up winning over Democrat Hillary Clinton.