Trump’s lawyers asked a New York appeals panel to reverse his 34-count conviction as prosecutors defended the verdict. No ruling was reported.
President Donald Trump’s lawyers asked a five-judge New York appeals panel on Thursday to overturn his 2024 hush money conviction, as a spokesman for his legal team called the prosecution a “Witch Hunt,” CBS News reported.
The arguments before the Appellate Division, First Department, in Manhattan came two and a half years after a jury convicted Trump on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. No decision was reported Thursday, and no date for one has been announced.
Trump’s Lawyers Target Jury Instructions
Trump did not attend the session, according to the Associated Press. The judges questioned both sides closely, much of it about the defense’s claim that prosecutors built their case on a mix of state and federal offenses.
Robert Giuffra Jr., co-chair of the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, argued that jurors were wrongly allowed to weigh violations of the Federal Election Campaign Act, or FECA.
“We think it’s the most obvious ground for reversal,” Giuffra told the judges, the AP reported.
Steven Wu, a lawyer for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, said a federal court has twice rejected the claim that FECA preempts the state case. “This court should reach the same conclusion here,” he said, according to CBS.
Justice Troy Webber asked whether prosecutors were relying on the federal law to prove the records charge. “Only partially,” Wu replied, adding that it was “important only to show that the purpose for the falsifying business records here was to conceal that conspiracy.”
Under New York law, falsifying business records is a misdemeanor unless it is done to commit or conceal another crime. Jurors did not have to agree on which other crime Trump intended. Giuffra argued they should have, while Wu said Trump’s trial lawyers had told the judge that unanimity was not required, CBS reported.
Presidential Immunity Fight Returns
The two sides also argued over whether jurors should have heard evidence from Trump’s first term in the White House, including his social media posts and testimony from former communications director Hope Hicks. His lawyers say that material was protected by presidential immunity.
“When a president addresses the nation to defend himself from allegations of personal misconduct (as all presidents do), or discusses such communications with his aides, he is carrying out his constitutional duties and is protected by immunity,” Giuffra wrote in an October filing.
One judge on the panel said Hicks’ testimony, which described a conversation about the Daniels allegations after they became public, may have fit in the “gray area of what’s in the outer sphere of presidential duties,” CBS reported.
Bragg’s office says the conduct was personal. “The criminal charges here arose from defendant’s unofficial, nonpresidential conduct,” prosecutors wrote in a July filing, ABC News reported.
The filing added that “a mountain of evidence unaffected by any claim of official presidential immunity overwhelmingly established defendant’s guilt.”
Wu also wrote that “A president’s discussions about a purely private matter, even with a White House advisor, do not constitute” official acts covered by immunity.
Trump’s team points to the 2024 immunity ruling from the Supreme Court. A spokesman for his legal team told CBS that the decision, “the federal and New York state Constitutions, and other established legal precedent mandate that the Witch Hunt perpetrated by the Manhattan D.A. be overturned and dismissed.”
“President Trump will continue defeating Democrat weaponization at every turn,” the spokesman said.
What Happens Next
The panel has not said when it will rule, and none of the reports gave a timeline.
Trump is also fighting the conviction in federal court. In August, U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein rejected, for the third time, his bid to move the case to federal court and have it dismissed on immunity grounds, the AP reported.
“Paying hush money to an adult film star or engaging in a cover-up of an embarrassment are not subsumed in presidential immunity,” Hellerstein wrote.
He had taken up the request again after the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in November 2025 that he needed to weigh issues he had not considered, AP reported at the time.
Hellerstein died on Oct. 28 at age 92. Trump’s lawyers are appealing his August decision, with arguments set for Nov. 16, according to the AP.
How the Case Got Here
The case centered on $130,000 that Trump’s then-lawyer Michael Cohen paid to Daniels before the 2016 election, buying her silence about an alleged sexual encounter, the AP reported. Trump denies the encounter and any wrongdoing.
The May 2024 verdict made Trump the first U.S. president convicted of a crime. He was sentenced on Jan. 10, 2025, days before his inauguration, to an unconditional discharge, which left the conviction in place without punishment.
“It’s been a political witch hunt. It was done to damage my reputation so that I’d lose the election, and obviously that didn’t work,” Trump said at his sentencing, ABC News reported.
His appeal, filed in October 2025, calls the case the “most politically charged prosecution in our Nation’s history,” The Hill reported. “This case should never have seen the inside of a courtroom, let alone resulted in a conviction,” his lawyers wrote.
The appeal also argues that trial judge Juan Merchan should have stepped aside. Prosecutors answered that there was “no basis for the trial judge to recuse himself due to his years-old and de minimis ($35 in aggregate) contributions to candidates and organizations affiliated with the Democratic Party,” ABC7 New York reported.
Trump’s legal team has changed since the trial. His former lead lawyer is now Attorney General Todd Blanche, who runs the Justice Department, and trial lawyer Emil Bove is now a federal judge.
Trump Also Appeals Wall Street Journal Ruling
In a separate case, Trump filed a notice of appeal to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals after a federal judge in Miami dismissed his $10 billion defamation suit against The Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch, TheWrap reported.
The suit targeted the paper’s reporting on a birthday letter bearing Trump’s name in an album compiled for Jeffrey Epstein. Trump denies writing it.
U.S. District Judge Darrin P. Gayles dismissed the suit with prejudice on Oct. 31, finding it failed to adequately allege actual malice, Editor and Publisher reported. Gayles wrote that Trump’s team was “grasping at straws.”
“President Trump will continue to press forward in his powerhouse lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal and all of the other defendants,” a spokesman for Trump’s legal team said, according to TheWrap.
Featured image from: The White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons