President Barack Obama's former ethics czar had one word to describe the legal check Donald Trump received Thursday in his criminal hush money conviction appeal: "Devastating."
Norm Eisen, now a legal analyst for CNN, argued on X that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's response delivered a potentially fatal blow to Trump's appeal of his criminal conviction.
"This matters even more now that the election is about a prosecutor vs. a perpetrator," Eisen wrote. "And the DA brief is DEVASTATING."
Eisen argues that Bragg successfully seized on several "major flaws" with Trump's challenge to his conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal hush money paid to an adult film star ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
Trump's appeal relied heavily on the controversial Supreme Court decision in his federal election interference case that ruled he enjoyed presidential immunity when he pressured the Justice Department to challenge his 2020 defeat, which Eisen argued presented a serious problem.
"The SCOTUS official acts immunity decision in Trump v. US is bad enough," Eisen wrote. "But as the DA points out, Trump's efforts to stretch it to cover this UNOFFICIAL acts case is even worse."
The first flaw Bragg pounces on is that Trump relies on arguments he did not raise before or during the trial, as is required by law, Eisen argued.
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"Trump didn't do that," Eisen explained.
Trump faces a similar problem when it comes to challenging evidence linked to his time in the White House, namely his social media posts and tearful testimony from Hope Hicks, his former communications director, Eisen wrote.
Eisen points readers attention to Bragg's brief, in which the prosecutor focuses on Hicks:
"None of this testimony is affected by the Supreme Court's newly announced rule concerning the admission of evidence of 'official conduct for which the President is immune' because none of it describes the President's conduct at all," Bragg wrote.
"The only testimony elicited by the People concerned discussions between [Trump] and Hicks about the hush-money scheme...that scheme was entirely personal and largely committed before the election, and it had no risen relationship whatsoever to any official duty of the presidency."
