Trump's 34-Count Hush Money Conviction Faces a New York Appeals Panel

Two and a half years after a New York jury found Donald Trump guilty on 34 felony counts, his lawyers get their turn Thursday before a Manhattan appeals court. A five-judge panel at the First Department of the State Supreme Court's Appellate Division will hear oral arguments on whether the conviction should be reversed. Trump's team needs to win over a majority to erase the distinction of being the only U.S. president ever convicted of a crime.

The case traces back to the spring of 2024, when Trump — then the presumptive Republican nominee — spent six weeks effectively parked in a Manhattan courtroom. Prosecutors alleged a scheme to hide a $130,000 hush money payment routed from his former lawyer to adult film actress Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election. Jurors convicted him on 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree, one for each payment he made to reimburse his lawyer.

After Trump won the 2024 election, the judge handed him an unconditional discharge, citing the extraordinary fact that he was days from inauguration. Trump later elevated his lead trial defense attorney, Todd Blanche, to attorney general of the United States. At sentencing, Trump called the case 'a political witch hunt' and said it was brought 'to damage my reputation so that I'd lose the election.'

His attorneys at Sullivan & Cromwell call it 'the most politically charged prosecution in our Nation's history,' according to abcnews.com. Their appeal argues the judge should have recused himself, that presidential immunity should have shielded part of the trial, and that prosecutors abused New York law by stacking time-barred misdemeanors into a felony under a theory they say was obscured until late in the proceedings.

Manhattan district attorney lawyers push back hard. They argue Trump was convicted of a crime New York prosecutes all the time, and that immunity has no bearing because the conduct was unofficial and nonpresidential. The filing points to what it calls a 'mountain of evidence' untouched by any immunity claim that overwhelmingly established his guilt, according to abcnews.com.

Now it's up to the appellate judges. A ruling against Trump would keep the conviction — and its history-making label — intact; a reversal would hand him a sweeping legal and political victory. Either way, the arguments drag one of the defining courtroom dramas of the 2024 campaign back into the spotlight.