President Donald Trump is arguing in an appeal of his 2024 criminal conviction that the verdict rested on a series of "fatal flaws," including evidence that he says should have been kept out of the trial based on the immunity he got from his first presidency.

"This is a case of many damaging firsts," Trump's lawyers wrote in the filing submitted to a New York appeals court late Oct. 27. From the evidence at trial to the instructions given to the jury to the presence of the judge in the case, they attacked a series of aspects of the trial that they said were unprecedented.

"This case should never have seen the inside of a courtroom, let alone resulted in a conviction," the lawyers wrote.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

A 12-person Manhattan jury unanimously convicted Trump in May of 2024 on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to cover up a 2016 hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Trump's then-lawyer, Michael Cohen, paid Daniels $130,000 to stay quiet during Trump's first presidential campaign about an alleged sexual encounter she had with the real estate mogul. Trump has repeatedly denied the encounter happened.

In July 2024, after Trump's criminal conviction, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that former presidents can't ever be prosecuted for certain core parts of their presidencies, and also that evidence of various official presidential acts can't be presented to a jury.

Trump's lawyers seized on that last portion of the high court's ruling, arguing that even though his conviction focused on his personal business' records tied to conduct before his first presidency, the jury scrutinized evidence of official presidential acts in order to reach its guilty verdicts.

Hope Hicks, who served as the White House communications director during Trump's first presidency, testified, for instance, about discussing with Trump at that time how to respond to an upcoming news article that was going to describe Daniels' non-disclosure agreement. That testimony, according to Trump's lawyers, was about official presidential conduct and was prohibited under the Supreme Court's later ruling.

Trump's legal team also argued that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg shouldn't have been able to prosecute Trump because federal prosecutors declined to bring charges under a federal law that deals with campaign activity. That federal law blocks state prosecutors from bringing a similar case, the lawyers said.

Trump's lawyers also argued that the jurors in Trump's case should have been told they not only had to unanimously agree on Trump's guilt in order to convict him, but also on the precise reason he was guilty.

In addition, Trump's lawyers said Judge Juan Merchan, who presided over the criminal case, should have recused himself based on a a $35 donation he made in 2020 to a Democratic-aligned entity, ActBlue, with $15 of that contribution designated for the 2020 Biden presidential campaign.

A New York commission that reviews judicial conduct dismissed a complaint against Merchan about that donation, although it did caution him, as first reported by Reuters. Before the trial, the New York State Advisory Committee on Judicial Ethics' determined that Merchan's impartiality couldn't be reasonably questioned based on the "modest" donation. It said it "seldom" requires disqualification or disclosure based on political contributions that are more than two years old.

"There is little doubt that (New York's district attorney) would have cried foul if Justice Merchan had donated $35 to President Trump’s 2020 campaign, and rightly so," Trump's lawyers wrote.

Trump's New York hush money case was the only one of his four criminal cases to go to trial. Two federal criminal cases were dropped when he won the 2024 presidential election. The fate of a fourth criminal case brought in Georgia is unclear after a state appeals court said the local district attorney can no longer prosecute the case, due to a romantic relationship she had with another prosecutor.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump appeals hush money conviction, claims ‘fatal flaws’ tainted trial

Reporting by Aysha Bagchi, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect