Former President Donald Trump’s legal team will seek to challenge “every potential issue” in the indictment once the allegations are unmasked, an attorney for former President Donald Trump told CNN on Sunday.
“We didn’t do anything at the arraignment because it would be a show, that’s all, because we haven’t even seen the indictment. Every — every — potential problem in the US, and we’re going to challenge it,” Joe Tacopina told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.”
Tacopina and other Trump lawyers gave several television interviews in anticipation of the former president’s first court appearance on Tuesday, when he will learn that a Manhattan grand jury has cleared the charges against him.
At times, lawyers have sworn to drop the charges. But the full charges are still unknown. Crucially, the judge will ultimately determine whether the law is sufficient for the case to go to trial.
“We can speculate about what evidence we think they may or may not have, but even with the indictment released, we really don’t know what the DA’s evidence is,” former Manhattan District Attorney Cyvans told NBC News Sunday. what and what they will show at trial.”
Vance’s team investigated the case but did not press charges, leaving it to the purview of his successor, Alvin Bragg.
What we know so far: Trump faces more than 30 counts related to commercial fraud in the indictment. The investigation by the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which began while Trump was still in the White House, involves a $130,000 payment made by his then-personal attorney Michael Cohen to adult film star Stormy Daniels in late October 2016, days before the presidential election, Stop her from speaking out about her alleged affair with Trump a decade ago. Trump has denied the incident.
Trump’s team’s court strategy may center on challenging the case because it may rely on business record entries that prosecutors linked to hush money payments to Daniels seven years ago, well beyond the criminal case’s statute of limitations .
Tacopina said in a television interview Sunday that the statute of limitations may pass and that Trump’s businesses have no false records.
“They weren’t false entries. But assuming they were, they were misdemeanors, well past the statute of limitations, so they had to piece them together and try to impose a felony,” he said.
Tacopina also said Sunday that Trump’s legal team had not yet considered a request to transfer the case to another New York City borough.