Trump has few ways to overturn his conviction as a New York felon

NEW YORK — “This is long from over,” Donald Trump, the former president and current felon, declared Thursday, moments after a Manhattan jury convicted him on 34 counts of falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal.

Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, is banking on the jury not having the final word on the case. He has already outlined a plan to appeal a verdict that Friday he labeled “a scam.”

But even if the former — and possibly future — president could persuade voters to ignore his conviction, the appellate courts might not be so sympathetic. Several legal experts cast doubt on his chances of success and noted that the case could take years to snake through the courts, all but ensuring he will still be a felon when voters head to the polls in November.

And so, after a five-year investigation and a seven-week trial, Trump’s New York legal odyssey is only beginning.

The former president’s supporters are calling on the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene, though that is highly unlikely. In a more likely appeal to a New York court, Trump would have avenues to attack the conviction, the experts said, but far fewer than he has claimed. The experts noted that the judge, whose rulings helped shape the case, stripped some of the prosecution’s most precarious arguments and evidence from the trial.

The appeal will be a referendum on the judge, Juan M. Merchan, who steered the trial through political and legal minefields even as Trump hurled invective at him and his family. Merchan, a no-nonsense former prosecutor, said that he was keenly aware “and protective of” Trump’s rights, including his right to “defend himself against political attacks.”

Mark Zauderer, a veteran New York litigator who sits on a committee that screens applicants for the same court that will hear Trump’s appeal, said that Merchan avoided pitfalls that often doom convictions.

“This case has none of the usual red flags for reversal on appeal,” Zauderer said.

Even if Merchan’s rulings provide little fodder, Trump could challenge the foundation of the prosecution’s case. Trump’s lawyers note that Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, used a novel theory to charge Trump with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.

In New York, that crime is a misdemeanor, unless the records were faked to conceal another crime. To elevate the charges to felonies, Bragg argued that Trump had falsified the records to cover up violations of a little-known state law against conspiring to win an election by “unlawful means.”

Trump’s conspiracy occurred during his first run for the White House. When Trump arranged to buy and bury damaging stories about his sex life, including a porn actor’s story of a tryst, he was trying to influence the 2016 election, Bragg said. In an appeal, Trump’s lawyers are expected to argue that Bragg inappropriately stretched the state election law — a convoluted one, at that — to cover a federal campaign. And they could claim that the false records law itself does not apply to Trump’s case.

“I certainly don’t think there has been a prosecution of falsifying business records like this one,” said Barry Kamins, a retired judge and expert on criminal procedure who teaches at Brooklyn Law School. “This is all uncharted territory, as far as an appellate issue.”

None of this criticism will surprise Bragg, a career prosecutor who has shown himself to be comfortable with innovative applications of law. Bragg’s head of appeals, Steven Wu, a fast-talking litigator, attended much of the trial. When the verdict was read, he was sitting in the second row, to Bragg’s right.

It is now Wu’s job to ensure that Trump does not escape his conviction.

Merchan will sentence Trump on July 11, just days before he attends the Republican National Convention to be anointed as the party’s presidential nominee. The judge could sentence him to as long as to four years in prison, or impose only probation.

The sentencing will start a 30-day clock for Trump to file a notice of appeal. That notice is just a legal stake in the ground. Trump will then have to mount the actual appeal at the New York State’s Appellate Division, 1st Department. The panel of appellate court judges most likely would not hear arguments until next year and might not issue a decision until early 2026.

Trump might also have a final option: the U.S. Supreme Court. Trump, who already tried and failed to move the case to federal court, could try again if he were elected.

Procedurally, it is exceedingly difficult for a state defendant to reach the Supreme Court without exhausting state appeals.

“This is a garden-variety state court conviction,” Zauderer said. “I don’t see a plausible path to the Supreme Court.”

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