Donald Trump’s Four Key Issues for Appeal Outlined by Attorney

Issues surrounding testimony heard and evidence given at the trial of Donald Trump are likely to form the basis of an appeal by the former president’s team against his felony verdict, former U.S. attorney Joyce Vance has said.

A New York jury found the former president guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records on Thursday.

The presumptive Republican candidate for the presidential election this year called the verdict a “disgrace,” said he was “a very innocent man” and that the “the real verdict” would be when Americans go to the polls on November 5.

Addressing reporters at the Trump Tower lobby in Manhattan, Trump said on Friday that he would appeal the verdict that made him the first U.S. president convicted of a crime, although he would have to wait until after his sentencing on July 11.

Newsweek has reached out to Trump’s lead attorney Todd Blanche and the Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung.

Trump was found guilty of 34 criminal counts of falsifying documents to cover up a hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

In a Substack article published Friday, Vance, who served as U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama from 2009 to 2017, outlined four areas she believed would be key issues in any appeal for Trump.

One would be whether the testimony by Daniels “exceeded what was permissible and unduly prejudiced Trump.” Vance said this will be contested although the judge allowed her testimony in to complete the story of the crime and in any case, “defense questions opened the door to her testimony.”

Another issue for the appeal, according to Vance would be “whether it was an error to allow the district attorney to use a federal campaign finance fraud crime as the object offense that converted the misdemeanor into a felony.”

“This is a pure legal issue, and the weight of the evidence appears to be on the People’s side,” said Vance, “but there are some unique issues here that need to be litigated.”

Vance said another point of contention would be whether the judge was correct to allow the jury to return a unanimous verdict about the object crime “but not the means used to accomplish it.” On this point, Vance said she believed the DA appeared to have a “strong argument.”

Vance had explained this in a previous post: “There are a number of different unlawful means Trump and his coconspirators could have used to try and influence the election. The law says the jury doesn’t have to agree unanimously on which one of them Trump used, and that’s how the Judge instructed the jury. This is consistent with New York law; there is nothing wrong about this.”

The fourth query would be whether there was enough evidence to support the verdict.

“Defendants frequently argue this on appeal but only rarely win,” Vance’s post said. “The question is whether a reasonable jury could have found the defendant guilty, and there was sufficient evidence here to support that conclusion.”

“There will be others too, but these are some of the main ones to expect,” added Vance, who made clear in her post titled “Felon” her support for the guilty verdict but admitted that Trump “does have some serious issues to raise.”

“Whether or not he succeeds. I don’t expect him to, but he is entitled to the same right all defendants have to pursue an appeal,” she added.

Any sentence is likely be suspended until the appeals process plays out. The charge of falsifying business records that Trump was convicted of has a maximum sentence of four years in prison though others found guilty of that crime often get shorter sentences, fines or probation.