NEW YORK — President-elect Donald Trump’s legal team on Wednesday told the judge in his Manhattan hush money criminal trial, in which he was convicted of 34 felonies in May, that the case should be dismissed entirely now that he has once again won the presidency. 

A dismissal would erase Trump’s conviction, sparing him the cloud of a criminal record as well as a possible prison sentence.

“On November 5, 2024, the Nation's People issued a mandate that supersedes the political motivations of [Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s] ‘People.’ This case must be immediately dismissed,” wrote Trump’s attorneys Todd Blanche and Emil Bove in a letter to Judge Juan Merchan on Tuesday.

Blanche and Bove, who Trump nominated to high-ranking positions at the Justice Department last week, said they will file paperwork formalizing their dismissal request and asked Merchan for a deadline of Dec. 20, after Special Counsel Jack Smith's team is expected to disclose the next steps it intends to take in two federal cases against Trump.

The attorneys argued Bragg’s case was “politically-motivated and fatally flawed.” They also wrote that federal precedent and the Supreme Court’s ruling earlier this year that presidents enjoy broad immunity dictate that the president, or president-elect, should not be burdened by local prosecutions.

Sentencing was set for Nov. 26, but Bragg and his team wrote in a letter to the judge on Tuesday that they would be open to delay sentencing until after his second term. 

They wrote that they “are mindful of the demands and obligations of the presidency” but also “deeply respect the fundamental role of the jury in our constitutional system.”

Merchan has not said when he will rule on the fate of the first criminal conviction of a former, and now future, U.S. commander in chief. But with the sentencing schedule now effectively on hold, Trump’s lawyers are pursuing multiple legal paths to try to dispose of the case — an effort that could reach the Supreme Court because of the unprecedented questions involved.

If the verdict stands and the case proceeds to sentencing, Trump’s punishments would range from a fine or probation to up to four years in prison.

Because it is a state case, Trump would not be able to pardon himself once he returns to office. Presidential pardons apply only to federal crimes.

The hush money case was the only one of Trump’s four criminal indictments to go to trial. 

Smith, the special counsel, is taking steps to wind down Trump's federal election interference and classified documents cases. A separate state election interference case in Fulton County, Georgia, is largely on hold.

Trump was convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal a $130,000 hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels to suppress her claim that they had sex a decade earlier. The payment was made shortly before the 2016 election.

Trump says they did not have sex and denies any wrongdoing.