The Daily Fuckup

Donald Trump entered the final weeks of November 2024 as both a president-elect and a criminal defendant whose Manhattan conviction had not been erased. The jury’s May verdict still stood, and on Nov. 20 his lawyers asked the New York judge overseeing the case to dismiss the conviction or put the matter on hold before sentencing. Court records show the defense filing came as the case was moving through post-trial proceedings, not as the conviction was disappearing on its own. ([ww2.nycourts.gov](https://ww2.nycourts.gov/people-v-donald-j-trump-criminal-37026))

That filing was part of a broader push by Trump’s legal team to use his election return as a reason to stop the case. The defense argued that his status as president-elect, and soon president, should change how the court handled the post-verdict stage of the prosecution. Prosecutors did not simply let that sit: they responded in the same period, and the court later issued a Nov. 22 decision affecting the timing and handling of sentencing. The sequence matters because it shows the case was still active, contested, and moving through ordinary court process even with Trump preparing to return to the White House. ([ww2.nycourts.gov](https://ww2.nycourts.gov/people-v-donald-j-trump-criminal-37026))

The underlying verdict remained a landmark. In May, a New York jury found Trump guilty in the first criminal conviction of a former U.S. president. That fact did not change when the election was over, and it did not vanish because his lawyers asked for dismissal. What changed was the procedural posture: the verdict was in place, sentencing had been delayed, and the parties were fighting over what should happen next. ([ww2.nycourts.gov](https://ww2.nycourts.gov/people-v-donald-j-trump-criminal-37026))

The result was an unusual legal posture for an incoming president. Trump was headed back to power while still trying to unwind a criminal case that had already produced a guilty verdict. His lawyers were pressing for a result that would end the prosecution or freeze it, while the record showed the conviction was still there and the court was still dealing with post-trial motions. That is not the same thing as the conviction being gone. It is a fight over whether the case survives the transition into a second Trump presidency. ([ww2.nycourts.gov](https://ww2.nycourts.gov/people-v-donald-j-trump-criminal-37026))