Former President Donald Trump's legal team is floating the idea of a malicious prosecution lawsuit against Democrat Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
The jury was in its second day of deliberations Thursday on deciding the fate of the former president, who was indicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover a $130,000 payment made by disgraced former attorney Michael Cohen to porn actor Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election.
Will Scharf, a Trump attorney who has attended the former president's trial in New York but is not part of his defense team in the case, said Thursday, "we'd have to consider our legal options at that point" should the jury find Trump not guilty. Trump has vehemently denied any wrongdoing in the case.
"But I think the case for malicious prosecution here is extraordinarily strong … this is not a case that would have been brought against any defendant not named Donald Trump and any defendant who frankly wasn't running for president," Scharf said, according to Newsweek, which cited an interview he gave with Fox News.
According to the New York Litigation Guide, four elements must be proved in a malicious prosecution case: that the defendant commenced or continued a criminal proceeding against the plaintiff; that the prosecution ended in the plaintiff's favor; the absence of probable cause; and actual malice.
Scharf said if Trump is convicted, "we will speedily appeal and, we will get that conviction thrown out on appeal."
Trump has maintained since his indictment in April 2023 that the whole case is a political witch hunt brought by a Democrat prosecutor in Bragg and enabled by a biased judge in Juan Merchan to prevent him from returning to the White House in November.
Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.
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