The Appeal: People of the State of New York v. Trump

[A]nother thing that one has to ask is, “What is the interest of justice here that Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan District Attorney, is really serving at this point?” No matter what happens at this point, Trump remains president. And the Appellate Division can’t increase the sentence. So at best, the only thing that Bragg is defending is that Trump retains the title of felon. But at worst, he’s spending a tremendous amount of judicial resources and his own office’s resources to defend this decision by Judge Merchan. 

What legitimate purpose is served by the District Attorney (“DA”) Bragg in defending the sentence and conviction below? The traditional purposes served by the criminal law include: deterrence—general and specific, retribution, restitution, and rehabilitation. I find it difficult to see how any of these traditional purposes are meaningfully served by the DA’s defending Merchan’s decision below. I suppose that the DA’s real purpose might be fairly described as some sort of institutional expressivism—which is easy to do when spending other people’s (that is, the taxpayers’) money. But if that is Bragg’s purpose, then that simply feeds into the narrative that violations of the criminal law are not now (and never were) the core of the prosecution against Trump; rather, it was always just politics. 

The above is from: Seth Barrett Tillman, Due Process and New York v. Trump: A Conversation with Professor Seth Barrett Tillman, Clem. L. Rev. Interview (forth. circa Oct. 2025), <https://ssrn.com/abstract=5677364>.

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Seth Barrett Tillman, ‘The Appeal: People of the State of New York v. Trump,’ New Reform Club (Oct. 29, 2025, 5:43 AM), <https://reformclub.blogspot.com/2025/10/the-appeal-people-of-state-of-new-york.html>;