Trump’s lawyers appear before appeals court as he fights hush money conviction

NEW YORK (AP) – President Donald Trump's lawyers are trying to persuade a New York appeals court on Thursday to throw out his hush funds conviction, two years after it produced history.

What happened

Meanwhile, the conviction, on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to obscure a $130, 000 payment to adult film performer Stormy Daniels, continues to nettle Trump enough that he denounced it on social media as lately as September. The president denies any wrongdoing, and he has turned to state and federal courts in hopes of unwinding the verdict. He didn't attend Thursday's court session.

Notably, the appeal turns on complex legal disputes, but political overtones aren't hard to find. The particularly first paragraph of one of the Trump team's court filings contends the case was the flimsy product of "immense political pressure" on a Democratic prosecutor to go after Trump – rhetoric that echoes the Republican president's own oft-repeated claims in the court of public opinion.

The bottom line

In short, trumps lawyers appear before appeals court as he fights hush money conviction is the central thread here, and readers can expect follow-up reporting as the picture becomes clearer.