In a court filing made public on Tuesday, prosecutors with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office urged Justice Juan Merchan to deny the Republican businessman-turned-politicians' request to throw out the case so it does not hang over him and impede his ability to govern once he takes office on January 20.
Noting that many of Trump's concerns involve the possibility that he could be incarcerated, prosecutors noted that there is no requirement that Merchan sentence him to prison - and said the judge could conclude that presidential immunity from prosecution would require a non-incarceration sentence.
Porn star Stormy Daniels was paid $US130,000 to keep quiet about her encounter with Donald Trump. (AP PHOTO)
"Such a constitutional limitation on the range of available sentences would further diminish any impact on defendant's presidential decision-making without going so far as to discard the indictment and jury verdict altogether," prosecutors wrote.
Merchan has not said when he will rule on Trump's bid for dismissal.
Trump has called the case an attempt by Bragg, a Democrat, to harm his 2024 campaign. In a statement on Tuesday, Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung said,
"Today's filing by the Manhattan DA is a pathetic attempt to salvage the remains of an unconstitutional and politically motivated hoax."
The case stemmed from a $US130,000 ($A204,000) payment that Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels for her silence before the 2016 election about a sexual encounter she has said she had a decade earlier with Trump, who denies it.
A Manhattan jury in May found Trump, 78, guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up his reimbursement of Cohen. It was the first time a US president - former or sitting - had been convicted of or charged with a criminal offence.
Falsifying business records is punishable by up to four years in prison, but incarceration is not required. Before his Nov. 5 election victory, legal experts told Reuters it was unlikely that Trump would be sentenced to prison due to his lack of a criminal history and advanced age, but that incarceration was not impossible.
The US Supreme Court in July ruled in a separate criminal case involving Trump that presidents have broad immunity from criminal prosecution for official actions taken in office, and that evidence of official acts could not be used in prosecuting a president over personal acts.
Trump's lawyers have argued that meant the case should be dismissed because prosecutors used statements that Trump made while president and testimony from his White House aides. The filing by Bragg's office on Tuesday said the hush money case involved "purely unofficial conduct."
