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I think you may have misunderstood me. I was responding directly to your hypothetical, which involved a defendant who was already convicted and where there was a case pending on appeal that challenged the constitutionality of the underlying offense. In that case, the defendant would wait out the other case and file a writ of habeas corpus if the ruling was beneficial; an appeal at that point would be moot before it is heard. Generally speaking, yes, you can challenge the constitutionality of the law under which you were convicted on appeal, though in almost all cases you have to raise the issue at the trial level to preserve it.
Don't take my comments about the extra layer too seriously. In your first hypothetical my thought was that the primary aim of the statute was to prevent document fabrication with sodomy being a collateral matter, so the constitutional issue wouldn't be as central to the case. In your second hypothetical the goal of the statute isn't to prevent motor vehicle use but to prevent sodomy, making the constitutional issue more salient. I'm not basing this on any concrete legal principles, just my own interpolation based on how hard these are to get, so it could really go either way.
That all being said, I'm not sure what your point is. Trump never raised any constitutional issues, and even if could still present them I doubt he has much of an argument that the relevant FECA provisions are unconstitutional.
Aside from the comment about habeus, none of what I've been talking about for the past day is related to procedure. As a more practical matter, Trump's cries of selective prosecution probably did more to hurt his case than help it. His lawyers spent inordinate amounts of time on irrelevant issues rather than focusing on the actual elements of the crime. Their treatment of David Pecker was particularly egregious, as he was a minor witness who was there for background. Rather than drill into the fact that he couldn't provide any information about the Stormy Daniels payments, the defense has to ask him about every story he ever bought to try to make it look like the payments were all normal operating procedure. It was almost like the defense forgot that the judge dismissed the McDougal claims and they thought they had to litigate them. The directions the defense went on cross and in their statements give the impression that the goal wasn't so much to rebut the prosecution's case as it was to rebut any comment made that cast Trump in an unfavorable light. Like how much energy they spent trying to disprove his relationship with Stormy Daniels. The right move was to just stipulate to the affair and keep her off the stand but instead they spent much of the early trial badgering her as though there were any chance she'd say she lied (and even that wouldn't have helped the defense that much). This was a winnable case for the defense but their client's demands sunk it for them.
Ok, great.
I'll bracket off questions of what Trump actually preserved. My sense is that plenty of appeals have been formed from very minimal raising of a possible issue.
I think Trump has a plenty good argument that the relevant FECA provisions are unconstitutional, especially as applied to his case. Citizens United was pretty clear that the provisions in question do, in fact, impinge on the First Amendment generally, and the only legitimate purpose which can sustain them from constitutional pressure is to prevent quid pro quo situations, where money is exchanged for (at least the promise/hope of) official acts. Donald Trump paid for the expense out of his own money, just through an intermediary (I see almost no constitutionally-relevant difference between this and paying via a credit card, with banks as intermediaries). It makes no sense to claim that Donald Trump entered into a quid pro quo with Donald Trump where he exchanged his own money to himself for his own official acts.
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