Trump asks federal court to intervene in hush money case in bid to toss conviction, delay sentencing
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign event at Alro Steel, Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024, in Potterville, Mich. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
NEW YORK (AP) — Former President Donald Trump asked a federal court late Thursday to intervene in his New York hush money criminal case, seeking a pathway to overturn his felony conviction and indefinitely delay his sentencing next month.
Lawyers for the current Republican nominee asked the federal court in Manhattan to seize the case from the state court where it was tried, arguing that the historic prosecution violated his constitutional rights and ran afoul of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent presidential immunity ruling.
Trump’s lawyers, who failed last year in a pretrial bid to get the case shifted to federal court, said moving it now will give him an “unbiased forum, free from local hostilities” to address those issues. In state court, they said, Trump has been the victim of “bias, conflicts of interest, and appearances of impropriety.”
If the case is moved to federal court, Trump’s lawyers said they will then seek to have the verdict overturned and the case dismissed on immunity grounds.
If the case remains in state court and Trump’s sentencing proceeds as scheduled on Sept. 18 — about seven weeks before Election Day — it would be election interference, his lawyers said, raising the specter that Trump could be sent to jail just as early voting is getting under way.
Trump’s request Thursday is poised to be decided by the same Manhattan federal judge who rejected his earlier bid to move the case — a decision that cleared the way for his trial in state court.
“The ongoing proceedings will continue to cause direct and irreparable harm to President Trump — the leading candidate in the 2024 Presidential election — and voters located far beyond Manhattan,” Trump lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove wrote in a 64-page U.S. District Court court filing.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office, which prosecuted Trump’s case and fought his previous effort to move the case out of state court, declined to comment. A message seeking comment was left with a spokesperson for New York’s state court system.
Trump was convicted in May of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to conceal a $130,000 hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels, whose affair allegations threatened to disrupt his 2016 presidential run.
Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen paid Daniels and was later reimbursed by Trump, whose company logged the reimbursements as legal expenses. Trump maintains that the stories were false, that reimbursements were for legal work and logged correctly, and that the case against him was part of a politically motivated “witch hunt” aimed at damaging his current presidential campaign.
Falsifying business records is punishable by up to four years behind bars. Other potential sentences include probation or a fine.
Even if Trump’s case isn’t moved to federal court, ensuing legal wrangling could force his sentencing to be delayed, giving him a critical reprieve as he navigates the aftermath of his criminal conviction and the homestretch of his White House run. Trump is the first ex-president convicted of a crime.
Separately, the trial judge, Juan M. Merchan, is weighing Trump’s requests to postpone sentencing until after Election Day, Nov. 5, and to overturn the verdict and dismiss the case in the wake of the Supreme Court’s immunity decision.
The high court’s July 1 ruling reins in prosecutions of ex-presidents for official acts and restricts prosecutors in pointing to official acts as evidence that a president’s unofficial actions were illegal.
Trump’s lawyers have argued that prosecutors rushed to trial instead of waiting for the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity decision, and that the trial was “tainted” by evidence that should not have been allowed under the ruling, such as former White House staffers describing how he reacted to news coverage of the hush money deal and tweets he sent while president in 2018.
Trump’s lawyers had previously invoked presidential immunity in a failed bid last year to get the hush money case moved from state court to federal court.
U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein rejected Trump’s claim that allegations in the hush money indictment involved official duties, writing in July 2023, “The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the matter was a purely a personal item of the president — a cover-up of an embarrassing event.”
“Hush money paid to an adult film star is not related to a president’s official acts. It does not reflect in any way the color of the president’s official duties,” Hellerstein added.
Trump appealed the ruling, but abandoned that fight just before a November 2023 deadline to file paperwork stating why he felt Hellerstein should be overturned.
Trump’s lawyers argued in Thursday’s filing that circumstances had changed since they initially attempted to get the case moved to federal court. Among other things, they said state prosecutors had misled the court by saying earlier that the trial wouldn’t involve Trump’s official duties or actions as president.
There was also testimony, they said, from Cohen about Trump’s potential use of pardon power and his response to various investigations into his conduct. All that testimony, they wrote, had to do with Trump’s actions as president.
“President Trump is entitled to a federal forum for his Presidential immunity defense based on the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. United States,” Blanche and Bove wrote. “After this case is properly removed, President Trump will establish that the charges must be dismissed.”
Blanche and Bove also reiterated their claims that Merchan has treated Trump unfairly because Merchan’s daughter is a Democratic political consultant, and they argued that the judge is wrongly muzzling Trump with a gag order he kept in place after the verdict.
Merchan this month rejected Trump’s latest request that he step aside from the case, saying Trump’s demand was a rehash “rife with inaccuracies and unsubstantiated claims” about his ability to remain impartial. A state appeals court recently upheld the gag order.
Merchan “is poised to incarcerate President Trump in the final weeks of the campaign, and he has maintained an unwarranted and unconstitutional prior restraint on President Trump’s ability to respond to political attacks by criticizing the New York County proceedings,” Blanche and Bove said.