Federal judge rejects Donald Trump's request to intervene in wake of hush money conviction

Sep 3, 2024 6:47 PM - 937 words

By MICHAEL R. SISAK Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge on Tuesday swiftly rejected Donald Trump’s request to intervene in his New York hush money criminal case, spurning the former president’s attempt at an end-run around the state court where he was convicted and is set to be sentenced in two weeks.

U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein’s ruling — just hours after Trump’s lawyers asked him to weigh the move — upends the Republican presidential nominee’s plan to move the case to federal court so that he could seek to have his conviction overturned in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling.

Hellerstein, echoing his denial of Trump’s pretrial bid to move the case, said the defense failed to meet the high burden of proof for changing jurisdiction and that Trump's conviction for falsifying business records involved his personal life, not official actions that the Supreme Court ruled are immune from prosecution.

In a four-page ruling, Hellerstein wrote that nothing about the high court's July 1 ruling affected his previous conclusion that hush money payments at issue in Trump’s case “were private, unofficial acts, outside the bounds of executive authority.”

Hellerstein sidestepped a defense complaint that Trump's state court trial had been plagued by “bias, conflicts of interest, and appearances of impropriety," writing that he “does not have jurisdiction to hear Mr. Trump’s arguments concerning the propriety of the New York trial.”

A Trump campaign spokesperson suggested he would seek to appeal Tuesday's ruling. Trump and his lawyers “will continue to fight to move this Hoax into federal court where it should be put out of its misery once and for all," spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office, which prosecuted Trump's case, declined comment. Earlier Tuesday, the office sent a letter to the trial judge, Juan M. Merchan, objecting to Trump’s effort to delay post-trial decisions in the case while he was seeking to have the U.S. District Court in Manhattan step in.

Merchan is expected to rule soon on two key defense requests: Trump’s call for the judge to delay his Sept. 18 sentencing until after the November election, and his request that the judge overturn his conviction and dismiss the case in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling.

Merchan has said he will rule Sept. 16 on Trump’s motion to overturn the verdict. His decision on delaying sentencing has been expected in the coming days.

Trump was convicted in May of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to conceal a $130,000 hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels, whose affair allegations threatened to disrupt his 2016 presidential run. Trump has denied her claim and said he did nothing wrong. His lawyers contend the case was tainted by violations of Trump's constitutional rights and that the verdict is vitiated by the Supreme Court's immunity ruling.

Falsifying business records is punishable by up to four years behind bars. Other potential sentences include probation or a fine.

Trump’s lawyers contend that sentencing Trump as scheduled, just two days after Merchan’s expected immunity decision, wouldn't give him enough time to weigh next steps, including a possible appeal, if the judge rules to uphold the verdict.

They also argued a Sept. 18 sentencing, about seven weeks before Election Day, would be election interference. In a court filing last week, they raised the specter that Trump could be sent to jail just as early voting is getting underway.

Prosecutors have not staked a position on whether to delay sentencing, deferring to Merchan on an “appropriate post-trial schedule.” In their letter Tuesday, they said they were open to a schedule that allows “adequate time” to adjudicate Trump’s motion to overturn the verdict while also sentencing him “without unreasonable delay.”

Trump’s lawyers first asked the federal court to intervene last week, but their paperwork was kicked back because they hadn’t gotten the required clearance from Hellerstein to file it. Hours after they submitted papers Tuesday requesting Hellerstein's permission to proceed, he issued his ruling denying it.

Before dissecting Trump's immunity claims, Hellerstein dispatched quickly of the defense's oft-repeated claims that Merchan had treated Trump unfairly — subjecting him to a gag order and refusing to delay the trial until after the Supreme Court ruled — because Merchan’s daughter is a Democratic political consultant.

Merchan last 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.

“It would be highly improper for this Court to evaluate the issues of bias, unfairness or error in the state trial,” Hellerstein wrote. “Those are issues for the state appellate courts.”

Instead, he noted, Trump can pursue a state appeal or seek review from the U.S. Supreme Court, whose immunity 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 prosecutors erred by showing jurors evidence that should not have been allowed under the ruling, such as former White House staffers describing how Trump reacted to news coverage of the hush money deal and tweets he sent while president in 2018.