Trump asks federal court to intervene in hush money case

Former president Donald Trump asked a federal court late on 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 US Supreme Court’s recent presidential immunity ruling.

Mr 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, Mr Trump has been the victim of “bias, conflicts of interest, and appearances of impropriety”.

If the case is moved to federal court, Mr 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 Mr Trump’s sentencing proceeds as scheduled on September 18 — about seven weeks before Election Day — it would be election interference, his lawyers said, raising the spectre that Mr Trump could be sent to jail just as early voting is getting under way.

“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,” Mr Trump’s lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove wrote in a 64-page US District Court court filing.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office, which prosecuted Mr 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.

Mr Trump was convicted in May of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to conceal a 130,000 dollar hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels, whose affair allegations threatened to disrupt his 2016 presidential run.

Mr Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen paid Ms Daniels and was later reimbursed by Mr Trump, whose company logged the reimbursements as legal expenses.

Mr 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.

Even if Mr Trump’s case is not 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.

Separately, the trial judge, Juan M Merchan, is weighing Mr Trump’s requests to postpone sentencing until after Election Day, November 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.

Mr 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.

Mr 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. A federal judge rejected that request, clearing the way for Mr Trump’s trial in state court.

US District Judge Alvin Hellerstein rejected Mr 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,” Mr Hellerstein added.

Mr Trump’s lawyers argued in Thursday’s filing that circumstances had changed since their initial attempt was rejected. Among other things, they said state prosecutors had misled the court by saying earlier that the trial would not involve Mr Trump’s official duties or actions as president.

There was also testimony, they said, from Mr Cohen about Mr 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 Mr 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,” Mr Blanche and Mr Bove wrote.

“After this case is properly removed, President Trump will establish that the charges must be dismissed.”

Mr Blanche and Mr Bove also reiterated their claims that Mr Merchan has treated Mr Trump unfairly because Mr Merchan’s daughter is a Democratic political consultant, and they argued that the judge is wrongly muzzling Mr Trump with a gag order he kept in place after the verdict.