The court rejected Trump’s third attempt to move the case to federal court, where the president believes he would benefit from broader protection from prosecution.
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A federal judge on Friday rejected President Donald Trump’s latest bid to erase his hush money conviction, ruling he had waited too long to try to move the case to federal court where his lawyers have argued he would enjoy broader immunities from prosecution.
U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein said that if Trump’s legal team wanted to pursue that option, they should have done so shortly after the May 2024 guilty verdict in New York state court.
They waited nearly two months while first petitioning the New York state judge overseeing the case to throw out the conviction based on the 2024 Supreme Court ruling that granted presidents broad protections from prosecution for official actions they took while in office.
But even if Trump had made that push in a timely fashion, there was no legal basis for removal, Hellerstein concluded.
“The grounds for … removal cited by Defendant, Donald J. Trump, are neither new nor legally sufficient,” the judge wrote. “He has failed to show good cause and diligence.”
A spokesperson for Trump’s legal team called Hellerstein’s decision “baseless and lawless” and, in a statement, vowed to appeal.
“The Supreme Court’s historic decision on Immunity, the Federal and New York State Constitutions, and other established legal precedent mandate that the Witch Hunt perpetrated by the Manhattan DA be removed to federal court, and immediately overturned and dismissed,” it read.
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A New York jury convicted Trump on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to conceal a hush money payment to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels, whose allegations of an affair with Trump threatened to upend his 2016 presidential campaign.
He was sentenced, shortly before the start of his second term, to an unconditional discharge, sparing him prison time but leaving his conviction in place. Trump has denied Daniels’s claims and that he committed any crimes.
Hellerstein, an appointee of President Bill Clinton, has twice denied similar bids from Trump to move the case to federal courts — first after he was indicted; then again after his conviction.
The judge’s decision Friday came after a federal appeals court sent the question back to Hellerstein last year, saying the judge needed to more carefully consider whether some of the evidence used in Trump’s trial would have been deemed inadmissible under the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling.
In his decision Friday, Hellerstein was unequivocal on that point.
“There is no way that discussions regarding hush money payments to cover up the President’s relations with Stormy Daniels could be an official act,” he wrote. “An affair, or a cover-up of an affair, is not within the ‘outer perimeter’ of the President’s official responsibilities.”
In addition to the matter before Hellerstein, the president has also asked a New York state appellate court to overturn the conviction.
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