Former President Donald Trump‘s criminal sentencing hearing may be one step closer after a federal judge rejected an attempt to move the New York state case to federal court for a second time.
A Manhattan jury convicted Trump in May on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records as part of a scheme to subvert the 2016 presidential election. New York State Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan is scheduled to sentence the former president in a hearing later this month, although he has not yet ruled on a Trump request to delay the hearing until after this year’s election.
U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein, who previously rejected a Trump request to move the case to federal court before the state trial took place, ruled on Tuesday against a fresh effort by Trump’s legal team to move the case ahead of the scheduled sentencing hearing.
The new request was based on claims that Trump’s New York trial was “biased” and that the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling on presidential immunity meant that the former president’s convictions should be thrown out because he was allegedly immune from prosecution.
Former President Donald Trump is pictured during a campaign stop in Potterville, Michigan on August 29, 2024. A federal judge rejected a second attempt to move Trump’s New York case to federal court on Tuesday. The former president is scheduled to be sentenced on his 34 felony convictions in New York on September 18.
Bill Pugliano
Hellerstein rejected outright the attempt to move the case due to the claim of bias in the state trial, pointing out that federal courts do not have jurisdiction over state matters. The judge said that bias allegations would instead be a matter for a New York appeals court.
On the immunity claim, Hellerstein argued that the actions leading to Trump’s convictions—concealing payments to porn star Stormy Daniels to keep an alleged affair under wraps as he was campaigning for president—were anything but the “official” acts that the Supreme Court ruled were required for immunity.
“Nothing in the Supreme Court’s opinion affects my previous conclusion
that the hush money payments were private, unofficial acts, outside the bounds of executive authority,” the judge wrote in Tuesday’s ruling.
Newsweek reached out for comment to Trump lawyer Todd Blanche via email on Tuesday night.
Pending any further delays, Merchan is expected to preside over Trump’s sentencing hearing on September 18. It is unclear whether or not Trump will be able to launch a fresh appeal of Hellerstein’s ruling before the hearing.
Legal analyst Lisa Rubin wrote in a post to X, formerly Twitter, that “there is no right to appeal an order denying leave to file a removal notice” but Trump may still attempt to appeal because “Hellerstein seems to have misconstrued his argument about immunity.”
In filing their second removal notice with Hellerstein last week, Trump’s lawyers referred to the New York case as a “zombie” case due to the Supreme Court immunity decision, despite the ruling only applying to sitting presidents conducting certain official acts.
Trump’s team argued that because a small amount of evidence used in the case dated to Trump’s time in the White House, the entire case should be thrown out on the basis of presidential immunity.
