Trump seeks second shot to transfer hush money case to federal court: report
A federal appeals court will weigh whether to allow Donald Trump a second shot to argue that his hush-money case should be moved from New York state court into a federal courtroom.
The latest move from the former president’s legal team comes after U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein rejected Trump’s request last month seeking permission to make a new argument that his criminal case should be moved into the federal court system in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling this summer on presidential immunity, CNN reported.
“On September 3, the district court issued a conclusory summary remand order that misapplied binding precedent and statutory removal procedure, ignored key evidence supporting the Second Removal Notice, and misapprehended the obligation of federal courts to provide an unbiased federal forum for fair litigation of federal defenses pursuant to the federal-officer removal statute,” according to Trump’s Monday night filing and obtained by CNN.
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But Hellerstein wrote in his September ruling that “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,” according to CNN.
Trump’s attorneys argued in the new legal filing that Hellerstein ignored “the significance and key features” of the Supreme Court ruling, “and proceeded to a merits analysis of the Presidential immunity defense, which was wholly improper in the context of threshold removal proceedings and ended with the entirely incorrect assertion that ‘[n]othing’ in the Supreme Court’s post-trial decision impacted the district court’s prior remand ruling.”
According to the network, Trump’s lawyers want the judge to be ordered by the appeals court to hear arguments on why the federal court is the appropriate venue for the case to be moved to. Trump's hush money sentencing on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records was delayed until Nov. 26 – weeks after the Nov. 5 Election Day.