Trump tries to move hush-money case to federal court to avoid sentencing

Donald Trump’s latest maneuver to try to avoid a looming sentencing date next month for his conviction for falsifying business records includes an ambitious request to move the case into federal court.

The former US president’s sentencing on 34 felony counts in a hush-money trial that gripped the nation had been set for 18 September at state court level in Manhattan. His lawyers had already filed a motion to delay that hearing until after November’s presidential election, in which he is the Republican nominee.

A new court filing on Thursday, reported by the New York Times , opens a second front in that effort.

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“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,” Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, Trump’s attorneys, said in the written filing to the federal judge Alvin K Hellerstein.

The trial judge Juan Merchan is already considering a request from the lawyers submitted in July to postpone the sentencing hearing, and it is unclear what effect their new motion will have on that process, the Times said.

The Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, said at the time he believed that request was without merit, but was content to leave the issue in the hands of Merchan, who oversaw the trial looking into payments Trump made to the adult film star Stormy Daniels.

A jury took less than 12 hours following the trial in May to determine that he illegally tried to influence the result of the 2016 election by paying Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet about an affair.

Trump, the first former president in history to be convicted of felony offenses, faces up to four years in prison, and has already seen the sentencing postponed once from its original 11 July date.

According to the Times, the filing to switch the case away from Merchan’s jurisdiction could end up backfiring by alienating him further. The judge imposed fines on Trump during the trial for violating a gag order that is still in effect, and has refused at least three demands from Trump’s legal team to recuse himself.

“Defendant has provided nothing new for this Court to consider. Counsel has merely repeated arguments that have already been denied by this and higher courts” and were “rife with inaccuracies and unsubstantiated claims”, Merchan wrote in his latest ruling dated 13 August.

Hellerstein has already rejected one identical request for the federal court to step in, filed last year before the trial. Trump’s lawyers argued that the case needed to be thrown out or considered before a higher court because it involved official acts Trump undertook as president.

Those claims took on added poignancy when the supreme court issued a controversial ruling in July that former presidents enjoy absolute immunity for officials acts in office, a decision that forced the special prosecutor Jack Smith into reworking a separate case against Trump over his efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat.

Smith filed a “superseding indictment” this week with the same four charges, but rewritten to emphasize that Trump’s meddling was not an official act.

Hellerstein, however, has already determined that Trump was not acting in any presidential capacity over the payment to Daniels.

“The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the matter was a purely personal item of the president – a cover-up of an embarrassing event,” he wrote in his opinion last year, the Times reported.

“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.”

Blanche and Bove, in the new filing, argue the New York state court system is “inadequate” to handle a case with significant federal implications, and that keeping it there would “result in further irreparable harm to President Trump”.

The Times said it was not clear when Hellerstein would respond to the “unorthodox” filing, or if he would grant a hearing to discuss it.

The hush-money case is one of numerous legal battles Trump has been fighting as he attempts to win back the White House in November.