Former US President Donald Trump filed a motion to move his New York hush money case to federal court, an attempt that could overturn his conviction and delay his sentencing date until after the presidential election in November, reported Juris.
Trump’s legal team asked the US District Court for the
Southern District of New York to take the case, claiming the Manhattan District
Attorney’s Office “violated the Presidential immunity doctrine … by relying on
evidence of President Trump’s official acts” while in office. The motion cited
a recent decision by the US Supreme Court that ruled former US
presidents are immune from criminal prosecution for their actions taken within
their “official responsibility.”
The motion stated:
These ongoing harms must be stopped. The impending election
cannot be redone. The currently unaddressed harm to the Presidency resulting
from this improper prosecution will adversely impact the operations of the
federal government for generations.
Trump’s attorneys also requested New York County Supreme
Court Justice Juan Merchan’s recusal from the hush money case. The motion cited public statements made by
Justice Merchan’s daughter in 2019 that “indicat[ed] that [Justice Merchan] had
been critical of President Trump’s use of Twitter during his Presidency.”
Trump’s team argued that these statements “confirm judicial bias and hostility
towards President Trump’s 2018 Tweets, which are a core issue in the pending
Presidential immunity motion.”
Trump’s team claimed Justice Merchan had a “conflict of
interest” in the case since he “made improper contributions to Democrat
interests” in 2020. The former president’s attorneys further claimed issues of
bias because Justice Merchan’s daughter worked on current Vice President Kamala
Harris’ 2019 presidential campaign and her company worked on President Joe
Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign.
In March 2023, a grand jury returned an indictment charging the former president
with 34 violations of falsifying business records in the first degree. Trump
was convicted of all 34 felony counts in May. Trump had
sent $130,000 in reimbursements to his attorney Michael Cohen for a hush money
payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels, and prosecutors argued that he
falsified records to conceal the hush money payments to unlawfully influence
the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.
The former president filed a motion to dismiss the
indictment and vacate the jury’s verdicts under the claim of presidential
immunity, and the motion is currently pending before Justice Merchan. In July,
Justice Merchan pushed Trump’s sentencing date in the case until
September 18 so he could consider the presidential immunity claim. Trump’s team
then requested the sentencing in his hush money case be
postponed until after the November election, claiming the current scheduling
would constitute election interference.
This is not Trump’s first attempt to remove the case from
New York’s jurisdiction. A federal judge in 2023 rejected Trump’s first attempt, finding that the
former president failed to show that the alleged conduct was related to his
official responsibilities as the president. US District Judge Alvin K.
Hellerstein stated, “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.”
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