
Less than a week after the former president pleaded with a federal court to intervene in his notorious hush-money case, a judge has rejected the request.
Donald Trump has fallen prey to many legal battles in recent years, one of which involved allegations that he falsified business documents to cover up an affair he had with an adult film actress—and which was said to have been done intentionally ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
Known to most citizens as the hush-money trial, the embattled Republican was found guilty of all 34 charges against him back in June. But that has not prevented Trump’s legal team from fighting the verdict. They made a last-minute request on August 29 for the case to be moved to the federal level, giving him a chance to reverse the outcome.
But on Tuesday September 3, Judge Alvin Hellerstein declined to take up the appeal. The request from Trump’s team asked the Manhattan federal court to take the case on the grounds that trying it in state court violated both Trump’s constitutional rights and the Supreme Court’s decision that allowed for a certain amount of presidential immunity in prosecution.
Had it been granted, the appeal would have moved the case to the federal level—where Trump might have had a chance to reverse the verdict based on the immunity precedent—and would have indefinitely postponed his sentencing, which is currently set for September 18.
But Judge Hellerstein decided this week that the immunity argument was not grounds for bias, further stating that the so-called hush-money payments do not count as “executive” actions of the office for which Trump could be granted immunity.
He wrote that the money given to adult actress Stormy Daniels was not “related to a president’s official acts” nor did it “reflect” the “official duties” of the commander-in-chief. His decision confirmed a previous ruling from last July. The judge added that the “issue of bias” is not to be determined by his court, adding that this and the suspicion of “error in the state court” is reserved for “state appellate courts.”