{"id":1030642,"date":"2026-08-29T09:13:31","date_gmt":"2026-08-29T09:13:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1030642\/"},"modified":"2026-08-29T09:13:31","modified_gmt":"2026-08-29T09:13:31","slug":"trump-loses-again-in-bid-to-erase-hush-money-conviction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1030642\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump loses again in bid to erase hush money conviction"},"content":{"rendered":"

A federal judge on Friday once again spurned Donald Trump\u2019s effort to erase his hush money conviction<\/a>, rejecting the president\u2019s bid to move the state court case to federal court and have it dismissed on presidential immunity grounds.<\/p>\n

Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein reiterated his earlier finding against Trump, saying that the reasons Trump cited for renewing his request were \u201cneither new nor legally sufficient.\u201d<\/p>\n

The judge added: \u201cHe has failed to show good cause and diligence.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is the third time Hellerstein has blocked Trump from having the U.S. District Court in Manhattan seize control of the case from the New York court where he was tried and convicted.<\/p>\n

And, like before, Trump will appeal, according to a spokesperson for his legal team who called Hellerstein’s ruling \u201cbaseless and lawless.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Supreme Court\u2019s historic decision on Immunity, the Federal and New York State Constitutions, and other established legal precedent mandate that the Witch Hunt perpetrated by the Manhattan DA be removed to federal court, and immediately overturned and dismissed,\u201d a statement issued on behalf of the legal team said. “President Trump will be filing a powerful appeal, and will continue defeating Democrat weaponization at every turn.\u201d<\/p>\n

The guilty verdict, reached in May 2024 while Trump was between terms, made him the first former \u2014 and now current \u2014 U.S. president to be convicted of a crime. Trump is also challenging his conviction through the state court appellate process, which is pending.<\/p>\n

Hellerstein\u2019s decision came after a federal appeals court last year ordered him to reconsider his prior denial. The judge previewed his ruling<\/a> during oral arguments in February, slamming Trump\u2019s lawyers for legal maneuvers that amounted to taking \u201ctwo bites at the apple.\u201d<\/p>\n

State prosecutors did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

The case centered on a payment to Stormy Daniels<\/p>\n

Trump was convicted in May 2024<\/a> of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to conceal a $130,000 hush money payment to adult film actor Stormy Daniels, whose claim of a sexual encounter with Trump<\/a> a decade earlier had threatened to upend his 2016 presidential campaign.<\/p>\n

Trump was sentenced to an unconditional discharge, which left his conviction intact but spared him any punishment. He had long denied Daniels\u2019 claim and said he did nothing wrong. He has sought to get the conviction overturned both by attempting to move the case to federal court and through the appeals process in state court, which is pending.<\/p>\n

Hellerstein rejected Trump\u2019s requests to move the case twice before. The first was after Trump\u2019s March 2023 indictment. The second was after Trump\u2019s trial, as his lawyers sought to nix his conviction in the wake of the Supreme Court\u2019s July 2024 ruling that presidents and ex-presidents can\u2019t be prosecuted for official acts and prosecutors can\u2019t use official acts as evidence that unofficial actions were illegal.<\/p>\n

Trump appealed Hellerstein\u2019s post-trial ruling and, last November, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the judge to reconsider his decision, finding that he had failed to consider \u201cimportant issues relevant\u201d to the president\u2019s request to move the case.<\/p>\n

A three-judge appellate panel said it expressed no view on how he should rule but instructed Hellerstein to closely review evidence that Trump claimed was related to official acts and whether Trump could argue those actions were taken as part of his White House duties.<\/p>\n

The judges also instructed Hellerstein to determine if Trump had \u201cdiligently sought\u201d to have the case moved to federal court and whether the case can even be moved to federal court now that Trump has been convicted and sentenced in state court.<\/p>\n

The judge questioned the Trump legal team\u2019s strategy<\/p>\n

During oral arguments in February, Hellerstein took issue with the Trump legal team\u2019s decision-making after the Supreme Court ruling.<\/p>\n

Instead of immediately seeking to move the case to federal court, he noted, Trump\u2019s lawyers first asked the trial judge in state court, Juan Merchan, to throw out the verdict on immunity grounds. Normally, such a request must be made within 30 days of an arraignment, but a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. has ruled that exceptions can be made if \u201cgood cause\u201d is shown.<\/p>\n

Trump, a Republican, did not attend the arguments.<\/p>\n

Trump lawyer Jeffrey Wall argued that prosecutors rushed to trial instead of waiting for the Supreme Court\u2019s presidential immunity decision and that Trump\u2019s legal team was crunched for time after the high court\u2019s ruling because his sentencing was scheduled for just 10 days later.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s lawyers did not ask Hellerstein to intervene until nearly two months later, while their request to Merchan was still pending. The judge called that a \u201cstrategic decision\u201d and suggested that by going to the state court first, Trump\u2019s lawyers cost him the right to pursue remedies in federal court.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, your honor,\u201d Wall replied. \u201cIt is what any sensible litigant would do\u201d in that situation.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot so,\u201d Hellerstein replied.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is a decision on your part,\u201d the judge added. \u201cYou didn\u2019t have to do that. You could have come right to the federal court. Just by filing a notice of removal, there would be no sentencing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s lawyers \u201cmade a choice,\u201d Hellerstein said, \u201cand you sought two bites at the apple.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his written ruling Friday, Hellerstein said Trump was asking for a \u201c’second bite at the apple,’ a result the law disfavors.\u201d<\/p>\n

The judge added that \u201cTrump\u2019s delay in filing for removal constitutes a \u2018quintessential strategic decision,\u2019 and the \u2018fact that he later came to view that decision as a poor one is not sufficient, by itself, to establish cause.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A federal judge on Friday once again spurned Donald Trump\u2019s effort to erase his hush money conviction, rejecting…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1030643,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,13565,7448,1578,405,403,50,5226,5225,5228,5227,80,13570,52,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-1030642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-america","tag-app-local-state-politics","tag-app-top-stories","tag-associated-press","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-news","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-politics","tag-spectrum-news-staff","tag-top-stories","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117178034345149978","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1030642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1030642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1030642\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1030643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1030642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1030642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1030642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}