Sept. 5 (UPI) — A day after a federal judge denied his request to move his state hush-money and election-interference case to a federal court, Donald Trump asked for the denial to be put on hold amid appeal.
Trump, the former president and current GOP presidential nominee, was convicted in May on all 34 counts for doctoring business records to hide hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels in order to hide their alleged affair from the voting public in the run up to the 2016 election.
He is to be sentenced Sept. 18.
Twice Trump has sought to move the case from state to federal court with the latest rejection coming down Tuesday. On Wednesday, his attorney’s filed a memorandum seeking a stay on Tuesday’s denial as he appeals it, a move that, if approved by the district judge, would seemingly delay his sentencing.
“The traditional considerations bearing on a stay … all favor the relief requested herein in order to protect important federal interests, including the institution of the Presidency, the integrity of the 2024 presidential election and the constitutional rights of President Trump and voters around the country,” his lawyers said in the filing.
The filing comes more than a year after Trump’s original request to move the case to federal court was rejected. His legal team had argued for the removal on the grounds that despite the offenses having occurred prior to his election to office that they were linked to his official presidential duties.
In his second request made late last month, his lawyers argued that the case violates their client’s First Amendment rights, that incarceration of Trump would be unconstitutional as it would take him off the campaign trail and that the prosecution violates a Supreme Court ruling in late May that states the president enjoys some immunity for official acts.
On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein rejected those arguments.
Of the arguments Trump presented, only his claim of the conservative-leaning high court granting him immunity can be considered and the New York real estate mogul has not shown good reason for the case to be moved to federal court, he said.
“I held in my Order and Opinion of July 19, 2023 … that ‘[h]ush 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,'” he said.
“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.”
In the filing Wednesday, Trump’s lawyers content that the public has an interest in free and fair elections that are “unburdened by the potential for the unlawful incarceration of President Trump by local officials in a single county.”
They said that a stay would be beneficial as it would avoid “the rat’s nest of comity and federalism issues” attached to Trump’s presidential immunity defense and his forthcoming sentencing, which is expected to occur before the appellate court will rule on whether the lower court erred in not moving the case to the federal level.
