Left: Donald Trump (AP Photo/Mike Roemer). Center: Acting New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan (AP Photo/Seth Wenig). Right: Matthew Colangelo, speaking while Acting Associate Attorney General in 2021 (DOJ).
Update: Trump’s federal court removal request was rejected on Tuesday afternoon.
“Good cause has not been shown, and leave to remove the case is not granted,” said Senior U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein. “The Clerk shall terminate.”
The case stays with Justice Merchan for now.
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A former DOJ official Donald Trump blasted for “running” his hush-money trial submitted a letter to the judge urging him to press on toward sentencing even as the defense for the former president tries once again to remove the New York prosecution to federal court in the wake of the Supreme Court’s immunity decision in his Jan. 6 case. As it turns out, the Jan. 6 prosecution made a noticeable appearance in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office response when arguing against scheduling delays.
The Tuesday letter signed by Matthew Colangelo, the former acting Associate Attorney General that Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg (D) appointed to his team, said that acting New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan should disregard defense complaints about a rush to sentencing on Sept. 18 and pay no mind to the most recently filed notice of removal in federal court, where Trump asked a judge to stay proceedings, vacate the hush-money verdicts, and toss the case for using “official acts” evidence at trial, including tweets.
Leaving aside that the removal notice was rejected as “deficient” for being filed without court permission, necessitating follow-up filings from the defense, the letter said that federal law is “clear” that there doesn’t need to be a halt to the state case as the removal bid, the second of its kind to date, remains pending. Therefore, the letter said, Merchan still has the power to decide Trump’s immunity-focused motion to set aside the verdicts on Sept. 16 and can adjust a sentencing schedule as needed but preferably “without unreasonable delay.”
Bragg’s office responded that the timing of the Trump removal effort is telling considering the first such attempt was “voluntarily abandoned” a couple months short of a year ago and the second attempt comes three months after a jury found him guilty of 34 falsification of business records counts.
The DA’s office also asserted that the defense’s complaints about sentencing being set before the 2024 election ring hollow since those “concerns […] about timing are a function of [defendant’s] own strategic and dilatory litigation tactics[.]”
Trump’s lawyers, writing the current Sept. 18 sentencing date was set for “after the commencement of early voting in the Presidential election,” had argued that pushing back the date would give the defense enough time to “pursue state and federal appellate options in response to any adverse ruling” and to “mitigate” alleged “appearances of impropriety” on the part of the judge. The defense also claimed that the DA was moving too quickly, given that even special counsel Jack Smith had recently requested a delay to further “assess” the impact of the Trump v. United States immunity decision on the Jan. 6 case.
More Law&Crime coverage: All of the details Jack Smith removed from — and added to — the revised Trump Jan. 6 indictment after high court justices threw supreme wrench into the case
But at the end of the Colangelo letter, the prosecution stated that Trump’s Jan. 6 charges for “corruptly interfering with the peaceful transfer of power” in 2021 should have no bearing on the schedule in New York and shouldn’t be a basis for delay.
“Nor does the pre-trial schedule in defendant’s federal prosecution for corruptly interfering with the peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 election have anything to do with the post-trial schedule in this case,” Colangelo wrote.
In May, Trump’s Republican allies in the House issued document demands and said that Colangelo’s “recent employment history” and subsequent appointment to Bragg’s team “demonstrates his obsession with investigating a person rather than prosecuting a crime” and creates a “perception that the Biden DOJ is assisting in District Attorney Bragg’s prosecution” of Trump.
Trump himself said as much outside of court, but without naming Colangelo.
“In fact, a lead person from the DOJ is running the trial. So, Biden’s office is running this trial,” Trump said, also in May. “This trial is a scam, and it’s a sham, and it shouldn’t happen. Thank you very much, we’ll see you later.”
The defense has similarly maintained that Merchan cannot be trusted to be fair and impartial, claiming that his criticisms of “Trump’s use of Twitter” in a 2019 conversation with his daughter — the president of Authentic Campaigns with “long-standing” professional ties to Democrats, including the Kamala Harris-Tim Walz campaign — raise reasonable questions about whether he should be the judge deciding if “2018 Tweets” used in evidence “were official acts under Trump v. United States.”
“Given the federal institutional interests at stake, that poses an intolerable risk of local bias under the Supremacy Clause,” the defense said in support of removing the case to federal court.
Reached for comment, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said there “should be no sentencing in this Election Interference Witch Hunt.”
“As mandated by the United States Supreme Court, this case, along with all of the other Harris-Biden Hoaxes, should be dismissed,” he said.
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