Left: Judge Juan Merchan poses for a picture in his chambers in March (AP Photo/Seth Wenig). Right: Donald Trump is escorted to a New York courtroom in April (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File).
A federal judge for the second time put the kibosh on Donald Trump’s attempt to remove his hush-money case from New York state court, but before the day was done on Tuesday lawyers for the former president filed their notice of appeal.
“Notice is hereby given that President Donald J. Trump, the above-captioned defendant, appeals to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit,” said the notice submitted by Emil Bove and Todd Blanche, challenging Senior U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein’s refusal.
Last Thursday, the defense filed their removal notice in the hopes of shutting down a Sept. 18 sentencing date, vacating Trump’s 34 falsification of business records guilty verdicts, and potentially setting the stage for dismissing the state prosecution in federal court, based on the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling in Trump v. United States and Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s (D) use of “official acts” evidence, including tweets, at trial.
The removal notice came a couple of weeks after acting New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan for the third time declined to recuse himself from the case. The defense argued that “asserted conflicts and appearances of impropriety,” including the judge’s criticism of “Trump’s use of Twitter” in a 2019 conversation with his daughter, a political consultant for the Kamala Harris-Tim Walz campaign and other Democrats, made it inappropriate for Merchan to decide ahead of sentencing whether “2018 Tweets were official acts under Trump v. United States.”
The “evidence of local hostilities” created a need for an “unbiased forum” in federal court to analyze these weighty issues, not a state judge who has donated to Democrats, the defense said.
But the removal bid got off to a rocky start not long after it began, as Hellerstein last Friday said the notice was “deficient,” since it was not filed with the permission of the court, among other technical issues.
This forced the defense to file its documents all over again on Tuesday, while seeking the leave of the court. Though the filing was correctly submitted the second time around, the judge made quick work of it the same day.
“This Court does not have jurisdiction to hear Mr. Trump’s arguments concerning the propriety of the New York trial,” Hellerstein said, writing that those issues are best left to New York state appellate courts or, ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court.
“Nothing in the Supreme Court’s opinion” in Trump v. United States “affects my previous conclusion that the hush money payments were private, unofficial acts, outside the bounds of executive authority,” the judge said, adding that Trump did not show “good cause” for removing the case to federal court.
Trump’s team has now responded with an appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which is the same court scheduled to hear oral arguments as soon as Friday morning in his appeal for a new E. Jean Carroll trial.
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