{"id":123204,"date":"2026-02-04T22:37:04","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T22:37:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/123204\/"},"modified":"2026-02-04T22:37:04","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T22:37:04","slug":"ny-judge-appears-unswayed-by-trump-bid-to-move-stormy-daniels-hush-money-case-to-federal-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/123204\/","title":{"rendered":"NY judge appears unswayed by Trump bid to move Stormy Daniels hush money case to federal court"},"content":{"rendered":"

Donald Trump\u2019s third bid to move his hush money case to federal court<\/a> appeared to be in trouble at a hearing Wednesday, where his lawyers squared off with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg\u2019s office.<\/p>\n

The renewed bid, if successful, could allow Trump to try to get his historic criminal conviction thrown out on the grounds of presidential immunity and fast-track an appeal to the Supreme Court\u2019s conservative supermajority.<\/p>\n

Manhattan Federal Judge Hellerstein, who reserved decision, appeared unswayed by Trump\u2019s position, saying he\u2019d sought \u201ctwo bites at the apple\u201d by first trying in state court to get his conviction tossed on account of the Supreme Court\u2019s July 2024 decision on presidential immunity\u00a0<\/a>and, when that didn\u2019t work, refocusing efforts in federal court.<\/p>\n

The judge said the strategy led Trump to miss the 30-day window to raise the matter federally, without a \u201cgood cause\u201d excuse.<\/p>\n

Pushing back, Trump attorney Jeffrey Wall contended the president\u2019s legal team had been under the gun with his sentencing fast approaching, arguing \u201cany sensible litigant\u201d would proceed the same way.<\/p>\n

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

\u201cNot so.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ManhattanManhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg speaks during a press conference Wednesday, Sept. 24, 2025 in Manhattan, New York. (Barry Williams \/ New York Daily News)<\/p>\n

A jury of twelve New Yorkers on May 30, 2024, found Trump guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records<\/a>, determining he orchestrated an illegal scheme to sway the results of the 2016 election by directing his then-fixer Michael Cohen<\/a> to silence porn star Stormy Daniels about a sexual tryst with Trump. He is separately appealing his conviction in the state appeals courts.<\/p>\n

A month after the verdict, the Supreme Court issued its immunity decision, granting sweeping legal protections to presidents that shielded them from criminal prosecution for actions taken in office.<\/p>\n

Trump took that decision to the trial court, arguing it meant that Bragg\u2019s office shouldn\u2019t have been able to present evidence of Trump\u2019s \u201cofficial acts\u201d and asking Manhattan Justice Juan Merchan to set aside the guilty verdict. Trump argued jurors shouldn\u2019t have heard about conversations he had as president with White House staffers Hope Hicks and Madeleine Westerhout, as well as posts from his governmental social media account taunting Cohen.<\/p>\n

When Merchan ruled against Trump, the president took another tack, in August 2024 asking the federal courts to let him move his case there. By that time, Hellerstein said Wednesday, Trump\u2019s right to pursue a federal forum so was time-barred.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat [was] a decision on your part. You didn\u2019t have to do that,\u201d Hellerstein said, calling the strategy \u201cfatal.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou made a choice, and you sought two bites at the apple.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump first tried to move his case to federal court in the months after his 2023 indictment. Hellerstein rejected that initial effort<\/a>, finding evidence overwhelmingly suggested the matter was purely personal, \u201ca coverup of an embarrassing event.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Clinton-appointed Hellerstein, 92, remained unconvinced after the immunity decision came down more than a year later, denying Trump\u2019s second effort<\/a> to let the case proceed on a federal track in September 2024. He said nothing within the decision by the nation\u2019s high court affected his previous conclusion that the hush money payments were unofficial acts.<\/p>\n

Trump challenged Hellerstein\u2019s decision at the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, which, in November, vacated it and sent <\/a>it back for reconsideration. The appeals court found Hellerstein \u201cbypassed what we consider to be important issues,\u201d but made no recommendation on the right course of action.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, the DA\u2019s chief of appeals, Steven Wu, said the case was not about Trump\u2019s official actions<\/a>, but New York laws he broke in his private life.<\/p>\n

Hammering home the point, Wu noted that one portion of testimony Trump was challenging concerned a conversation with Hicks<\/a> in which he expressed he was \u201cglad the story of the hush money payments came out during the presidency rather than the campaign\u201d because it could have hurt him in voting booths.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s utterly incidental that that conversation happened to take place at the White House,\u201d Wu said.<\/p>\n

Wall, from the Sullivan & Cromwell law firm, argued that the DA\u2019s decision to introduce evidence relating to Trump\u2019s time in office was enough to make the case a federal one. He said Trump\u2019s team wanted Hellerstein to<\/a>\u00a0adopt Merchan\u2019s judgment, so they could appeal it federally.<\/p>\n

The attorney argued the matter of presidential immunity and how it applied in the case \u201cshould be decided by this court, then the 2nd Circuit, then the Supreme Court.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hellerstein did not indicate when he would rule.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m working all this out in my mind,\u201d the judge said, conceding some of the arguments before him hadn\u2019t \u201cever been made in any case before.\u201d<\/p>\n

The hush-money case was the only one of four criminal matters brought against Trump between his presidencies that made it to trial, with the federal cases accusing him of plotting to overthrow President Joe Biden\u2019s 2020 victory and hoarding stolen classified documents dismissed.<\/p>\n

He was sentenced to an unconditional discharge in the New York case in January 2025 <\/a>and formally became a convicted felon 10 days before his return to power.<\/p>\n

Among Trump\u2019s first actions as president were appointing his hush-money lawyers to the senior-most positions in federal law enforcement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donald Trump\u2019s third bid to move his hush money case to federal court appeared to be in trouble…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":123205,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[266,85,75,84,83,9,24,12,63],"class_list":["post-123204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-latest-headlines","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-news","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123204\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}