Exclusive: Trump Mounts New Push To Move Appeal of Stormy Daniels Case to Less Hostile Federal Court

The filing by President Trump in federal court of a new argument for why his appeal of his conviction in the Stormy Daniels hush money case ought to be heard in federal court underscores how he is driven to end his status as a convicted felon.The brief, docketed on Monday, is the latest salvo in the 47th president’s appellate struggle to wipe clean the 34 state criminal convictions secured by Manhattan’s district attorney, Alvin Bragg, an elected Democrat. Mr. Trump is appealing those verdicts in New York’s courts. He is also arguing to Judge Alvin Hellerstein, 92, of the Southern District of New York that the case belongs in a federal forum.This latest argument leans on a Supreme Court case that was handed down last week, Chevron USA Inc. v. Plaquemines Parish. In that case, fresh off the presses, the high court held removal is available “for or relating to any act under color of federal office.” The justices held that the right to removal “sweeps broadly” and is applicable as long as “not tenuous, remote, or peripheral.”Chevron was decided by an eight to one margin, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackosn the lone dissent — as has been her wont. She acknowledged that the court’s majority “jettisoned the causal-nexus test in favor of a looser standard.” Mr. Trump’s lawyers write that the “looser standard” that is now Supreme Court precedent “plainly encompasses this case.” Mr. Bragg, this brief argues, has “no way to deny that this case satisfies the ‘relating to’ element of the federal-officer removal statute.”Mr. Trump’s case for federal court rests on the argument that “key evidence in this case centered” on Mr. Trump’s presidential position. Some of the payments were signed in the Oval Office, and the entire raison d’être of the checks, according to the prosecution, was to prevent Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign from being upended. The government also introduced Mr. Trump’s official social media post into evidence.Removal of a lawsuit to federal court from a state one dates to the Judiciary Act of 1789, but it was expanded during Reconstruction in the Removal Act of 1875. That law was motivated by the belief that a federal office could not secure a fair trial in the tribunals of the former Confederacy. Mr. Trump hopes that a federal court will be less hostile to his claims that one convened under the aegis of deeply Democratic New York. Judge Hellerstein has resisted that request twice before, concluding that the payments totalling some $130,000 that Mr. Trump made to Daniels, an adult film performer whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, were “private” and that Mr. Trump failed to show that they were committed under “color of federal office.” Mr. Trump argues that the payments, which were processed through his erstwhile attorney Michael Cohen, cleared that bar.The issue is back before Judge Hellerstein because the Second United States Appeals Circuit ordered the nonagenarian jurist to reconsider his ruling on removal in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling on immunity in Trump v. United States. The Second Circuit reckoned that Judge Hellerstein “did not consider whether certain evidence admitted during the state court trial relates to immunized official acts or, if so, whether evidentiary immunity transformed” the hush money case into one predicated on official acts.That question was also considered by the trial judge, Juan Merchan. He ruled that Mr. Bragg’s case related “entirely to unofficial conduct,” and therefore was not immune or eligible for removal. Mr. Trump and Judge Merchan repeatedly locked horns during the trial, with the president demanding the judge’s recusal. Judge Merchan donated small sums to Democrats in 2020, including President Biden. His adult daughter Loren worked for a liberal marketing firm whose clients included Vice President Harris.Judge Merchan’s jury instructions that the charges against Mr. Trump, usually misdemeanors, could be elevated to felonies if they were committed in the service of a second crime — even if the jury did not agree unanimously on the nature of that second crime — paved the way for Mr. Trump’s status as a convicted felon. Mr. Trump is arguing on appeal that those instructions were unconstitutional and violate his due process rights.Despite the case’s somewhat flimsy factual and legal predicates, it remains the only one in which prosecutors secured convictions against Mr. Trump. The charges brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith and the district attorney of Fulton County, Fani Willis, were both dismissed before they even reached trial. Only Mr. Bragg, who brought a case that was passed on by both federal prosecutors and his successor, succeeded in securing “guilty” verdicts.Ms. Clifford was spotted last week outside Atlanta’s Avon Theater, where she performed in “an evening of storytelling and comedy.” Earlier this month her erstwhile lawyer, Michael Avenatti, was moved to a Los Angeles halfway house from prison. He is serving time for stealing millions of dollars from his clients, including a $300,000 book advance from Mrs. Clifford.

Exclusive: Trump Mounts New Push To Move Appeal of Stormy Daniels Case to Less Hostile Federal Court

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