Trump Aims for Win in Stormy Daniels Case: Will Appeals Court Overrule Judge, 92, Who Refuses To Move Prosecution to Federal Court?

The tenor of oral arguments over President Trump’s effort to appeal his hush money convictions in federal court could earmark the issue for further review — possibly at the Supreme Court.Even if Mr. Trump is unsuccessful in moving his case out of New York, he can still win his appeal in the usual course by convincing Empire State judges that his guilty verdicts deserve to be overturned. The validity of those convictions, which were jerry rigged into felonies from misdemeanors, has been widely questioned by legal observers. In the multiple criminal and civil cases brought against Trump during the interregnum, he has often fared poorly in the lower level courts but done better on appeal. The jury’s verdict in the hush money case was aided by how the presiding judge, Juan Merchan, allowed the state to use a novel legal theory to transform misdemeanor charges into felony ones and how he instructed the jury. During the trial, Mr. Trump’s attorneys — including his current deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, and current appeals court judge, Emil Bove — appeared attentive to issue that could be raised on appeal. Judge Alvin Hellerstein, 92, presided over the arguments on Thursday. He has twice before rejected Mr. Trump’s petitions to move the case to a less hostile federal forum from New York State court. Mr. Trump was convicted on all 34 counts in the prosecution brought by Manhattan’s district attorney, Alvin Bragg.Judge Hellerstein accused Mr. Trump of what lawyers call “forum shopping,” meaning seeking a venue where his claims could prosper. The judge reckoned that the president “intended to litigate in state court. Only when you sensed disappointment did you revert to an effort to have a federal forum.” The charges in the Stormy Daniels case stemmed from payments made by Mr. Trump to Ms. Daniels, an adult film performer and director whose real name is Stephanie Clifford. Mr. Trump repeatedly asked Judge Merchan to recuse himself on account of small donations he made to Democrats in the 2020 election. Judge Merchan’s adult daughter Loren also worked for a firm retained by Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign for president. While Judge Hellerstein did not issue a final ruling last week, he did declare it “seems that you’re waiting too long” with respect to Mr. Trump’s request that the case be removed. If the 47th president succeeds on that front, his appeal will be heard by the Second United States Appeals Circuit rather than the Empire State’s intermediate appellate tribunal, where the case is docketed for now. Mr. Trump seeks what he calls an “unbiased federal forum.”During oral arguments the president’s attorneys argued that waiting to request removal until after the case ran its course in state court was “what any sensible litigant would do” because to act any earlier would risk showing “disrespect” to Judge Merchan. Mr. Trump, though, has called Judge Merchan “psychotic” and “corrupt.” The judge in turn imposed a gag order on Mr. Trump. Judge Hellerstein called consideration of Judge Merchan’s ego “irrelevant” to the legal requirements of a timely motion. Mr. Trump has been requesting that the case be relocated to federal court since October 2023, notwithstanding Judge Hellerstein’s refusal to greenlit that change. The request gained new life following the Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. United States that official presidential acts are presumptively immune from prosecution. Mr. Trump contends that Trump precludes Mr. Bragg’s criminal case. Judge Merchan rejected that argument, instead insisting that the entirety of the case was built on “unofficial acts.” The question of removal — whereby a federal official can argue that he cannot receive a fair hearing in state court — is back before Judge Hellerstein because the Second Circuit ordered him to reconsider Mr. Trump’s case. The circuit riders reckoned that the judge failed to consider “whether certain evidence admitted during the state court trial relates to immunized official acts or, if so, whether evidentiary immunity transformed the State’s case into one that relates to acts under color of the Presidency.” Judge Hellerstein last week ventured that “the telling part of the evidence was the falsification of the records themselves that had nothing to do with any kind of White House directory or official records.” He wondered out loud whether the payments were tied to official duties — a requirement to achieve removal — or were merely “embarrassing.” Ms. Clifford claims that she and Mr. Trump had sex at a Lake Tahoe hotel during a celebrity golf tournament in 2006. Mr. Trump denies that encounter ever happened.Judge Hellerstein pushed back on Mr. Trump’s request that he reel the case back into federal court, telling the president’s lawyers that “The only thing you want me to do is adopt the New York Supreme Court judgment as mine. In conscience I can’t do that.” To that Mr. Trump’s counsel responded that if the judge approves removal “On we go to the 2nd Circuit. You would be done with this in a day.”Mr. Trump’s efforts to remove his case could eventually reach the Supreme Court, where the justices might look askance at a partisan, elected, Democratic state prosecutor like Mr. Bragg trying — and convicting — a once and future president before a Manhattan jury. Even if removal fails, though, Mr. Trump still has his appeal in state court, in front of the same body that reversed the $500 million civil fraud verdict secured by New York’s attorney general, Letitia James who, like Mr. Bragg, is an elected Democrat.One issue — reported first by the Sun — that could surface on appeal is whether Mr. Bragg trespassed on federal prerogative when he accused Mr. Trump of violating, via the payments to Ms. Clifford, New York state election law. Mr. Trump, though, was running for federal office — the highest one, no less — and therefore could argue that he was convicted under a statute that had been preempted by federal law. That position is taken by a liberal law professor, Jed Shugerman, who twice supported Mr. Trump’s impeachment. Now, he calls Mr. Trump’s convictions a “terrible precedent” and declares that the “sooner this case gets overturned the better.”

Trump Aims for Win in Stormy Daniels Case: Will Appeals Court Overrule Judge, 92, Who Refuses To Move Prosecution to Federal Court?

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