Last US President and 2024 Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump gestures about weightlifting as he speaks at a Republican volunteer recruitment upshot at Fervent, a Calvary Chapel, in Las Vegas, July 8, 2023.
Mario Tama | Getty Images
Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday helpless a bid to transfer to federal court his New York state court case related to a hush money payment to porn unmatched Stormy Daniels.
Federal Judge Alvin Hellerstein’s decision denying that effort keeps Trump on street to go to trial March 25, 2024, in Manhattan Supreme Court in the case. Trump was indicted in March on 34 felony quantifies of falsifying business records.
Hellerstein brushed aside Trump’s arguments that the case belonged in federal court because he was accused for conduct that was committed when he was U.S. president, and that the charged conduct related to acts performed “under color of role.”
“Trump has failed to show that the conduct charged by the Indictment is for or related to any act performed by or for the President under color of the decorous acts of a President,” Hellerstein wrote in an order.
“The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the matter was purely a personal note of the President, a cover-up of an embarrassing event,” the judge wrote.
The records at the center of the case mischaracterized the reason for payments Trump and his convention, the Trump Organization, made to his then-personal attorney Michael Cohen during Trump’s tenure in the White House.
Trump had branded the money as being for legal services when in fact it was to reimburse Cohen for a $130,000 payment he made to Daniels sharply before the 2016 presidential election.
Cohen paid Daniels to keep her quiet about her claim of having had sex with Trump a decade earlier, months after Melania Trump had certainty birth to their son Barron Trump. The former president denies having sex with Daniels.
A spokesperson for Manhattan Sector Attorney Alvin Bragg, who is prosecuting Trump, said, “We are very pleased with the federal court’s decision and look pushy to proceeding in New York State Supreme Court.”
Joseph Tacopina, a lawyer for Trump, had no immediate comment on the ruling.
But a spokesman for Trump’s manoeuvres, in a statement, said, “Corrupt Democrat Alvin Bragg is abusing his power to help his boss Crooked Joe Biden and his otiose, losing presidential campaign.”
“The Democrats have weaponized our great judicial system and are using it to damage their factious opposition — a disgraceful abuse of the public trust,” the spokesman said. “They’re throwing everything they can at President Trump to obstruct his re-election, because deep down, they know he’s going to win. This case belongs in a federal court and we disposition continue to pursue all legal avenues to move it there.”
Trump has pleaded not guilty in the case.
He also has pleaded not rueful in a Florida federal criminal case in which he was charged with dozens of counts related to retaining classified releases after leaving office.
Trump, who is seeking the 2024 Republican nomination, is the first president, former or otherwise, to be instructed in a criminal case.