Remember the hush money case? President Donald Trump is still appealing his conviction in that one from the White House, and he’s still trying to get it moved to federal court, even though he was already sentenced in state court in New York before taking office.
In a brief filed Monday to the federal appeals court that covers Manhattan, the president’s latest personal lawyers argued that his sentencing doesn’t moot his federal court bid. “Because President Trump had good cause to remove this case after his trial, this Court should order the district court to grant him permission to do so now,” they wrote to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Among other things, they cited Trump’s Supreme Court immunity win in the federal election interference case, a ruling that was issued after he was found guilty in state court last year.
“Such an order would transfer the pending appellate proceedings from the New York State Appellate Division to this Court (after a brief administrative stop at the district court),” Trump’s lawyers wrote, adding in reference to the 2nd Circuit: “An appeal would then proceed in this Court as if the case has been in federal court all along — as it should have been.”
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office, which secured the guilty verdicts on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, argued that the removal attempt is moot at this point and that the president’s appeal should proceed normally in state court. Bragg’s office wrote in its own brief earlier this year that Trump’s “appellate claims are best channeled to the state appellate courts — an avenue of relief that the Supreme Court specifically directed defendant to pursue in denying his attempt to stay sentencing.”
That stay bid reference relates to the president’s last-ditch attempt to convince the justices to halt his sentencing just ahead of his inauguration in January. Rejecting that bid over dissent from Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, the high court said Trump’s claims of alleged evidentiary violations at his trial “can be addressed in the ordinary course on appeal.” To be clear, even if Trump’s appeal stays in state court, it can still get to the Supreme Court. As a general matter, cases can be appealed to the justices either from the federal appeals courts or from state supreme courts. And, as that divided high court action on his way to being sentenced to an “unconditional discharge” without jail time shows, the president might find support from the justices in the likely event that his appeal makes it to them — whichever route it takes to get there. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in Donald Trump’s legal cases.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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