Trump Wins Review in Hush-Money Case

A federal appeals court on Thursday ordered a lower court to reconsider a decision to keep President Donald Trump's ongoing case to erase his hush money conviction in state court.

The three-judge panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a federal judge failed to consider "important issues relevant" to Trump's request to move the New York case to federal court, where he can seek to have it thrown out on presidential immunity grounds.

Judges Susan L. Carney, Raymond J. Lohier Jr. and Myrna Pérez made their ruling after hearing arguments about the case in June.

Trump's legal team cited a Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity.

"President Trump continues to win in his fight against Radical Democrat Lawfare," a spokesperson for Trump's legal team said in a statement. "The Supreme Court’s historic decision on Immunity, the Federal and New York State Constitutions, and other established legal precedent mandate that the Witch Hunt perpetrated by the Manhattan DA be immediately overturned and dismissed."

U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein, an appointee of President Bill Clinton, had twice denied Trump's requests to move the case, once after his March 2023 indictment and another after Trump's May 2024 conviction.

The high court subsequently ruled that presidents and former presidents cannot be prosecuted for official acts. Trump pleaded not guilty to all 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree but was found guilty after an unprecedented six-week criminal trial in New York.

Hellerstein's ruling, the center of Thursday's decision, said Trump's lawyers had failed to meet the high burden of proof for changing jurisdiction and that Trump’s conviction for falsifying business records involved his personal life, not official actions that the Supreme Court ruled are immune from prosecution.

The appeals court panel said Hellerstein’s ruling failed to "consider whether certain evidence admitted during the state court trial relates to immunized official acts or, if so, whether evidentiary immunity transformed."

Trump's lawyers argued that former presidents have a right to be tried in federal court for charges related to their time in office.

Steven Wu, the appellate chief for the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, which prosecuted Trump, countered that the president was too late in seeking to move the case to federal court. Normally, such a request must be made within 30 days of an arraignment.

Exceptions can be made if "good cause" is shown, which Hallerstein said wasn't the case.

In a 111-page appeal filed in New York Supreme Court’s Appellate Division in October, Trump's lawyers also argued that Judge Juan Merchan, who presided over the case in which Trump was convicted, refused to recuse himself from the case. They questioned his impartiality due to his past political contributions — donating to both then-President Joe Biden and to a group called "Stop Republicans PAC."

The lawyers also called into question Merchan’s daughter’s work as the president and part-owner of an advertising company that was paid millions by the Kamala Harris campaign and other Democrats.