Appeals court: Judge should reconsider Trump bid in hush-money ruling

by · UPI

Nov. 6 (UPI) -- An appeals court has ruled that the judge in Donald Trump's hush-money case in New York should reconsider whether the should be immune to prosecution.

The decision reopens a path to getting the conviction dismissed.

The three-judge panel said it has no opinion on whether Trump's bid should succeed, but that the lower judge should reconsider his ruling.

Trump was convicted by a jury in May 2024 on 34 counts related to the falsification of business records to hide hush-money payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels. The payments were to hide their alleged affair from the public before the 2016 election.

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In the appeal filed in October, Trump's lawyers argued that New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, "concocted a purported felony by stacking time-barred misdemeanors under a convoluted legal theory, which the DA then improperly obscured until the charge conference."

They also said Justice Juan Merchan "fatally marred" the trial by allowing the introduction of official presidential acts. The lawyers argue that this is in opposition to a Supreme Court ruling that came down months after the trial, which said the president has immunity from prosecution for such crimes.

Trump is trying to move the case out of state court into a federal court to try to convince a federal court that his conviction should be overturned because of the immunity ruling.

U.S. District Court Judge Alvin Hellerstein denied the transfer request last year, saying that Trump failed to show good cause for the move after the verdict.

But Thursday's appeals ruling said, Hellerstein "bypassed what we consider to be important issues bearing on the ultimate issue of good cause," the panel wrote.

"We leave it to the able and experienced District Judge to decide whether to solicit further briefing from the parties or hold a hearing to help it resolve these issues," the panel wrote.

The Trump legal team said the case should be overturned.

"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."