Judge rejects Trump's third bid to move hush-money case to federal court

A federal judge in Manhattan on Friday rejected President Trump's third attempt to move his New York hush-money criminal case into federal court, ruling that the underlying conduct — a $130,000 payment to conceal an alleged affair before the 2016 election — was personal business, not an official act of the presidency, and so falls outside the immunity the Supreme Court granted him in 2024.

U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein issued a 35-page opinion finding that Trump's renewed bid for removal was "neither new nor legally sufficient" and that he had failed to show the "good cause and diligence" the law requires. It is the third time Hellerstein has turned back an effort by Trump's lawyers to shift the case, which produced 34 felony convictions for falsifying business records, out of New York State Supreme Court and into the federal system, where his team has argued he would be entitled to broader constitutional protections.

The numbers

The case centers on a $130,000 payment arranged through Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen to adult film actress Stormy Daniels in the closing days of the 2016 campaign, then logged in Trump Organization records in a way jurors found amounted to falsification of business records. A Manhattan jury convicted Trump on all 34 counts in May 2024. He was sentenced in January 2025 to an unconditional discharge — no prison time, fine or probation — days before his second inauguration, a disposition intended to preserve the verdict without further punishing a sitting president-elect.

Friday's ruling turned in large part on timing. Hellerstein found that after the Supreme Court handed down its immunity decision in Trump v. United States in July 2024, Trump's lawyers first asked the state trial judge, Juan Merchan, to throw out the conviction on immunity grounds before turning to federal court roughly 58 days later — well past the 30-day statutory window for removal. At a February hearing, Hellerstein told Trump's lawyers they had "made a choice" and "sought two bites at the apple," a sequencing he called fatal to their case months before issuing Friday's written order.

How we got here

Trump's lawyers have now tried three times since 2023 to move the case out of New York courts, arguing first that his position as a former president and then, after the 2024 immunity ruling, his position as a sitting president entitled him to a federal forum. Hellerstein rejected the first attempt before trial and rejected a second, immunity-based removal notice in September 2024. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit vacated that decision in November 2025, ordering Hellerstein to take a closer look at how the Supreme Court's immunity framework applied to the case, which produced Friday's ruling.

In his opinion, Hellerstein wrote that the payment to Daniels and the effort to conceal it could not plausibly be characterized as falling within the "outer perimeter" of presidential responsibilities the Supreme Court described in its immunity decision, since the conduct took place years before Trump held office and concerned his private conduct rather than any exercise of government power.

"Paying hush money to an adult film star or engaging in a cover-up of an embarrassment are not subsumed in presidential immunity."

Who is affected

The immediate parties are narrow — Trump, Bragg's office and the New York court system that has handled the case since the original indictment in 2023 — but the ruling carries weight beyond this single prosecution. It is one of the first extended lower-court applications of the Supreme Court's 2024 immunity ruling to a case involving conduct that predates a defendant's time in office, and prosecutors and defense lawyers in other jurisdictions have been watching for guidance on how far that immunity reaches into a president's personal life. A contrary ruling would have signaled that virtually any criminal case touching a sitting or former president could eventually be pulled into federal court years after conviction, a prospect state prosecutors have warned would upend the ordinary finality of state convictions. Cohen, who pleaded guilty in 2018 to federal campaign-finance and tax charges tied to the same payment and served time before becoming a cooperating witness against Trump, is not a party to the removal fight but remains central to the underlying facts prosecutors used at trial.

Reaction

A spokesman for Trump's legal team said in a statement that the president "will be filing a powerful appeal, and will continue defeating Democrat weaponization at every turn," signaling another trip to the Second Circuit, which has already sent the dispute back to Hellerstein once. Trump has separately continued to describe the case, brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, as a politically motivated prosecution, an argument state and federal judges have repeatedly declined to credit.

Bragg's office, which has defended the conviction through multiple rounds of appeals since the 2024 verdict, has argued in filings that the payment and its concealment were plainly personal conduct predating Trump's presidency and that allowing removal at this stage — after conviction, sentencing and a change of venue already litigated once — would let defendants relitigate settled state convictions indefinitely by invoking federal jurisdiction after the fact.

What happens next

The ruling does not alter Trump's underlying sentence, which was already served in the form of the unconditional discharge, but it keeps the case and its record of 34 felony convictions inside the New York state court system rather than shifting it to a federal venue where his lawyers have signaled they would seek to have the verdict vacated outright. Trump's team is expected to file a new notice of appeal to the Second Circuit, which would mark the second time the removal fight has reached that court. Legal analysts following the case say a further appellate review could take months, and the Second Circuit is not obligated to revisit an issue it has already sent back once for reconsideration. Absent a reversal on appeal, the 2024 conviction stands as the only criminal conviction of a former or sitting American president in the nation's history.