Trump Asks Federal Court To Intervene In Hush Money Case In Bid To Toss Conviction

NEW YORK (AP) — Former President Donald Trump asked a federal court late Thursday to intervene in his New York hush money criminal case, seeking a pathway to overturn his felony conviction and indefinitely delay his sentencing next month.

Lawyers for the current Republican nominee asked the federal court in Manhattan to seize the case from the state court where it was tried, arguing that the historic prosecution violated his constitutional rights and ran afoul of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent presidential immunity ruling.

Trump’s lawyers, who failed last year in a pretrial bid to get the case shifted to federal court, said moving it now will give him an “unbiased forum, free from local hostilities” to address those issues. In state court, they said, Trump has been the victim of “bias, conflicts of interest, and appearances of impropriety.”

If the case is moved to federal court, Trump’s lawyers said they will then seek to have the verdict overturned and the case dismissed on immunity grounds.

If the case remains in state court and Trump’s sentencing proceeds as scheduled on Sept. 18 — about seven weeks before Election Day — it would be election interference, his lawyers said, raising the specter that Trump could be sent to jail just as early voting is getting under way.

Trump’s request Thursday is poised to be decided by the same Manhattan federal judge who rejected his earlier bid to move the case — a decision that cleared the way for his trial in state court.

“The ongoing proceedings will continue to cause direct and irreparable harm to President Trump — the leading candidate in the 2024 Presidential election — and voters located far beyond Manhattan,” Trump lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove wrote in a 64-page U.S.