Federal judge rejects Trump’s request to intervene in his state felony conviction

A federal judge on Tuesday swiftly rejected Donald Trump’s request to intervene in his New York hush money criminal case, spurning the former president’s attempt at an end-run around the state court where he was convicted and is set to be sentenced in two weeks. U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein’s ruling — just hours after Trump’s lawyers asked him to weigh the move — upends the Republican presidential nominee’s plan to move the case to federal court so he could seek to have his conviction overturned in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling. In a four-page ruling, Hellerstein wrote that nothing about the high court’s July 1 ruling affected his previous conclusion that hush money payments at issue in Trump’s case “were private, unofficial acts, outside the bounds of executive authority.” Hellerstein sidestepped a defense complaint that Trump’s state court trial had been plagued by “bias, conflicts of interest, and appearances of impropriety,” writing that he “does not have jurisdiction to hear Mr. Trump’s arguments concerning the propriety of the New York trial.” The Manhattan district attorney’s office, which prosecuted Trump’s case, declined to comment. Prosecutors have not staked a position on whether to delay sentencing, deferring to Merchan on an “appropriate post-trial schedule.” In their letter Tuesday, they said they were open to a schedule that allows “adequate time” to adjudicate Trump’s motion to overturn the verdict while also sentencing him “without unreasonable delay.” Trump’s lawyers first asked the federal court to intervene last week, but their paperwork was kicked back because they hadn’t gotten the required clearance from Hellerstein to file it. “Those are issues for the state appellate courts.” Instead, he noted, Trump can pursue a state appeal or seek review from the U.S. Supreme Court, whose immunity ruling reins in prosecutions of ex-presidents for official acts and restricts prosecutors in pointing to official acts as evidence that a president’s unofficial actions were illegal.