By The Opinion
04 Sep 2024, 01:30 AM EDT
U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein denied former President and Republican candidate Donald Trump’s request to move his New York criminal case to federal court. for irregular payments to a porn actress to protect her previous electoral campaign.
Just hours after Trump’s lawyers asked him to consider the move, The judge quashed the Republican presidential candidate’s plan to move the case to federal court so he could seek to overturn his conviction in the wake of the presidential immunity ruling. of the Supreme Court of the United States.
In a four-page decision, Hellerstein, who had already rejected the same request for transfer last year, points out that the money that Trump sent “to a porn actress is not related to the official acts of a president” and assures that the opinion of the Supreme Court does not change that those payments “were private and unofficial acts outside the limits of executive authority.”
Trump filed the motion to move the case to federal court late Thursday ahead of the Labor Day weekend in the U.S. in a new attempt to buy time or thwart the sentencing scheduled for Sept. 18.
Faced with the setback, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung suggested he would try to appeal Tuesday’s ruling. Trump and his lawyers “will continue to fight to bring this hoax to federal court, where it should be put out of its misery once and for all.”
Trump, who was found guilty last May by a jury of 34 charges of falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal, is in the midst of an election campaign for the November elections, in which he faces Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.
The Republican thus became the first former president to be charged and convicted in a criminal case in the country. For now, it has been announced that Judge Juan Merchan will read out the possible sentence on September 18.
However, Trump’s legal team has also asked to delay sentencing until after the election, something that the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, which is behind the case, has opposed.
*With information from EFE.
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