A federal just has rejected Donald Trump’s request to move the State of New York’s case charging him with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records into the federal court system. The well-known case involves criminal allegations by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg that Trump paid $130,000 to the adult film actress known as Stormy Daniels as hush money but falsely claimed it as legal expenses, and in an attempt to help him win the 2016 presidential election.
U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein on Wednesday ruled that Trump’s alleged actions had nothing to do with him being president, and thus he is not protected by any federal statute.
“Trump has failed to show that the conduct charged by the Indictment is for or relating to any act performed by or for the President under color of the official acts of a President,” Judge Hellerstein ruled. “Trump also has failed to show that he has a colorable federal defense to the Indictment.”
The judge ordered the case returned to the New York Supreme Court.
In the second strongly-worded smackdown by a federal judge against Donald Trump today, Judge Hellerstein wrote: “Trump argues that a ‘politically motivated’ district attorney who ‘disfavored [Trump’s] acts and policies as President’ caused the grand jury to indict.”
“Trump fails to show, however, that the grand jury lacked a rational basis for the indictment, or that there was ‘widespread resistance by state and local governmental authorities to Acts of Congress and to decisions of [the Supreme] Court.'”
Judge Hellerstein adds, “there is no reason to believe that the New York judicial system would not be fair and give Trump equal justice under the law. Trump fails to make a case of protective jurisdiction.”
Trump pleaded not guilty to the charges in April. This is the first case indicting a former U.S. president.
Also on Wednesday another federal judge delivered damning news to Trump. Judge Lewis Kaplan rejected Trump’s request for a new trial in the E. Jean Carroll defamation and sexual assault civil case. A jury had found Trump liable for sexual assault and defamation but not rape. But after Trump’s attorneys argued that because he had not been found liable for rape a new case should be granted, Judge Kaplan wrote that the jury did find Trump raped her, according to the common definition of the word.
“The finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’ Indeed,” Judge Kaplan wrote, “as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”
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