US President Donald Trump speaks after signing an executive order that aims to rename Lake Ontario to Lake America in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on Aug. 27, 2026.
Jim Watson | AFP | Getty Images
A federal judge on Friday rejected an effort by President Donald Trump to transfer to federal court the New York state criminal hush money case that ended with his conviction.
Judge Alvin Hellerstein’s ruling was the second time he had denied Trump’s request that his criminal case be handled in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
Hellerstein said that Trump had waited too long after his May 2024 conviction to seek removal of the case to federal court.
Later Friday, Trump’s lawyers filed a notice of appeal of Hellerstein’s ruling, which would be heard by the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.
Trump was convicted of crimes of falsifying business records in Manhattan state Supreme Court related to a hush money payment to keep porn star Stormy Daniels quiet before the 2016 election about her claims of having had sex with him. He was sentenced in January 2025 to unconditional discharge, shortly before being sworn in to a second non-consecutive term in the White House.
Trump sought the removal as part of a strategy to overturn his conviction on the grounds that evidence allowed to be introduced at trial included conversations and observations of presidential aides, which his lawyers should have been kept out because they are related to official conduct.
“There is no way that discussions regarding hush money payments to cover up the President’s relations with Stormy Daniels could be an official act,” Hellerstein wrote.
The ruling is the latest in a string of legal setbacks for Trump in a personal capacity dating to 2025.
In July, another Manhattan federal court judge ordered the release of about $5.8 million to the writer E. Jean Carroll to satisfy a civil trial verdict holding Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming her. In April, a federal appeals court declined to reconsider a decision upholding another, $83.3 million civil judgment in Carroll’s favor against Trump for defaming her.
In April, a federal judge dismissed Trump’s $10 billion defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch, while allowing him to amend his civil complaint.
Hellerstein, in his ruling Friday, also said Trump had no legal grounds to remove the case from state court after he was convicted and sentenced.
“He cannot play one court against another; he cannot seek victory in one court, and then, when it becomes apparent that the court will rule against him, seek to remove his case to another court,” Hellerstein said in his ruling.
Hellerstein also wrote that the evidence introduced at trial did not infringe on presidential immunity, and that Trump had not demonstrated that he was prosecuted by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office for conduct related to his having been president.
“Paying hush money to an adult film star or engaging in a cover-up of
an embarrassment are not subsumed in presidential immunity,” Hellerstein said.
Trump is separately appealing his conviction in the New York state appeals court system.
A spokesman for Trump’s legal team, in a statement on Hellerstein’s ruling, said, “The Supreme Court’s historic decision on Immunity, the Federal and New York State Constitutions, and other established legal precedent mandate that the Witch Hunt perpetrated by the Manhattan DA be removed to federal court, and immediately overturned and dismissed.”
“President Trump has already prevailed in this case at the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, and today’s baseless and lawless decision contradicts that correct ruling,” the spokesman said. “President Trump will be filing a powerful appeal, and will continue defeating Democrat weaponization at every turn.”