Left: Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg speaks at a news conference on Feb. 22, 2024, in New York (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II). Right: Then-former President Donald Trump addresses reporters after meeting with International Brotherhood of Teamsters members at the union’s Washington headquarters on Jan. 31, 2024 (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik).
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit to reject Donald Trump’s latest effort to move his long-running New York hush money prosecution into federal court.
Trump was convicted in May 2024 on 34 felony counts under New York Penal Law Section 175.10. The statute criminalizes falsifying business records with the intent to commit, conceal or facilitate another offense. After Trump returned to the White House, however, the judge overseeing the case concluded that an effective punishment was unavailable while leaving the convictions intact.
Trump has repeatedly failed to persuade the courts to remove the Manhattan criminal case to federal jurisdiction, both before and after his conviction.
The federal court battle began in May 2023, when Trump filed a notice of removal before U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein, a Bill Clinton appointee.
Following a rapid series of motions, Hellerstein rejected the request in July 2023 and returned the case to New York Supreme Court in New York County, the official designation for Manhattan’s trial-level court.
Trump’s subsequent appeals failed to change that result. He was convicted in May 2024, then submitted a second removal notice in late August of that year. About two months later, he defeated Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election and ultimately took office as the nation’s 47th president.
As Trump’s removal bid continued, his potential sentencing remained unresolved. That issue was ultimately settled in the president-elect’s favor when New York Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan imposed an “unconditional discharge.” The hush money prosecution, involving payments made to Stormy Daniels before the 2020 election, therefore ended without a direct legal penalty for Trump.
Between the election and the sentencing hearing, the federal district court again denied Trump’s removal request and refused to pause the ruling. The dispute then advanced to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where it was argued in June 2025.
In November 2025, the appellate court returned the matter to the district court and directed it to reconsider Trump’s arguments in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark opinion addressing presidential immunity.
Hellerstein ruled against Trump once more in August, concluding that the grounds cited for the second removal attempt were “neither new nor legally sufficient.”
Trump appealed that decision to the 2nd Circuit in September.
In a 66-page appellate brief, Bragg urged the appeals court to uphold the district judge’s decision and allow the state court proceedings to remain undisturbed.
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The Manhattan prosecutor argued that Trump is pursuing overlapping legal strategies concerning what Bragg described as “his wholly private, unofficial misconduct.”
“His direct appeal to the Appellate Division, First Department has been fully briefed and, by the time this Court hears this appeal, will already have been argued,” the brief states. “Now, nearly two years after his sentencing concluded the state prosecution, defendant seeks to wrench his pending appeal from the Appellate Division to this Court.”
Bragg’s filing says Trump initially held off on seeking removal while awaiting the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity decision. Trump’s attorneys later acknowledged that they should have filed “immediately” after the ruling, but did not do so.
“Defendant’s unjustified delay by itself forecloses good cause,” Bragg’s brief says.
The district court’s ruling, Bragg noted, found that Trump had made a deliberate choice to rely on presidential immunity as a trial defense rather than use it as the basis for moving the case to federal court. After the conviction, Trump invoked immunity again in seeking dismissal—but still did not seek removal on that ground.
Trump has continued presenting the same immunity arguments in state court, according to Bragg.
“Even worse, before seeking leave to remove, defendant filed a lengthy motion asking the state court to dismiss the charges based on Trump v. United States,” the brief states. “Under well-settled law, a defendant waives removal by invoking a state court’s jurisdiction to resolve the merits of a case.”
Trump, for his part, argues that he was essentially forced to file in state court to preserve certain rights as sentencing loomed.
Bragg rejects the compulsion argument, at length:
Defendant’s claim that he was compelled to file that motion is specious: the state court had already adjourned sentencing by more than two months, and New York law imposes no deadlines for post-trial motions before sentencing. Defendant thus freely chose to invoke the state court’s jurisdiction to resolve his evidentiary claim. That choice waives removal; at minimum, it forecloses any finding of good cause.
The district attorney’s brief goes on to argue that Trump’s request does not even meet the statutory standards for removal because the state prosecution was not “for or relating to any act under color” of federal office.
“Rather, all of the contested evidence concerned defendant’s unofficial conduct of paying hush money to an adult film actress,” the brief reads.
The post ‘Unofficial conduct’: Manhattan DA urges appeals court to once again reject Trump’s effort to move hush money case to federal court first appeared on Law & Crime.
