NEW YORK — Donald Trump has renewed his request to move the Stormy Daniels hush money case to federal court, where the drawn-out legal saga began — and he’s confident his legal arguments will get him off the hook.
The beleaguered former president, who could potentially pardon himself if the case was moved and he wins the 2024 presidential election, argued in new filings that he should be tried in federal court because he was president when the alleged crimes occurred.
Manhattan Federal Court is “the appropriate jurisdiction for this case,” Trump lawyer Todd Blanche argued in legal papers — adding that the case “was brought solely due to the political motivation of the Manhattan District Attorney.”
The case brought by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg — which Blanche called “nonexistent” — hinges on “federal, not state, campaign finance laws, as made evident by both the federal jurisprudence and the New York State election board.”
Bragg, whose office says Trump shouldn’t be shielded from state prosecution, has charged Trump with committing 34 felonies during his first year in the White House by reimbursing his fixer-turned-foe Michael Cohen for a $130,000 payment to porn star Daniels ahead of the 2016 election.
Bragg says Cohen’s payment to Daniels was an illegal campaign contribution — and that Trump tried to hide the nature of the payments by classifying them as legal fees.
Bragg alleges that Trump falsified business records to hide the fact the payments violated state and federal election laws — and that the falsification of records constitute a felony under New York law.
The money was meant to better Trump’s chances in the 2016 election by buying Daniels’ silence about their alleged extramarital tryst, Bragg has charged.
Trump’s lawyers contend there was no underlying crime and he shouldn’t have been charged with felonies.
Blanche said the allegations are an “exclusive federal concern” that shouldn’t go forward before a jury in lower Manhattan’s state courthouse, where Trump pleaded not guilty to the charges in April.
Trump’s legal team has identified multiple arguments they could make in federal court, Blanche said.
Judge Alvin Hellerstein is expected to hear arguments from the district attorney and Trump’s lawyers later this month.
If Hellerstein lets Trump move his case, the hush money saga will return to the federal courthouse where it first played out in 2018 when the Manhattan U.S. Attorney prosecuted Michael Cohen. Manhattan assistant district attorneys could still present the case, Bragg’s office says.
The feds implicated Trump in Cohen’s case but didn’t charge him under Justice Department guidance against indicting a sitting president.
In his tell-all book released last year, former Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman revealed that Trump’s Justice Department brass tried in vain to get any mention of Trump erased from Cohen’s case, and tried to get Cohen’s conviction wiped.
Berman said former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr, who fired him, sought quash all of his office’s probes into various Trump associates and focus instead on investigating Trump’s political enemies.
Cohen is expected to be the Manhattan DA’s star witness at Trump’s hush money trial.
But he didn’t play the same role in the feds’ hush-money case. After his arrest, federal prosecutors offered Cohen a cooperation agreement for a more lenient sentence. But the deal never materialized because Cohen wouldn’t come clean about all the crimes he’d witnessed.
Cohen wound up getting three years imprisonment for campaign finance crimes and other offenses the late Judge William Pauley described as a “veritable smorgasbord of fraudulent conduct.”
On Friday, Manhattan Federal Judge Jesse Furman denied Cohen’s third effort to cut short his three-year term of supervised release, taking the side of prosecutors who strenuously objected.
Describing Cohen’s memories of his case as “rose-colored” — his lawyers argued he’d provided “meaningful assistance” to the government — the feds said they remembered it differently.
“The Government previously delineated many of Cohen’s lies that undermined his attempts at cooperation, and pointed to Cohen’s repeated attempts to downplay his own conduct after his guilty plea,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicolas Roos wrote.
Prosecutors said Cohen’s public remarks show he has continued to evade responsibility.
“Cohen falsely wrote in a book he authored that he ‘did not engage in tax fraud,’ that the tax charges were ‘all 100 percent inaccurate,’ and that he was ‘threatened’ by prosecutors to plead guilty,” the feds wrote in court papers.
“(While) Cohen is free to write and say what he wants, he cannot simultaneously distance himself from his conduct on cable news, while cloaking himself in claims of acceptance of responsibility in court filings.”
Cohen could not be reached for comment.
