A federal district court judge suggested on Tuesday that he is not inclined to move a New York criminal case against former President Donald Trump to a federal venue.
Trump’s legal team argued that the charges of falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments alleged violations of election law, consequently making a state court with a local prosecutor the wrong venue for a federal criminal matter.
“The argument is very clear that the act for which the president has been indicted does not relate to anything under color of his office,” said U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein, according to Reuters.
If the judge were to agree with Trump’s lawyers and move the case to federal court, Trump could file a motion for dismissal based on the argument that a federal official cannot be criminally prosecuted for acting within his job duties, AP News reported.
Still, requests for transferring criminal cases from state court to federal court are rarely granted, and Manhattan’s district attorney claimed that nothing surrounding the payments had anything to do with his duties as president.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, Trump was indicted back in March for allegedly directing his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, to pay off two women whom he purportedly had affairs with — former porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal — and then falsify financial records to cover up the payments. Trump has denied the alleged affairs never took place.
Casting further doubt on the likelihood that he would grant Trump’s motion for a change of venue, Judge Hellerstein said, “There’s no reason to believe that an equal measure of justice could not be rendered by the state court.”
Hellerstein noted that he would issue a formal written ruling within the next two weeks.
Trump’s hearing on June 27 was only the latest development in the former president’s multiple legal woes following his federal indictment earlier in the month for allegedly mishandling classified materials. A trial date has been set for August 14, just one week before the Republican primary debates.
He is also still under investigation in Georgia, where Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is looking into whether he violated the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations statute in a bid to overturn election results in 2020.
