June 11 (UPI) — U.S. President Donald Trump’s appeal hearing in his hush-money case is back in a New York court on Wednesday in the president’s latest legal bid to overturn his historic criminal conviction.
A three-judge U.S. court of appeals panel will meet in a Manhattan courtroom as Trump’s lawyers argue the case should instead be directed to a federal court because prosecutors allegedly relied heavily on Trump’s official presidential acts as evidence and thus deserve a federal platform to push the presidential immunity claim.
Trump is not expected to make an appearance at the appeal hearing.
Trump was convicted in May 2024 by New York’s lower Supreme Court on all 34 counts of falsifying business records purportedly to cover up payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels over their alleged sexual encounters prior to the 2016 presidential election.
He was officially sentenced 10 days before he was sworn in for his second term in January, having received an unconditional discharge implying no fine or stay in prison.
However, the conviction remains on his record.
The Trump-led U.S. Department of Justice requested in March to file a friend-of-the-court brief in the case on behalf of the president.
Meanwhile, Wednesday’s hearing will see new lawyers in the fold after Trump tapped his four main legal standard bearers — Todd Blanche, Emil Bove, D. John Sauer and Will Scharf — to senior administration roles.
In court briefs, Trump’s legal team wrote that he had “good cause to pursue a post-trial removal for a simple reason: he could not have raised any of the arguments set forth herein until well after his trial began.”
“Trump is exhausting every possible argument he can make,” Jed Shugerman, a professor at Boston University School of Law, told NPR.
