President Donald Trump’s personal lawyers filed a federal appeals brief on Thursday that tears into the rulings of U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein. Hellerstein died the day before.
“AWKWARD: President Trump’s personal attorneys just filed a brief in the 2nd Circuit attacking the decisions of Judge Alvin Hellerstein … who died yesterday,” wrote Kyle Cheney, senior legal affairs reporter at Politico.
The brief is part of Trump’s long-running effort to move his New York hush money criminal case out of state court and into federal court, where he could raise what his lawyers call “substantial federal defenses.” Hellerstein rejected that bid in September 2024. The 2nd Circuit sent the question back to him, and he rejected it again.
Trump’s lawyers didn’t hold back. They wrote that both the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and the district court, “(Hellerstein, J.),” had “grasped for different, meritless reasons to wrongly deny President Trump — the chief federal officer — a federal forum.”
“But the district court got it wrong again,” the brief says, “this time after taking ten months to issue its decision.”
Hellerstein, 92, died Wednesday, the Associated Press reported. He was appointed by President Bill Clinton and spent decades on the federal bench in Manhattan. There he oversaw high-profile matters including litigation stemming from the Sept. 11 attacks and the case against former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
A jury convicted Trump in May 2024 on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to a hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. He was further sentenced to an unconditional discharge and is appealing the conviction.
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