Trump appeals his criminal conviction in New York hush money case

NEW YORK — On Monday, President Donald Trump requested a New York appeals court to throw out his criminal conviction in the Manhattan hush money case, which declared him a felon as he plotted his way back to the White House last year.

Trump’s lawyers used a lot of the same arguments that Trump had made before, during, and right after the 2024 trial in a 96-page filing. They said that the conviction should be thrown out because of the Supreme Court’s decision on presidential immunity and that the judge who oversaw the trial should have stepped down because he gave money to political campaigns. His lawyers, a six-person team from Sullivan & Cromwell, wrote, “This case should never have gone to court, and it certainly shouldn’t have ended in a conviction.”

Trump is trying to get his conviction overturned since he was found guilty of 34 charges of business fraud last May for trying to hide a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.

He has also requested a federal appeals court to move his state criminal case to federal court. This would let Trump seek the Supreme Court to wipe his criminal record clean by throwing out his conviction on the grounds of presidential immunity.

Trump hasn’t faced many penalties since his conviction. He won reelection in November and was given no punishment in January. However, he will still be known as a felon unless an appellate court overturns the decision.

In a filing on Monday, Trump’s lawyers said that the Supreme Court’s decision on presidential immunity, which came more than a month after a New York jury found Trump guilty in the hush money case, meant that prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorney’s office should not have been able to use evidence related to Trump’s “official acts” as president during his first term. His lawyers said that evidence includes testimony concerning talks between Trump and Hope Hicks, who was then the White House communications director, as well as Trump’s social media posts.

Justice Juan Merchan, the trial judge, said late last year that the immunity ruling did not apply to the evidence used in the case. He said that the evidence in question was not about Trump’s official actions but rather about his private behavior, specifically his attempt to hide a hush money payment to Daniels.

Trump’s lawyers also went after Merchan himself, as they did several times during the trial. They said that “his impartiality was reasonably in doubt” because he gave minor amounts of money to Democratic politicians or causes in 2020. They also talked about how his daughter works for a digital organization that works with a lot of Democratic lawmakers.

When Trump’s lawyers made the same case in 2023 and asked Merchan to step down, the judge said that earlier that year he had asked the New York State Advisory Committee on Judicial Ethics for advice on some of the same points Trump later brought up.

The judge noted that the committee had given him an advisory opinion about his daughter’s job that said, “We see nothing in the inquiry to suggest that the outcome of the case could have any effect on the judge’s relative, the relative’s business, or any of their interests.”

Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/28/donald-trump-appeal-hush-money-conviction-00624382

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