A federal judge’s denial of President Trump’s bid to have District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against him moved to federal court means that his trial, over allegations of falsifying business records, will unfold in state court. 

The removal provision is a portion of the United States Code that governs the federal judicial system that allows “federal officers” to remove any civil or criminal case against them for “any act under color of [their] office.” Its intent, according to the judge hearing the case, Alvin Hellerstein, is to “prevent individual states from using their laws to hinder the federal government from exercising its lawful authority.” 

In deciding that Mr. Trump’s case belongs in state court, Judge Alvin Hellerstein concluded that “no evidence was presented” that the case belonged in federal court and that “hush money paid to an adult film star is not related to a President’s official acts,” or the kind of activities that would justify a federal hearing. He was, though, persuaded by Mr. Trump’s argument that the president is a “federal officer,” a contested point of law.    

Mr. Bragg’s case centers on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. The complaint arose from an alleged hush-money payment to an adult film actress, Stormy Daniels, earmarked to prevent her from publicizing an affair with Mr. Trump before the 2016 election. Mr. Trump denies the affair and pleaded “not guilty” to the charges.  

A month after the indictment was handed up, Mr. Trump’s attorneys moved to remove the case to federal court. They argued that the allegations against Mr. Trump were committed while he was president and involved federal election law. They also alleged bias, asserting that the indictment was “politically motivated” and “the product of state hostility.”   

Mr. Bragg’s office contended that the president is not a “federal officer” because he is elected and not appointed. On this point, Judge Hellerstein appears to have been swayed by Mr. Trump’s citation to elected members of Congress that had won removal from state to federal court. 

Mr. Trump’s side argued that his payments to his attorney, Michael Cohen, totaling $420,000, were a “direct result of [his] role as President of the United States and his obligations under the Constitution, and in order to separate his business affairs from his public duties.” 

Judge Hellerstein ruled, though, that the invoices Cohen provided for receiving his monthly payments did not specify a salary, nor did they describe the work he performed. They “remained at the Trump Organization, a private enterprise, in New York City, not in Washington, D.C … Trump used his private funds, and the payments did not depend on any Presidential power for their authorization.” 

Judge Hellerstein cites Clinton vs. Jones. In 1994 a former Arkansas state employee, Paula Jones, filed a sexual harassment suit against President Clinton and a former Arkansas police officer. Mr. Clinton requested the case be dismissed on grounds of presidential immunity. 

The Eighth Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals ruled in Ms. Jones’s favor, finding that “the President, like all other government officials, is subject to the same laws that apply to all other members of our society.”          

Judge Hellerstein explains that the “concept that a President is not entitled to immunity for unofficial acts grounded purely in the identity of his office” applies to this case as well. There is an “outer perimeter,” he adds, to a “President’s authority and responsibilities beyond which he engages in private conduct.”