NEW YORK—Captain Comb-Over asked a federal judge this week to move his 34 state felony convictions into a federal court system now supervised by his former defense attorney. U.S. District Judge Alvin Hallerson denied the request, ruling that waiting until the Justice Department had been converted into a personal legal service was not a valid procedural ground.
The decision keeps the former president's hush money case in state court, where a jury convicted him on 34 counts of falsifying business records. His lawyers argued that the case belonged in federal court because the conduct occurred while he was president. Hallerson replied that the defense knew about that argument years ago and chose not to make it while federal prosecutors still operated independently.
Attorney General Todd Blanche represented the defendant in that same case before his appointment. A transfer would have allowed Blanche's Justice Department to ask the court to erase the convictions. Department staff did not say whether a draft dismissal order already existed. A spokesperson described the department's commitment to "the orderly resolution of cases involving former officials."
"The defendant elected to remain in state court when the Justice Department was not yet available to attend to his personal legal affairs," Hallerson wrote in a nine-page order. "That choice was timely. This one is not."
Legal analysts said the ruling was not complicated. "You cannot demand a new court because you have finally acquired a better judge," said one former federal prosecutor. "That is not removal. That is shopping."
Hallerson also found that the underlying conduct was not an official act of the presidency. That removed a second possible path to federal jurisdiction. The decision came as the former president's approval rating reached 33 percent in national polling.
The defendant responded earlier in the week by threatening to demolish the Kennedy Center after a programming dispute. The matter did not appear in the ruling. The judge's final paragraph noted that the hush money conviction "shall remain where it has always belonged."
At a hearing last month, Hallerson asked why the defense had waited through years of state proceedings. No clear answer was given. The judge wrote that the court could not ignore the sequence of events.
The request also arrived while an appeal remained pending in state court. Hallerson wrote that pending state proceedings were another reason to keep the case in New York. A defendant could not pause a state review because a better legal system had been installed in Washington.
