Fogbow

The attempt to move the case into federal court appears to be a long-shot bid to try to undercut Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against Trump, who pleaded not guilty last month to charges of falsifying business records with the intent to conceal illegal conduct connected to his 2016 presidential campaign.

W. Kevin Vicklund wrote: ↑Thu May 04, 2023 1:46 pm Goomba?

Inner City Press
@innercitypress
Update: Trump's bid to remove the Alvin Bragg prosecution from state to Federal court in SDNY has this morning been assigned to Judge Ronnie Abrams

northland10 wrote: ↑Thu May 04, 2023 10:39 pm Since this is a criminal trial, isn't Habeas Corpus the proper route?

northland10 wrote: ↑Thu May 04, 2023 10:39 pm That said, IIRC, federal courts do not like interfering in local criminal cases unless absolutely necessary (and it is about the actual Constitutional issues not Taco/Trump's feeling that "I was President, so a state can't touch me."

Joyce Alene
@JoyceWhiteVance

There's a Substack for everything: I wrote about the law governing removal of state prosecutions to fed'l court in the context of a possible Trump prosecution in Georgia. The law is the same, but the NY case is weaker because Trump wasn't POTUS.

northland10 wrote: ↑Thu May 04, 2023 10:39 pm It is, of course, just a delay tactic anyway.

Dismissal. (a) By the Government. The government may, with leave of court, dismiss an indictment, information, or complaint. The government may not dismiss the prosecution during trial without the defendant's consent.

[T]he district court may well grant the Government’s motion to dismiss the case against General Flynn. In fact, it would be highly unusual if it did not, given the Executive’s constitutional prerogative to direct and control prosecutions and the district court’s limited discretion under Rule 48(a), especially when the defendant supports the Government’s motion. But if the court denies the motion, General Flynn has multiple avenues of relief that he can pursue. And because he does, mandamus is not appropriate in this case at this time.

Inner City Press
@innercitypress
Update: Trump's bid to remove the Alvin Bragg prosecution from state court to Federal SDNY has been reassigned from Judge Abrams (whose husband was on the Mueller team) to Judge Hellerstein, five of whose cases I covered this morning, stories coming.

N.Y. Times May 2, 2010: Empathetic Judge in 9/11 Suits Seen by Some as Interfering

As the federal judge who has overseen the wrongful death, property damage and personal injury lawsuits arising from 9/11, Judge Hellerstein, 76, has developed a visible empathy for both the families of the victims and for the workers who fell ill after the rescue and cleanup efforts.

The struggle over control of the settlement has underscored two different, but not necessarily contradictory views of the judge: the compassionate jurist driven by a sense of social responsibility and with a wealth of experience with victims’ suffering, and the aggressive judge unwilling to cede ground on cases he has shepherded for years.

A Bronx native and Columbia Law School graduate who was appointed to the bench by President Bill Clinton in 1998, Judge Hellerstein has shown independence and a strong adherence to the First Amendment and to transparency, for example. He ordered the government to release videos and photos from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq after the American Civil Liberties Union sued under the Freedom of Information Act. In a 1999 decision against the New York Police Department that was later overturned, he ruled that members of the Ku Klux Klan could wear their traditional masks at demonstrations.

Charles G. Moerdler, a friend and former co-partner at the firm Stroock & Stroock & Lavan, said that Judge Hellerstein, an Orthodox Jew who has been active on the board of several Jewish organizations, was motivated by “a very high standard of morality and decency.”

As a litigator representing banks and large corporations, he said, the judge was willing to tell a bank client being sued by an investor over money losses to reconsider its position. “He’d say, I can litigate this, and I can fight this, but in fairness, this person was injured,” Mr. Moerdler said.

In his order, Judge Juan Merchan largely sided with the Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg by limiting what Trump can publicly disclose about new evidence from the prosecution before the case goes to trial.

The order states that "any materials and information provided by the People to the Defense in accordance with their discovery obligations...shall be used solely for the purposes of preparing a defense in this matter."

Merchan's order said that anyone with access to the evidence being turned over to Trump's team from state prosecutors “shall not copy, disseminate or disclose” the material to third parties, including social media platforms, “without prior approval from the court."

It also singles out Trump, saying he is allowed to review sensitive "Limited Dissemination Materials" from prosecutors only in the presence of his lawyers, and "shall not be permitted to copy, photograph, transcribe, or otherwise independently possess the Limited Dissemination Materials."

chancery wrote: ↑Mon May 08, 2023 7:51 pm However, I see that the notice of removal has precatory language ("WHEREFORE, this case should be removed to Federal Court"), which I would not have included, so maybe there's something different about federal officer removal.

28 U.S. Code § 1455 - Procedure for removal of criminal prosecutions

(b)Requirements.—

(3)The filing of a notice of removal of a criminal prosecution shall not prevent the State court in which such prosecution is pending from proceeding further, except that a judgment of conviction shall not be entered unless the prosecution is first remanded.

JUST IN: Federal judge in NY sets June 27 hearing and briefing schedule on Trump’s removal of his Manhattan criminal case to federal court.

Judge also emphasizes that proceedings in state court may continue.