Former US President Donald Trump filed a motion on Thursday to move his New York hush money case to federal court, an attempt that could overturn his conviction and delay his sentencing date until after the presidential election in November.

Trump’s legal team asked the US District Court for the Southern District of New York to take the case, claiming the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office “violated the Presidential immunity doctrine … by relying on evidence of President Trump’s official acts” while in office. The motion cited a recent decision by the US Supreme Court that ruled former US presidents are immune from criminal prosecution for their actions taken within their “official responsibility.”

The motion stated:

These ongoing harms must be stopped. The impending election cannot be redone. The currently unaddressed harm to the Presidency resulting from this improper prosecution will adversely impact the operations of the federal government for generations.

Trump’s attorneys also requested New York County Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan’s recusal from the hush money case. The motion cited public statements made by Justice Merchan’s daughter in 2019 that “indicat[ed] that [Justice Merchan] had been critical of President Trump’s use of Twitter during his Presidency.” Trump’s team argued that these statements “confirm judicial bias and hostility towards President Trump’s 2018 Tweets, which are a core issue in the pending Presidential immunity motion.”

Trump’s team claimed Justice Merchan had a “conflict of interest” in the case since he “made improper contributions to Democrat interests” in 2020. The former president’s attorneys further claimed issues of bias because Justice Merchan’s daughter worked on current Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2019 presidential campaign and her company worked on President Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign.

In March 2023, a grand jury returned an indictment charging the former president with 34 violations of falsifying business records in the first degree. Trump was convicted of all 34 felony counts in May. Trump had sent $130,000 in reimbursements to his attorney Michael Cohen for a hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels, and prosecutors argued that he falsified records to conceal the hush money payments to unlawfully influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.

The former president filed a motion to dismiss the indictment and vacate the jury’s verdicts under the claim of presidential immunity, and the motion is currently pending before Justice Merchan. In July, Justice Merchan pushed Trump’s sentencing date in the case until September 18 so he could consider the presidential immunity claim. Trump’s team then requested the sentencing in his hush money case be postponed until after the November election, claiming the current scheduling would constitute election interference.

This is not Trump’s first attempt to remove the case from New York’s jurisdiction. A federal judge in 2023 rejected Trump’s first attempt, finding that the former president failed to show that the alleged conduct was related to his official responsibilities as the president. US District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein stated, “Hush money paid to an adult film star is not related to a president’s official acts. It does not reflect in any way the color of the president’s official duties.”