Trump Stormy Daniels Payoff Was Not an Official Presidential Act, Federal Judge Rules
A federal judge has rejected Donald Trump’s latest attempt to use presidential immunity to challenge his New York hush-money conviction, ruling that discussions about a payoff to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels were private conduct rather than an official act of the presidency.
U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein issued the ruling Friday, August 28, rejecting Trump’s effort to move his state criminal case into federal court. The decision represents another setback for the president’s legal strategy and keeps his conviction in the New York state court system.
Hellerstein was particularly direct when addressing Trump’s argument that actions connected to the hush-money case could be protected under the presidential immunity doctrine.
“There is no way that discussions regarding hush money payments to cover up the President’s relations with Stormy Daniels could be an official act,” Hellerstein wrote. He added that an affair or a cover-up of an affair was not within the “outer perimeter” of a president’s official responsibilities.
The ruling centers on Trump’s attempt to overturn his 2024 conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
The case involved a $130,000 payment made to Daniels during the 2016 presidential campaign. Daniels has said she had a sexual encounter with Trump years earlier, an allegation Trump has denied. Prosecutors argued that the payment was part of an effort to prevent damaging information from becoming public during the presidential campaign and that business records were subsequently falsified to conceal the transaction.
Trump has consistently denied wrongdoing and has described the prosecution as politically motivated.
He was convicted in May 2024 while he was between his first and second presidential terms. The conviction made him the first former U.S. president to be convicted of a felony. He was later sentenced to an unconditional discharge, meaning he received no jail time, probation or financial penalty, but the conviction itself remained intact.
Trump’s legal team has been attempting to challenge the conviction through multiple avenues.
One of its central arguments has relied on the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling concerning presidential immunity. That decision established that presidents have substantial protection from criminal prosecution for official acts carried out while in office and that prosecutors cannot simply use protected official acts as evidence to establish criminal liability for unofficial conduct.
Trump’s lawyers argued that some of the evidence presented during the New York trial involved actions taken while Trump was president during his first term.
They therefore sought to move the case from New York state court to federal court, where they hoped the immunity argument could provide a path toward having the conviction dismissed.
Hellerstein rejected that argument.
The judge concluded that the conduct at the heart of the case was personal rather than governmental. According to his ruling, the fact that some events or evidence involved Trump’s presidency did not transform private matters into official presidential duties.
The decision came after a federal appeals court instructed Hellerstein to reconsider Trump’s request.
A three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had previously directed the district judge to take a closer look at Trump’s arguments concerning presidential immunity and evidence connected to his time in the White House.
The appeals court did not order Hellerstein to accept Trump’s position. Instead, it required the judge to reconsider whether the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling changed the legal analysis.
After reviewing the matter, Hellerstein reached essentially the same conclusion he had reached previously.
He also criticized Trump’s legal strategy.
The judge noted that Trump’s lawyers did not immediately pursue the federal-court route after the Supreme Court’s immunity decision. Instead, they first sought relief in state court before returning to federal court.
Hellerstein described that delay as a strategic decision and concluded that Trump had failed to demonstrate the necessary diligence and good cause for his renewed effort to remove the case.
The judge also rejected the suggestion that his role was simply to transfer or certify the case for an appeals court.
“Federal district courts are not certifying clerks,” Hellerstein wrote, emphasizing that the court had an independent responsibility to evaluate the legal arguments before it.
Friday’s ruling is the third time Hellerstein has blocked Trump’s effort to have the federal court take control of the case.
Trump’s legal team quickly announced that it would appeal.
A spokesperson for Trump described the ruling as “baseless and lawless” and argued that the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity decision, along with other constitutional protections, required the New York case to be moved to federal court and dismissed.
The dispute is therefore not over.
Trump continues to challenge his conviction through the New York state appellate system, while his lawyers can also pursue the federal issues raised by Hellerstein’s ruling.
The legal battle could eventually place questions surrounding presidential immunity before higher courts again.
For now, however, Hellerstein’s ruling establishes an important distinction between Trump’s official presidential responsibilities and his personal conduct.
The judge’s conclusion was that discussing or arranging a hush-money payment connected to an alleged personal affair could not reasonably be characterized as an official function of the presidency.
That distinction is central to Trump’s immunity argument.
The Supreme Court’s immunity ruling did not establish that everything a president does while in office is protected from criminal prosecution. Instead, the protection focuses on conduct that qualifies as official presidential action.
Hellerstein concluded that the Stormy Daniels matter fell outside that category.
The decision also highlights the unusual legal position Trump occupies as both a sitting president and a person with a standing felony conviction.
His 2024 conviction remains in place despite his return to the White House. His unconditional discharge spared him punishment, but it did not erase the verdict.
Trump has continued to insist that the case should never have been brought and that the prosecution was politically motivated.
Prosecutors and courts have rejected those arguments throughout the legal proceedings.
The latest ruling does not determine the ultimate outcome of Trump’s state appeal, nor does it prevent his attorneys from pursuing further challenges.
It does, however, close another potential route for Trump to have the conviction transferred to federal court and challenged under presidential immunity.
The Stormy Daniels case therefore remains an unresolved legal issue for the president.
As Trump’s lawyers continue their appeals, the central question will remain whether the conviction can survive his challenges based on presidential immunity, constitutional protections and the procedures used during the original prosecution.
For now, Judge Hellerstein has made his position clear.
The Trump Stormy Daniels payoff was a private matter, not an official presidential act, and presidential immunity does not provide a shield for the conduct underlying the New York conviction.
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