Judge tells Trump to stop 'beating a dead horse' in bid to overturn felony convictions

President Donald Trump is still fighting his 34 felony convictions in New York, one legal analyst wrote on Wednesday, but they're not likely to succeed.

In his "All Rise News," long-time legal reporter Adam Klasfeld wrote that after nearly three hours of arguments, U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein — an appointee of former President Bill Clinton — was over it.

“I think we are beating a dead horse,” he said.

A jury found Trump guilty of falsifying business records to hide his hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels during his 2016 campaign.

The Trump team has argued that some of the "evidence" should have been suppressed due to executive privilege and that the case should be removed from New York state court and tried in the federal court. It was an argument that he made during the initial stages of the case to no avail, as he was not president in 2016 when the crimes took place.

Klasfeld explained that if the judge agreed it would hand Trump a victor in his ongoing "crusade to discredit his criminal prosecution."

The problem, however, Klasfeld pointed out, is that very little would change if the case was moved to federal court. The only meaningful difference would be that Trump's appeal could move faster, zooming its way to the Supreme Court. The guilty verdicts on the 34 counts would be entered into federal court. The one major difference, however, is that a president can't pardon state court convictions only federal ones.

While Trump was found guilty, he received no fine or jail time because he was elected to the presidency. New York state Judge Juan Merchan said at the time that the only lawful sentence available to him was one that didn't step on the office of the president was an "unconditional discharge" on all counts.

Trump has tried to appeal the case, but in the second denial by the appeals court, the judges sent it back to Hellerstein's court saying that the judge should explain why the Supreme Court's finding that Trump gets immunity as the president doesn't automatically send the case to federal court.

Klasfeld reported that Hellerstein told lawyers that Trump waived his rights to move the case to federal court by agreeing to "litigate the fallout of the Supreme Court's immunity’s decision in state court."

“That’s a strategic decision,” the judge said.

Trump's lawyer, Jeff Wall, said “any sensible litigant” would try the same, relayed New York Daily News reporter Molly Crane-Newman on BlueSky.

“Not so,” Hellerstein replied. “Not so.”

"With an adverse state court ruling imminent, Trump filed his second removal request nearly 60 days later — after the statutory 30-day clock expired. Hellerstein said that Trump’s lawyers were seeking a 'second bite of the apple' after losing in New York, which the removal statute doesn’t allow," Klasfeld relayed.

Trump's lawyers tired to claim that they only did that out of respect to Judge Juan Merchan, but Hellerstein wasn't buying it.

“Whether Judge Merchan would have been pleased or displeased is totally irrelevant,” he said. The decision to litigate in state court was "fatal" to their immunity case in state court, the judge added.

As a convicted felony, Trump would have some challenges, the Law Dictionary outlines. In Virginia he wouldn't be able to vote, but as a non-violent offender Trump's voting rights remain in tact in Florida. Many countries don't allow felons to travel to their country. Canada, for example would require a background check and could still deny a felon entrance. Some states bar a felon from possession of a gun, and Florida is one of them, KBTX reported in 2025. In some jobs being a felon would preclude a person from that job, such as the U.S. Armed Forces. That hasn't been a problem for Trump, who was elected despite being convicted of 34 felonies.

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