Donald Trump, when elected president last year, became the first person with criminal felony convictions to be elected president. And while Trump swiftly moved to drop his remaining federal criminal cases, his 34 criminal convictions in New York state court remain outside of the government’s reach.
However, Trump is now pushing to overturn those convictions.
Trump, per Politico, has now appealed those criminal convictions, which were related to falsifying business records in relation to his payoffs to Stormy Daniels, as part of a scandal that emerged during the 2016 campaign. Trump did not receive any jail time or other punishment as a result of the conviction when sentencing took place after his election to the presidency, although the conviction still stands and was not overturned or set aside.
President Donald Trump on Monday asked a New York appeals court to overturn his criminal conviction in the Manhattan hush money case that made him a felon as he plotted a path back to the White House last year. https://t.co/uKzZqHFsE1
— erica orden (@eorden) October 28, 2025
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The appeal came in the form of a 96-page filing in which, per the report, “Trump’s lawyers relied on many of the same arguments that Trump previously made before, during and immediately following the 2024 trial, including that the conviction should be thrown out in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity and that the judge who oversaw the trial should have recused himself because he made political contributions.”
“This case should never have seen the inside of a courtroom, let alone resulted in a conviction,” the president’s attorneys said in the filing. Trump’s attorneys had previously attempted to have the case moved to federal court, which would presumably allow his Justice Department to dismiss it, or for a court to do so under the grounds of presidential immunity.
Trump, the lawyers added, was “convicted after a trial that featured repeated and clear violations of his constitutional rights, federal law, and New York law, presided over by a judge who was required to recuse,” Axios reported.
Justice Juan Merchan, however, had rejected the presidential immunity argument earlier this year, finding “evidence at issue related not to Trump’s official acts, but instead to his private conduct — specifically, his effort to conceal a hush money payment to Daniels.”
Photo courtesy of the Political Tribune media library.
