Judge to consider moving Trump’s New York hush money conviction to federal court
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a bill signing in the Oval Office of the White House on February 03, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — A federal judge on Wednesday is set to consider moving President Donald Trump’s conviction in his criminal hush money case in New York to federal court, where Trump could try to overturn it.
Trump’s lawyers and prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorney’s office will argue before U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein over the immunity the U.S. Supreme Court granted Trump for his official acts.
The Supreme Court decided in July 2024 that presidents are entitled to presumptive immunity for acts taken in their official capacity. Trump’s attorneys have argued that ruling means his Manhattan criminal case belongs in federal court.
Hellerstein has already denied them twice, deciding that falsifying business records before the 2016 election in order to conceal a long-denied affair with Stormy Daniels had nothing to do with the presidency.
After Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts, his attorneys went back to Hellerstein, who was still not convinced, writing that “hush-money payments were private, unofficial acts, outside the bounds of executive authority.”
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Hellerstein to take another look.
New York Judge Juan Merchan sentenced Trump last year to an unconditional discharge without prison, fines or probation. Prosecutors have argued that the “advanced stage” of the case weighs against moving it into federal court.
Trump was found guilty of orchestrating an illegal scheme to influence the 2016 presidential election by directing his personal lawyer at the time, Michael Cohen, to pay $130,000 to adult film actress Stormy Daniels to prevent her from publicly revealing a long-denied sexual encounter with Trump.
Trump is separately pursuing an appeal through the state court system.
Mohsen Mahdawi, a Columbia University student and Palestinian activist, who was arrested by US immigration authorities in mid-April 2025, attends the inauguration ceremony at City Hall in New York, United States, on January 1, 2026. (Selcuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — For the second time in a little more than a week, attorneys have announced that an immigration court has terminated deportation proceedings against a pro-Palestinian student after Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed they posed a threat to foreign policy.
According to a letter filed in court, attorneys for Mohsen Mahdawi, the Columbia University student who was detained at his naturalization interview in April, a judge has found that the Department of Homeland Security “did not meet its burden of proving by clear and convincing evidence” that he is removable.
It comes after an immigration court terminated removal proceedings against Tufts University Ph.D. student Rümeysa Öztürk. Her attorneys announced the order in a letter to the federal judge overseeing the case challenging her detention on Feb. 9.
For Mahdawi’s case, immigration judge Nina Froes appears to have based her decision on the finding that DHS failed to authenticate a memo allegedly signed by Rubio claiming Mahdawi was a threat to U.S. foreign policy.
Mahdawi’s attorneys have argued that, like other pro-Palestinian demonstrators, organizers and students, he was being targeted for his constitutionally protected speech.
Öztürk, like Mahdawi, was also labeled a foreign policy risk by Rubio in a memo.
Both cases can be appealed by the Trump administration, so their habeas petitions will likely continue to play out in federal court.
“I am grateful to the court for honoring the rule of law and holding the line against the government’s attempts to trample on due process,” Mahdawi said in a statement. “This decision is an important step towards upholding what fear tried to destroy: the right to speak for peace and justice.”
“In a climate where dissent is increasingly met with intimidation and detention, today’s ruling renews hope that due process still applies and that no agency stands above the Constitution,” he added.
In response to a request for comment about both cases, the Department of Homeland Security sent a previous statement about Mahdawi and said: “It is a privilege to be granted a visa or green card to live and study in the United States of America. When you advocate for violence, glorify and support terrorists that relish the killing of Americans, and harass Jews, that privilege should be revoked, and you should not be in this country. No activist judge, not this one or any other, is going to stop us from doing that.”
Mahdawi was detained in Vermont last spring during his citizenship interview. Arguing that he should continue to be detained, lawyers for the Trump administration pointed to a 2015 FBI investigation, in which a gun shop owner alleged that Mahdawi had claimed to have built machine guns in the West Bank to kill Jews.
However, the FBI closed that investigation and Mahdawi was never charged with any crime, a point a federal judge highlighted when he ordered Mahdawi’s release.
In response to the government’s allegations against him, Mahdawi and his lawyers have firmly refuted allegations that he ever threatened Israelis or those of the Jewish faith. He told ABC News he has been advocating for peace and protesting against the war in Gaza.
“So for them to accuse me of this is not going to work, because I am a person who actually has condemned antisemitism,” Mahdawi said. “And I believe that the fight against antisemitism and the fight to free Palestine go hand in hand, because, as Martin Luther King said, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
Öztürk was detained in March by masked federal agents, and the arrest was captured on camera. Attorneys representing her said she was targeted, like other high-profile arrests of students, for her Pro-Palestinian views, specifically, for co-authoring an Op-Ed in the student paper in March 2024 calling on the school’s administration to take steps to “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide.”
A federal judge ordered her release in May.
“Today, I breathe a sigh of relief knowing that despite the justice system’s flaws, my case may give hope to those who have also been wronged by the U.S. government,” Öztürk said in a statement on Feb. 9. “Though the pain that I and thousands of other women wrongfully imprisoned by ICE have faced cannot be undone, it is heartening to know that some justice can prevail after all.”
Fire and smoke mark where a UPS cargo plane crashed near Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport on November 04, 2025 in Louisville, Kentucky. Stephen Cohen/Getty Images
(LOUISVILLE, Ky.) — Newly released photos included in a National Transportation Safety Board preliminary report on the deadly UPS plane crash in Louisville show the moment the aircraft’s left engine came off during takeoff and ignited.
Federal investigators are focusing on metal fatigue cracks around the engine of the UPS plane that crashed on Nov. 5, killing 14 people, according to a new report by the NTSB.
In a preliminary report released Thursday, the engine is seen flying off the McDonnell Douglas MD-11 freighter plane’s wing, going up into the air, before a burst of fire engulfs the plane.
The plane was departing Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport, and headed to Daniel K. Inouye International Airport in Honolulu, when the crash occurred.
The three crew members on board and 11 people on the ground were killed, officials said. Additionally, 23 people on the ground were injured, the NTSB said.
The newly released images in the NTSB report, taken from an airport surveillance video, show the left engine and left pylon separate from the left wing. A fire ignited on the left engine as it went up and over the fuselage, before it hit the ground, the NTSB said.
A fire also ignited “near the area of the left pylon attachment to the wing, which continued until ground impact,” the report stated.
The plane only got about 30 feet above the ground before it crashed in a ball of fire, impacting a storage yard and two buildings, according to the NTSB report.
Upon inspection following the crash, the left engine pylon showed signs of fatigue cracks and over-stress failure, according to the report.
The parts with fatigue cracking were last inspected in October 2021, according to the report. The plane had completed 21,043 flights, and those parts were not scheduled to be inspected until the plane hit 28,000 flights, the report said.
In the wake of the crash, federal authorities are prohibiting all operators of McDonnell Douglas MD-11 planes from flying the aircraft until they are inspected.
The emergency directive from the Federal Aviation Administration on Saturday was “prompted by an accident where the left-hand engine and pylon detached from the airplane during takeoff,” FAA documents said. “The cause of the detachment is currently under investigation. The unsafe condition could result in loss of continued safe flight and landing.”
The NTSB noted in its report that a similar crash involving this type of plane killed over 270 people in Chicago in 1979. American Airlines Flight 191 crashed into an open field after the left engine and pylon assembly and part of the left wing separated from the plane during takeoff, the report said.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
DHS Federal Coordinator Jeff Brannigan speaks with ABC News at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. (ABC News)
(SANTA CLARA, Calif.) — There will be a “substantial law enforcement presence” in the Bay Area for the week leading up to Super Bowl Sunday, the man who is leading it all told ABC News.
“We have multiple command centers that we are operating as the federal government in concert with our local partners,” Jeff Brannigan, the Department of Homeland Security federal coordinator, told ABC News in an interview. “It’s a broad footprint with a lot of personnel. Some are uniformed and, very clearly, government officials of some way.”
Others are working behind the scenes, he said.
The Super Bowl is a SEAR 1 event, meaning there is extensive federal security coordination.
“The federal government has brought resources to bear to augment the security planning of the cities of Santa Clara, San Francisco and San Jose, and we have brought resources that those cities don’t necessarily have, and that really is a full-domain security posture to include air support, maritime support and support on the ground,” he said.
The federal government will have support from the FBI; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; the U.S Coast Guard; aerial assets from Customs and Border Protection; the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA); and even a helicopter that scans for nuclear technology.
Brannigan said he couldn’t get into specifics, but that there are “hundreds of federal special agents from across the government,” working with local police departments to provide security for the event.
Brian Clark, the associate chief of operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Pacific and Southwest region, said his agency is also providing support to state and local law enforcement in the area.
“For Super Bowl events, you have a lot of human trafficking that comes in,” he said. “You’ll also see a lot of drug trafficking that comes in the area for parties and things … So we would like to say for people to be aware, to have that conversation. Take this time, when you’re gathering with your friends and family, have that conversation about the dangers of fentanyl, because one pill, one time can kill.”
There are also law enforcement from outside the immediate area that are being brought in for “mutual aid,” Brannigan said.
Some of the concerns are lone wolf attackers, threats from drones and cyberattacks, he said.
“Oftentimes, people you know will see something and they want to dismiss it as that’s, ‘That’s my imagination,’ or ‘That’s not an issue,'” he said. “It is always better for members of the public to call the police and tell them about something they find suspicious, let the police investigate it, determine it isn’t an issue. But if you see something, say something.”
