The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan on Thursday rejected Donald Trump’s request to halt postconviction proceedings in his hush money criminal case, leaving a key ruling and the former president’s sentencing on track for after the November election, the AP reports. Trump had appealed to the 2nd Circuit after a federal judge last week thwarted the Republican nominee’s request to have the U.S. District Court in Manhattan seize control of the case from the state court where it was tried. In a separate Thursday decision, the New York state Court of Appeals upheld a judge's gag order on Trump in the hush-money case, Reuters reports. Trump had argued that Justice Juan Merchan's restrictions on his ability to speak publicly about court staff and individual prosecutors violated his right to free speech as guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. But the court dismissed Trump's appeal because "no substantial constitutional question is directly involved."
Also on Thursday, in Trump’s Georgia election-interference case, Scott McAfee of Fulton County Superior Court in Atlanta threw out three charges Trump and his allies while upholding the felony racketeering charge against Mr. Trump and the 14 other defendants in the case — the centerpiece of the indictment — calling it “facially sound and constitutionally sufficient,” The New York Times reports. The decision to toss three of the remaining 35 charges was a win for the defendants, who have been trying to chip away at the case. Prosecutor Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, originally brought 41 counts against 19 defendants in August 2023. Four defendants have since pleaded guilty, and Judge McAfee previously quashed six of the charges.
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