NEW YORK, Aug. 29 -- The judge was not moved.

For the third time, United States District Judge Alvin Hellerstein rejected Donald Trump's petition to transfer his New York criminal hush-money case to federal court - a legal maneuver Trump has pursued since his 2024 conviction in the hope that a federal venue would grant him immunity protections unavailable in state proceedings. Hellerstein's ruling, issued Friday, was characteristically blunt: an affair is not within the outer perimeter of a president's official responsibilities.

The phrase echoed through decades of American immunity jurisprudence before landing against Trump's central argument. His legal team had insisted that because some evidence in the case touched on conduct during ...