NEW YORK — 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.

In a 96-page filing, 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,” his lawyers, a six-person team of Sullivan & Cromwell attorneys, wrote.

The appeal is just one of Trump’s attempts to overturn his conviction last May of 34 counts of business fraud for his effort to conceal a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.

He has separately asked a federal appeals court to transfer his state criminal case to federal court. Such a move would pave the way for Trump to eventually ask the Supreme Court to erase his criminal record by tossing his conviction on presidential immunity grounds.

Though Trump has suffered few consequences as a result of the conviction — he won reelection in November and was subsequently sentenced to no punishment in January — he’ll still carry the title of felon unless an appellate court overturns the case.

Trump’s lawyers argued in the filing Monday that the Supreme Court’s decision on presidential immunity, issued more than a month after a New York jury convicted Trump in the hush money case, meant prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorney’s office should have been precluded from using evidence connected to Trump’s “official acts” as president during his first term. That evidence, his lawyers wrote, included testimony about conversations between Trump and Hope Hicks, who was then the White House communications director, as well as Trump’s social media posts.

Late last year, the trial judge, Justice Juan Merchan, rejected the notion that the immunity ruling applied to the evidence used in the case, finding that 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.

Trump’s lawyers also took aim at Merchan himself, as they did numerous times during the course of the prosecution, writing that “his impartiality was reasonably in doubt” because of small-dollar political contributions he made to Democratic candidates or causes in 2020. They also cited his daughter’s work for a digital agency whose clients include a number of Democratic officials.

When Trump’s lawyers made the same arguments in 2023, asking Merchan to recuse himself, the judge disclosed that he had sought guidance earlier that year from the New York State Advisory Committee on Judicial Ethics about several issues Trump subsequently raised.

The judge said the committee had issued an advisory opinion regarding his daughter’s employment that concluded: “We see nothing in the inquiry to suggest that the outcome of the case could have any effect on the judge’s relative, the relative’s business, or any of their interests.”