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Charges dropped against most of Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall protesters
NEW YORK — Charges were dropped Thursday against most of the Columbia University students and staff who were arrested inside Hamilton Hall during pro-Palestinian demonstrations back in April.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office announced that of the 46 people charged with trespassing, 31 cases were dismissed due to a lack of evidence. The DA’s office said surveillance cameras inside the building had been covered and that no police officers were injured during the arrests.
Prosecutors told 14 others that their cases would be dropped if they avoid getting arrested in the next six months, but they rejected that offer, the DA’s office said. Of those 14, only two are students, prosecutors said.
A fifteenth defendant whose trespassing charge was not dropped is also facing unrelated charges of burning a flag during a Columbia protest and breaking an NYPD camera while detained in a holding cell, the DA’s office said.
A group of Columbia students spoke outside Manhattan criminal court Thursday to address the dropped charges.
“The state has attempted once again to divide us, dismissing some of our cases and offering others deals in accordance with their outside agitator narrative,” one student said. “As ever, we categorically reject this division as one drawn along arbitrary, classist lines meant to preserve the sanctity of Columbia University, not an institution in the city of New York, but always above and apart from it.”
The students and staff who are no longer facing criminal charges still have to deal with ongoing school disciplinary proceedings, prosecutors said.
The DA’s office said, however, that it is continuing to pursue cases involving assaults against police officers.
The arrests ended two weeks of demonstrations at Columbia University, as students called on the school to divest from companies doing business with Israel. Protesters had set up an encampment on the school’s main lawn, and some forced their way inside Hamilton Hall after discussions with school officials broke down.
Columbia University President Dr. Minouche Shafik then requested the NYPD’s help to clear the hall.
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Donald Trump is trying to leverage a Supreme Court decision holding that presidents are immune from federal prosecution for official actions to overturn his conviction in a New York State criminal case.
A letter to the judge presiding over the New York case is not yet public. It was filed Monday after the Supreme Court’s landmark holding further slowed the former president’s criminal cases.
A spokesperson for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg declined to comment when asked about Trump’s effort to overturn the conviction, which was first reported by The New York Times.
Trump’s criminal case in New York is the only one of four against him to go to trial. On May 30, a unanimous jury concluded Trump was guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in an effort to cover up reimbursements for a “hush money” payment to an adult film star. Trump signed off on falsifying the records while he was in the White House in 2017.
Monday’s Supreme Court decision extended broad immunity from criminal prosecutions to former presidents for their official conduct. But the issue of whether Trump was engaged in official acts has already been litigated in his New York case.
Trump sought in 2023 to move the case from state to federal jurisdiction. His lawyers argued that the allegations involved official acts within the color of his presidential duties.
That argument was rejected by a federal judge who wrote that Trump failed to show that his conduct was “for or relating to any act performed by or for the President under color of the official acts of a president.”
“The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the matter was purely a personal item of the president — a cover-up of an embarrassing event,” U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein wrote. “Hush money paid to an adult film star is not related to a president’s official acts. It does not reflect in any way the color of the president’s official duties.”
Trump initially appealed that decision, but later dropped it.
His case went to trial in April, and soon after the jury’s unanimous decision finding him guilty, Trump vowed to appeal the conviction.
Trump is scheduled to be sentenced July 11. Prosecutors were expected to file a sentencing recommendation Monday. That filing has not been made public.