NO DELAY, DON: COURT
Appeals judge denies claim that hush money jury will be prejudiced
Donald Trump’s latest long-shot bid to delay his impending trial centering on a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels was denied by an appeals court judge in New York on Monday, a week out from the expected start of jury selection.
The ruling by Justice Lizbeth Gonzalez came down after lawyers for the former president asked the midlevel state appeals court for an indefinite delay so they could attempt to get the case moved to a different location than liberal-leaning Manhattan, according to court filings.
In their recent delay efforts, Trump’s attorneys have argued that he can’t get a fair shake in the borough, citing the findings of a survey they conducted showing a majority of 400 Manhattan respondents had read about the notorious hush money payments at the heart of the case.
It showed 35% believed he was guilty of the alleged offenses.
“[Polling] and quantitative analysis of media coverage shows that a fair and impartial jury cannot be selected right now based on prejudicial pretrial publicity,” Trump’s lawyers wrote in their emergency request for a delay on Monday.
In court filings last week opposing a separate motion by Trump to delay proceedings on account of intense pretrial publicity, prosecutors said Trump’s team highlighted parts of their survey showing a lot of people had read about the case as proof he couldn’t get a fair trial and disregarded answers from a majority of respondents saying they still felt they could be impartial. They said Trump was trying to have his cake and eat it too by complaining about media attention while actively seeking it.
“Defendant simply cannot have it both ways: complaining about the prejudicial effect of pretrial publicity, while seeking to pollute the jury pool himself by making baseless and inflammatory accusations about this trial, specific witnesses, individual prosecutors and the court itself,” Assistant District Attorney Matthew Colangelo wrote.
Trump’s legal team has been in overdrive trying to delay what’s expected to be the first criminal trial of a former U.S. president, filing a flurry of eleventh-hour motions in the leadup to jury selection — partially succeeding last month in delaying it by three weeks.
Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan has yet to rule on their motions to delay the trial because of pretrial publicity and their second request that he recuse himself. Earlier Monday in sealed court filings, Trump’s lawyers initiated a lawsuit against him to fight his rulings.
Having failed to get Merchan off the case when they last tried in August, Trump’s attorneys last week doubled down on their allegations that his daughter financially benefits from Trump’s prosecution — pointing at her job at a political firm that works with Democrats — and that he is biased as a result.
Merchan has resoundingly rejected those claims and last week widened a gag order prohibiting Trump from commenting about jurors, witnesses and others involved in the case to include his own family after Trump targeted his daughter in a barrage of Truth Social posts.
Trump, 77, has pleaded not guilty to 34 felonies in the case alleging he covered up reimbursement to his former fixer to disguise that it was payback for carrying out an illicit scheme that included paying Daniels, Playboy model Karen McDougal and a Trump Tower doorman to stay silent about alleged sex scandals to secure his victory in the 2016 election.
The criminal case is one of four the presumptive 2024 GOP presidential nominee faces — now encompassing 88 felony charges total — to all of which he’s pleaded not guilty.
Barring another delay, prospective jurors are expected to start filing into Merchan’s 15th-floor courtroom on Monday morning.
Among other lines of inquiry, they’ll be asked whether they have strong feelings about Trump, his former presidency, his current White House run, his criminal and civil cases and whether they listen to Michael Cohen’s podcast or read publications including the Daily News.
Lawyers for Trump and a spokeswoman for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg declined to comment.