Trump loses bid to delay hush money trial
Criminal case against former US president set to begin next Monday in New York
A New York state appellate judge has denied Donald Trump’s bid to delay his April 15 criminal trial on charges stemming from hush money paid to a porn star while the former US president sought to move the case out of Manhattan.
Associate Justice Lizbeth Gonzalez issued her decision after a 30-minute hearing at the Appellate Division in Manhattan, a mid-level state appeal court.
Emil Bove, a lawyer for the former US president, said during the hearing his client was seeking to stay the case pending the application to move the trial on the charges brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
A lawyer from Bragg’s office, Steven Wu, countered that Trump waited too long to object to being tried in Manhattan, where he once lived. The charges were brought in April 2023.
Trump, the Republican candidate challenging Democratic President Joe Biden in the November 5 US election, has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records.
Bove did not specify where Trump’s team would like the trial to be held. Bove said a survey taken by Trump’s legal team of residents in heavily Democratic Manhattan, one of New York City’s five boroughs, found 61 per cent of respondents thought Trump was guilty, and 70 per cent had a negative opinion of him.
“There is real potential prejudice here to moving forward,” Bove said. “Jury selection cannot proceed in a fair manner starting next week in this county.”
Wu said biased jurors could be weeded out during the jury selection process and that Trump could not cite media attention as a reason to move the trial. “He himself has been responsible for stoking that publicity,” Wu said.
Trump is accused of covering up his former lawyer Michael Cohen’s US$130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels in exchange for her silence before the 2016 presidential election about a sexual encounter she said she had with Trump a decade earlier.
Trump has denied any such encounter with Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.
It is one of four criminal cases he faces. The others stem from his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Biden, and his handling of sensitive government documents after leaving the presidency in 2021. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Jury selection is to begin next Monday. Potential jurors will be asked whether they have ever attended a rally in support of or opposition to Trump.
A group of randomly selected New Yorkers comprising 12 jurors and up to six alternates will be picked to hear the case, the first criminal trial of an ex-president, which is expected to last six to eight weeks. Their verdict must be unanimous, and both prosecutors and Trump’s lawyers will be seeking to ferret out the political leanings of potential jurors to fashion a panel to their liking.