NEW YORK — Donald Trump on Monday asked a New York appeals court to overturn his silence order and move his hush-money criminal trial from Manhattan in an eleventh-hour bid for a delay just a week before it was set to begin.
A judge on the state’s mid-level appeals court was scheduled to hold an emergency hearing Monday afternoon after the former president’s lawyers filed paperwork challenging preliminary rulings by Manhattan Judge Juan M. Merchan.
The documents were sealed, but a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press that they related to Trump’s gag order — recently expanded to ban comments about the judge’s family — and the Republican’s desire to throw the trial out of court. heavily Democratic Manhattan to move. The person was not allowed to speak publicly and did so on condition of anonymity.
Messages seeking comment were left for Trump’s lawyers, the Manhattan district attorney’s office and a spokesperson for the New York state justice system.
Trump had promised to appeal after Merchan ruled last month that the trial would begin on April 15. His lawyers had argued for the trial to be postponed at least until the summer so they could have more time to review late-arriving evidence from an earlier federal investigation into the case.
Merchan, who had already moved the trial from its original start date of March 25 due to the evidence issue, said further delays were not justified.
Trump’s lawyers filed their appeal Monday in two separate court dockets. One was designed as a lawsuit against Merchan, a legal mechanism through which they could challenge his statements.
In New York, judges can be sued for some court decisions under a state law known as Article 78. Trump has used the tactic before, including against the judge in his civil fraud case in a failed last-minute attempt to postpone the case last fall. .
A clerk at the state Court of Appeals Appellate Division said no documents were publicly available on the appellate docket.
Trump’s hush-money trial is the first of his four criminal charges to go to trial and would be the first-ever criminal trial of a former president.
Trump is accused of falsifying his company’s records to conceal the nature of payments to his former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen, who helped him bury negative stories during his 2016 campaign. Cohen’s activities included paying porn actor Stormy Daniels $130,000 to suppress her claims of an extramarital sexual encounter with Trump years earlier.
Trump pleaded not guilty last year to 34 felony counts of falsifying company records. He has denied having a sexual encounter with Daniels. His lawyers argue that the payments to Cohen were legitimate legal fees.
Trump’s move Monday is the latest escalation in his battle with Merchan.
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee attacked the judge on social media after imposing a gag order last month that banned Trump from making public statements about jurors, witnesses and others related to the case. After Trump’s complaints, Merchan extended the gag order to members of his own family.
Last week, Trump renewed his request for the judge to dismiss the case, citing Merchan’s daughter’s work as head of a firm whose clients included his rival President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and other Democrats .
The former president claims the judge is biased against him and has a conflict of interest because of his daughter’s work. The judge denied a similar request last August.
Trump has also made numerous other attempts to have the trial postponed, echoing a strategy he has used in his other criminal cases. “We want a delay,” Trump shouted to TV cameras outside the February hearing in his hush money case.
Merchan last week rejected his request to delay the trial until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on presidential immunity claims he made in another of his criminal cases.
A New York judge has yet to rule on another request for a delay from the defense, which claims Trump will not get a fair trial because of “damaging media reporting.” Trump has suggested on social media that the trial should be moved to Staten Island, the only New York City borough he won in 2016 and 2020.
Trump has also filed a lawsuit against the judge in his civil fraud case in New York, accusing the lawyer of repeatedly abusing his authority. Trump’s lawyers in that case complained, among other things, that Judge Arthur Engoron had denied their request for a delay in the trial. Their charges were filed about three weeks before the trial was scheduled to begin.
A state appeals court rejected Trump’s claims and the trial began as scheduled on October 2.
During the civil trial, Trump sued Engoron again, this time over a silence order he issued after Trump smeared the judge’s chief clerk in a social media post. The silence order prohibited parties in the case – and later their lawyers – from commenting publicly on court personnel, but not on the judge himself.
One appeals judge lifted the ban, but a four-judge appeals panel ultimately reinstated it two weeks later. The panel said Trump’s lawyers should have followed a normal appeals process instead of suing the judge. Trump’s lawyers said they were trying to take quick action.
Engoron, who decided the case without a jury, ruled that Trump, his company and key executives deceived bankers and insurers by overstating his wealth in documents used to obtain loans and coverage. Trump denied any wrongdoing and is appealing the finding and the $454 million in fines and interest.
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Associated Press reporter Jennifer Peltz contributed to this report.