Judge rejects Donald Trump’s request to delay hush-money trial until Supreme Court rules on immunity
NEW YORK — A judge on Wednesday rejected Donald Trump’s bid to delay his April 15 hush-money criminal trial until the Supreme Court rules on presidential immunity claims he made in another of his criminal cases — repeating another ploy by the former president to postpone the historic trial. There are several more pending.
Manhattan Judge Juan M. Merchan declared the request premature, ruling that Trump’s lawyers had “countless opportunities” to raise the immunity issue before finally doing so last month, long after a pretrial deadline had already passed.
The timing of the defense’s March 7 filing “raises real questions about the sincerity and true purpose of the motion,” Merchan wrote in a six-page decision.
Lawyers for Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, had asked Merchan to postpone the trial in New York indefinitely until Trump’s immunity claim in his election interference case in Washington DC is resolved.
Trump claims he is immune from prosecution for conduct incidental to official actions while in office. His lawyers did not raise that as a defense in the hush money case, but they argued that certain evidence — including Trump’s social media posts about former lawyer Michael Cohen — dates back to his time as president and should be excluded from the trial because of his immunity protections .
The Supreme Court will hear arguments on April 25 – a week and a half after the start of jury selection in the hush money case.
Trump attorney Todd Blanche declined to comment. The Manhattan district attorney’s office also declined to comment.
Trump first raised the immunity issue in his criminal case in Washington, which alleges he worked to overturn the results of his 2020 election loss in the lead-up to the violent riot by his supporters at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021.
In his ruling, Merchan distinguished between the Washington case – which he called the Federal Insurrection Matter – and the hush money case he oversees.
In Washington, Trump is trying to use presidential immunity to get the charges dismissed on the grounds that he has “absolute immunity from federal criminal liability,” the judge wrote. In the hush money case, he said, Trump is trying to exclude evidence of what prosecutors say was his “pressure campaign” against Cohen and other witnesses.
The hush money case centers on allegations that Trump falsified his company’s internal records to conceal the true nature of payments to his former lawyer Michael Cohen, who helped Trump bury negative stories during his 2016 presidential campaign. Cohen paid porn actor, among others 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, and his lawyers argue that the payments to Cohen were legitimate legal fees and not part of a cover-up.
The hush money trial, the first of four criminal cases Trump would try before a jury, was originally scheduled to begin on March 25. Merchan postponed it until April 15 after Trump’s lawyers complained about a last-minute document dump from an earlier federal investigation. in the case that sent Cohen to prison.
Trump and his lawyers have continued to lobby for even more delays, turning complaints about Merchan and concerns about due process in heavily Democratic Manhattan into pleas for more time. It’s the latest iteration of the strategy Trump proclaimed to TV cameras outside a pretrial hearing in February: “We want delays.”
Trump’s lawyers are again urging Merchan to distance himself from the case, saying in a letter to the judge this week that he may have a conflict of interest because of his daughter’s work as a Democratic political consultant. Merchan rejected a similar request for recusal last year. If he were to leave now, the trial schedule would be thrown into disarray and time would be needed to appoint a new judge and notify that person.
In other recent filings, Trump’s lawyers argued that the trial should be postponed indefinitely until “damaging media attention” about the case subsides. They also claim that by trying to argue the case over the 2016 election, prosecutors in the liberal district are “trying to give jurors an opportunity for a referendum” on Trump’s victory in that race.
Prosecutors declined Wednesday, arguing that publicity about the former president’s unprecedented trial is unlikely to wane anytime soon. They blamed Trump’s “own incessant rhetoric” for generating significant publicity, adding that “it would be perverse” to reward him with a reprieve “based on media attention that he actively seeks.”
Prosecutors said the jury selection process — with additional questions to weed out biased prospects — will allow both sides to choose an impartial jury.
In his ruling Wednesday, Merchan wrote that Trump’s failure to raise the immunity issue earlier strained credulity, as the former president’s lawyers had previously invoked presidential immunity last year in a failed attempt to move the hush money case from state court to federal court.
U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein rejected Trump’s claim that the allegations in the hush-money indictment related to official duties, writing last July: “The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the case was purely a personal matter of the president — a cover for a embarrassing event. “
“Hush money paid to an adult film star has no connection with the official actions of a president. It in no way reflects the color of the president’s official duties,” Hellerstein added.
The question of whether a former president is immune from federal prosecution for actions in office is legally untested.
Prosecutors in the Washington case have said that no such immunity exists and that in any case none of the actions mentioned in the indictment count as official acts. The judge in Washington and a federal appeals court both ruled against Trump.
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Associated Press reporter Jennifer Peltz contributed to this report.