Former President Donald Trump will face trial next week on fraud charges related to secret payments made by his personal lawyer before the 2016 election, a New York appeals court ruled Monday evening, rejecting the president’s latest attempt. Republican candidate to block justice.
“Defendant’s motion for a stay of trial…is denied,” Judge Lizbeth González of the New York Supreme Court’s Appellate Division wrote in an April 8 order. Trump was seeking to delay his trial in Manhattan, which is scheduled to begin April 15, asking the appeals court to push back the start while he fights to change the venue. Trump’s lawyers have argued that New Yorkers, including Manhattan Judge Juan Merchan, are too biased against the former president to give him a fair trial.
In court, prosecutors rejected the claim, describing it as another delaying tactic and an insult to the justice system, Politico reported.
“The question in this case is not whether a random poll of New Yorkers in any neighborhood can be impartial, but whether a trial court is capable of selecting a jury of 12 jurors impartial,” said Steven Wu, an attorney at Manhattan. District Attorney’s Office said Monday. The defendant himself attempted to sully the jury with “countless media appearances discussing the facts of this case, the witnesses, etc.” “, did he declare.
Monday’s ruling means jury selection will effectively begin April 15, with Trump facing some 34 charges of falsifying business records to conceal payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels, who alleged he had an affair with the Republican. Trump has denied the allegations against him.
CNN legal analyst Norm Eisen commented that Trump’s latest attempt to delay the trial was, in his view, the former president’s “ninth delaying tactic.” Trump also sued the judge in the Manhattan case on Monday as part of a separate legal effort to move the case out of Manhattan and lift the silence imposed on him after he publicly attacked the judge and his family.
Eisen said Trump’s argument — that the case should be postponed and moved because of New Yorkers’ alleged bias — was never going to work since courts already address potential bias by questioning the potential jurors during the jury selection process. “He was a big loser from the start,” Eisen said.
Former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman rated on, the website formerly known as Twitter, that the appeals court judge did not even send the issue back to a full panel for review, instead rejecting arguments from Trump’s legal team in an “unsigned one-sentence order.” Trump, Litman said, is “struggling and embarrassing himself within the legal system.”
George Conway, the conservative lawyer turned anti-Trump commentator, also took note of the court’s quick and brief response. “The Appellate Division issued this order so quickly that the judges didn’t even have time to stop laughing,” he wrote on X.
The rejection of Trump’s latest delaying tactic comes just two weeks before the Supreme Court hears arguments on whether the former president has absolute immunity from criminal prosecution.
Andrew Weissmann, a former Justice Department lawyer who worked with former special counsel Robert Mueller, urged the nation’s highest court to follow the lead of state judges. New York courts ‘have had enough’ of Trump’s delaying tactics, he posted on »
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