- Trump’s secret trial remains on track for jury selection Monday after a decision Friday evening.
- Judge Juan Merchan rejected Trump’s attempt to delay the trial because of “pre-trial publicity.”
- The judge must still rule on a final request for a pre-trial postponement, a request from the defense for him to recuse himself.
Donald Trump’s secret trial remained on track for jury selection Monday after the judge late Friday rejected — in no uncertain terms — a defense attempt to delay the trial indefinitely because of damaging pretrial publicity.
“It’s not tenable,” the New York Supreme Court trial judge said. Judge Juan Merchansaid in his ruling, noting that much of the pretrial publicity was caused by Trump himself.
Delaying the trial “is simply not an adequate remedy when there is a risk that the postponement will become indefinite,” the judge wrote, in his most scathing ruling in this case to date.
Friday night’s decision leaves only one case likely to delay the trial, which will be resolved before Monday.
But it’s the longest draft: Trump’s demand that the judge recuse himself from the case because his daughter is a partner in a Chicago-based political consulting firm that has replaced high-profile Democrats like President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
Merchan had rejected a nearly identical defense recusal request in August, after the State Advisory Committee on Judicial Ethics found that the daughter’s independent political activities provided an insufficient basis to question the impartiality of the judge.
“The defendant appears to consider that his situation and this case are unique and that pretrial publicity will never diminish,” the judge wrote in Friday’s ruling.
“However, this vision does not correspond to reality,” he wrote.
“Over the past 12 months alone, the defendant has been very publicly involved in a multitude of criminal and civil cases in several states, both at the federal and state levels,” he wrote.
“In this county alone, the defendant has had two civil trials, one in state court and the other in federal court,” the judge wrote, referring to Trump’s previous cases in Manhattan – a civil suit for fraud and his defamation case against E. Jean Carroll.
The loss of these two trials cost him more than half a billion dollars in judgments. Trump posted bonds covering both judgments while he appeals.
“In both cases, he was personally responsible for much, if not most, of the publicity, through his public statements, which were often made just steps from the courtroom where the proceedings took place , and thanks to his incessant media action messages attacking those he considered responsible for his fate,” wrote the judge.
“The situation the defendant currently finds himself in is not new to him and, at least in part, is his own making.”
Defense attorneys Susan Necheles and Todd Blanche argued that “prejudicial media coverage has saturated the montere,” or jury pool, and that Manhattan is “extremely biased” against him.
They said a fair jury could not be chosen at any time in April and asked Merchan to delay the trial indefinitely.
“President Trump’s constitutional right to a fair trial is at stake,” the defense wrote in its statement. a motion postponed on March 18 which included 180 pages of supporting documents.
Defense pollsters found that 61% of potential Manhattan jurors already believe Trump is guilty of somethingor nearly twice the rate of surrounding counties, they argued.
Only 35% thought Trump was guilty specifically in the secrecy affair.
Prosecutors had questioned the defense’s survey methodology, and Merchan agreed Friday.
The survey “provides no information about how it obtained respondents’ contact information or how it ensured that its samples were truly random or representative,” the judge wrote.
Prosecutors also argued that the onslaught of pretrial publicity was largely Trump’s fault and that jury selection would effectively weed out biased potential jurors.
“Defendant’s incessant rhetoric generates significant publicity, and it would be perverse to reward defendant with a deferment based on the media attention he actively seeks,” lawyers for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin wrote Bragg, to object to the delay.
Last week, Trump lost an attempt by the Manhattan appeals court to urgently delay the trial for pretrial publicity reasons.
That appeal effort is still ongoing and argues that the trial should be moved out of Manhattan altogether.
Trump on Monday is expected to become the first former president to stand trial on criminal charges.
Prosecutors say he falsified 34 Trump Organization business records — including invoices, checks and accounting entries — to hide a secret $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels that reduced her to silence just 11 days before the 2016 elections.
Trump has denied the accusations and Daniels’ claim that she was paid to hide a 2006 sexual relationship with the then-Apprentice star.
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