An emergency hearing was scheduled for Monday afternoon in the First Department of the Appellate Division. It is possible that an appeals judge will grant a trial delay before a full panel can review one or both cases.
The court documents were not immediately available to the public Monday, but they center on Merchan’s limited silence order protecting those involved in the case and their loved ones, and an older motion seeking a change of venue, according to a person familiar with the procedure.
The trial was supposed to begin March 25, but Merchan postponed it until April 15 after federal prosecutors recently turned over about 100,000 pages of records to the defense.
The former president – the likely Republican presidential nominee – openly criticized some people, including the judge’s daughter, during the election trial and on social media.
In the trial scheduled to begin April 15, Trump faces 34 counts of falsifying business records related to paying $130,000 to adult film actress Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election. The payment allegedly was intended to silence her over a sexual relationship she says she had with Trump years earlier.
Merchan issued a limited silence order against Trump on March 26, a day after the final pretrial conference in the case. His order barred Trump from publicly discussing various players in the case, including court staff, witnesses and certain prosecutors or their families.
The limited gag order did not include Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, the judge or their relatives, but concerns grew after Trump continued to discuss Merchan’s adult daughter on social media.
Merchan expanded the order on April 1 to include protections for members of Bragg’s family and his own, saying that “Trump’s tendency to attack family members of presiding lawyers and attorneys assigned to his cases does not serves no legitimate purpose.”
“This only instills fear in those assigned or called to participate in the proceedings that not only they, but their family members, are ‘fair trade products’ for (Trump’s) vitriol,” it said. Merchan’s order.
The judge also warned that Trump’s behavior could lead to a ruling that would bar him from access to jurors’ names, which will be available to the parties but not made public.
Two days after the order was extended, Trump published posts from conservative bloggers discussing the judge and his daughter, who runs a political marketing and fundraising company serving Democratic candidates, including the Trump campaign. Biden and Vice President Harris.
Trump and his supporters have argued that the judge cannot be fair because of his close ties to someone whose profession is supporting Democratic campaigns.
In August, the defense lost a motion to have Merchan recuse himself from the case because of his daughter’s work and two small donations the judge apparently made to Biden’s campaign and a progressive organization. Merchan gave $15 to Biden in 2020 and he made two $10 donations to Democratic groups.
Prosecutors say Trump’s reimbursements to his former lawyer Michael Cohen were illegally documented as legal fees, even though they were made to support Trump’s campaign.
Trump has been indicted in three other jurisdictions and charges are pending in all of them.
In Washington, Trump is accused of trying to disrupt the election before the January 6 insurrection. In Georgia, he is charged in a state-level case for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election. He also has a federal case in Florida for alleged violations of the Espionage Act by illegally retaining classified government documents after leaving office. He faces additional charges for obstructing the government’s efforts to recover them.
He has pleaded not guilty to all 88 charges he faces.
washingtonpost
