A judge rejects to postpone Trump’s hush money trial in New York due to concerns about pretrial publicity

Due to the case’s increased public awareness, the judge in Donald Trump’s criminal hush money case denied the former president’s plea to delay his trial on Friday.

As he tries to postpone the trial’s start on Monday with jury selection, Trump has received a number of court rejections of delays this week. This is the most recent in a run of such denials.

Trump’s attorneys had said, among other reasons, that the jury pool was inundated with news reports about the case that they perceived to be “exceptionally prejudicial.” That, according to the defense, is a justification to put off the case indefinitely.

Trump “appears to take the position that his situation and this case are unique and that the pre-trial publicity will never subside,” according to a ruling by Judge Juan M. Merchan. But this viewpoint is not consistent with reality.”

Merchan stated that the former president “was personally responsible for generating much, if not most, of the surrounding publicity with his public statements” outside of those courtrooms and on social media, citing Trump’s two federal defamation trials and a state civil fraud trial in Manhattan during the previous year.

The judge said, “Defendant is not new to the situation he finds himself in and at least partly of his own doing.” He said that any reservations regarding potential jurors’ capacity for impartiality and fairness would be allayed via inquiry.

Correspondence was sent with Trump’s attorneys requesting a response. The matter is being prosecuted by the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which refused to comment.

Meanwhile, Trump said on Friday that he will be testifying in the trial and referred to the matter as a “scam.”

At his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, Trump told reporters, “All I can do is tell the truth.” “And in actuality, they don’t have a case.”

When asked about jury selection, Trump said that it is “largely a luck process.”

Trump said, “It depends who you get.”

He reiterated his criticisms of the judge, saying, “It’s very unfair that I’m having a trial there.”

Friday, April 12, 2024, at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida: Republican presidential candidate and former president Donald Trump talks as Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., listens.
The first US former president to face a criminal prosecution is Trump. What You Should Know About the Hush Money Case
Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche said that “potential jurors in Manhattan have been exposed to huge amounts of biased and unfair media coverage relating to this case” in a court filing last month.

Blanche said, “Many of the potential jurors already mistakenly believe that President Trump is guilty,” referring to the defense’s analysis of press reports and other studies.

According to Blanche, the investigation turned up 1,223 pieces regarding the case that were posted online between mid-January and late-February, many of which “unfairly and improperly ‘demonized'” Trump. However, a chart that was part of the defense filing had several references to phrases that were pertinent to the case, including 142 references to “Hush Money Payments” and 207 references to the “Manhattan Trial.”

Trump’s attorneys also accused Stormy Daniels and Michael Cohen, two important prosecution witnesses, of fueling the unfavorable media coverage of their client. They cited the attention surrounding the publication of a documentary about Daniels, which debuted last month on the NBC streaming service Peacock, as well as Cohen’s scathing criticism of Trump on his podcasts and social media accounts.

Prosecutors said that Trump’s remarks created a lot of attention and that it was unlikely to diminish. Prosecutors also cited Manhattan’s population of over a million, claiming that a jury of twelve members and six alternates could be found who could be unbiased.

The first of Trump’s four criminal charges to be tried is the hush money case; if successful, it would be the first time a former president has gone to trial for a crime.

He is charged with falsifying his company’s documents to conceal the true purpose of payments made to Cohen, his former attorney and fixer, who assisted the candidate in dispelling unfavorable allegations made about him during the 2016 campaign. Among Cohen’s actions was paying porn star Daniels $130,000 to bury her claims that she had an adulterous relationship with Trump years prior—a claim that the businessman disputes.

In response to 34 felony charges of falsifying company documents, Trump entered a not guilty plea last year. According to his attorneys, Cohen’s payments were justified legal costs.

This week, Trump’s attorneys have made more, sometimes similar requests for postponements before an appeals court. On the basis that the jury pool has been tainted by press coverage of Trump’s other recent lawsuits, one of those appeals attempted to postpone the trial until the appellate court could fully evaluate the defense’s claim that it should be transferred somewhere else.

Additionally, according to Trump’s legal team, the strongly Democratic city of Manhattan presents “real potential prejudice” to the presumed Republican presidential candidate.

Friday, April 12, 2024, at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida: Republican presidential candidate and former president Donald Trump talks as Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., listens.
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Every appeal this week was denied by a single appellate judge; however, the cases will now be reviewed by a panel of appeals judges.

In addition to their allegations over pretrial publicity, Trump’s attorneys criticized the prosecution of Allen Weisselberg, the former finance head of the Trump Organization, for lying during the civil fraud case. They said that while the Manhattan District Attorney’s office was using “unethical, strong-armed tactics against an innocent man in his late 70s,” they were “turning a blind eye” to Cohen’s alleged dishonesty.

The new claim “compels this Court — again, to express its continuing and growing alarm over counsel’s practice of making serious allegations and representations that have no apparent basis in fact — or at least are unsupported by a legitimate basis of knowledge,” according to Merchan, who Trump’s attorneys claimed was pressuring Weisselberg into a prior guilty plea.