GREAT NEW YORK -Donald Trump’s third last-ditch effort this week to delay his April 15 criminal trial on charges related to paying hush money to a porn star was turned down by a New York appeals judge on Wednesday. This means that Trump will be the first former president to be tried in criminal court.
At a previous meeting, Emil Bove, a lawyer for Trump, said that the trial should be put off because Justice Juan Merchan, who is in charge of the case, has not yet decided on their request for him to step down.
Bove also said Merchan was wrong to turn down their request to stop prosecutors from using Trump’s tweets as proof while he was president from 2017 to 2021. Bove said that because the president is immune, the authorities shouldn’t be able to use those posts as proof.
“We are going to start trial in a way that will violate President Trump’s rights,” Bove said at the meeting in front of Associate Justice Ellen Gesmer at the Appellate Division, a mid-level state appeals court.
Steven Wu, a lawyer for the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, said that Trump’s lawyers had sent the requests too late.
“There is a powerful public interest in ensuring that this criminal trial go forward,” Wu told us.
There are claims that Trump, the Republican candidate for president, hid the fact that his former lawyer Michael Cohen paid porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet about a sexual experience she says she had with Trump in 2006.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of making false business records. He also says he never met Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.
Trump has asked Merchan to step down, but Merchan has not yet decided. The defense has said that the fact that the judge’s daughter works for a political consulting company whose clients are Democrats is unfair and creates a conflict of interest.
Monday, an Appellate Division judge turned down Trump’s request to put off the case while he tries to question the fact that the trial is being held in Manhattan, which is a very Democratic city.
On Tuesday, another judge turned down his request to stop the trial while he appeals Merchan’s decision to put a gag order on him so he can’t say anything public about possible witnesses, court staff, lawyers, or family members of the judge and District Attorney Bragg.
Those pleas will still be looked at by many people.
The case is one of four criminal charges against Trump as he gets ready to run against Democratic Vice President Joe Biden in the U.S. election on November 5. In every case, he has tried to put off the trial until after the election. The only case with a set trial date is the hush money case.
His attempts to overturn his loss to Biden in the 2020 election and the way he handled sensitive government papers after he left office in 2021 are what led to the other cases. All charges against Trump have been dropped.
