Donald Trump loses bid to get his hush money trial moved out of Manhattan after failed appellate court argument
The legal move came just one week before jury selection is set to begin in Trump's first scheduled criminal trial.
Reuters/Jane Rosenberg
- Donald Trump leap-frogged to appellate court Monday in an 11th-hour challenge to his hush-money case.
- His lawyers asked jury selection be delayed so that they could formally ask to move the case out of Manhattan.
- An appellate judge heard afternoon arguments from both sides.
Donald Trump rushed his lawyers to a Manhattan appellate courthouse on Monday in a failed 11th-hour effort to delay his hush money trial.
The legal effort, which came one week before jury selection is scheduled to begin, shows Trump is amping up his efforts to forstall his first criminal trial.
Trump's lawyers had hoped for a stay — meaning a delay in jury selection — that would have given them time to file a change of venue motion.
The motion would have argued that it would be impossible to find a fair and impartial jury in Manhattan, Trump's defense attorney Emil Bove said Monday.
Associate Justice Lisbeth Gonzalez issued her ruling denying Trump's bid shortly after arguments concluded Monday afternoon. Her disposition only noted that the request for a stay had been denied, offering no explanation.
Earlier, during brief arguments at the First Department Appellate Division in Manhattan, Bove told Gonzalez that there had been an "onslaught" of negative publicity ahead of the trial.
A defense poll of 400 potential Manhattan jurors found that "61% of the respondents believe President Trump is guilty," Bove told the judge.
He told Gonzalez the same appellate court — the First Department — had agreed to a change of venue in 1999, in the NYPD shooting of Amadou Diallo. That trial was moved from the Bronx to Albany after defense polling found that 41 percent of the jury pool believed the police were guilty of shooting Diallo, knowing he was unarmed.
"Defendant could have raised this earlier and did not do so," a Manhattan prosecutor countered, telling Gonzalez that the venue-change effort is coming far too late.
The proper procedure would be to wait until jury selection, argued the prosecutor, Steven Wu, who is head of the Manhattan District Attorney's Office appeals division.
Jury selection is set for April 15.
Only then would it be clear "whether this hypothetical jury that they're afraid of can be impartial," Wu told the judge. He also noted that in the same defense survey, 70% of respondents "said they could be fair and impartial."
The survey, which Business Insider wrote about last week, showed that only 35% of respondents believed Trump was guilty in the hush money case itself.
AP Photo/Seth Wenig
The defense is also challenging a gag order that bars Trump from making statements about jurors, witnesses, the trial prosecutors, and the families of the trial judge, state Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, though not against Merchan and Bragg themselves.
Despite the gag, Trump has continued to attack Merchan's daughter, a progressive political consultant whose firm has repped Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Trump has attacked Loren Merchan in legal filings by his attorneys, seeking Merchan's recusal. He has also failed to remove from Truth Social his direct attacks Loren Merchan from before the gag order was issued. And he has used Truth Social to repeat others' attacks on the daughter.
Trump's fourth recent delay attempt
Monday's venue-change efforts were Trump's fourth attempt at delaying the hush money trial in as many weeks.
Last week, Merchan rejected Trump's attempt to delay the trial on presidential immunity grounds. Trump's lawyers had claimed that things he said while president about key witnesses Stormy Daniels and Michael Cohen were official statements and that Manhattan prosecutors should not be able to use them at trial.
The defense had asked to delay the trial until after the US Supreme Court decides if presidential immunity protects Trump in his federal election interference case. Oral arguments in that case are set for April 25.
Still pending are Merchan's decisions on Trump's attempts to delay the trial by arguing that "prejudicial pretrial publicity" makes it impossible to pick a fair jury any time this month, and by convincing the judge to recuse himself because of the daughter's political work on behalf of Democrats.