A Manhattan judge has rejected the bid by the former President, Donald Trump to delay his April 15 hush money criminal trial until the Supreme Court rules on presidential immunity claims he raised in another of his criminal cases — spurning another of the former president’s ploys to put off the historic trial. Several more are pending.
Manhattan Judge Juan M. Merchan ruled that Trump’s lawyers had missed the deadline to raise the immunity issue, so it was untimely.
The timing of the defense’s March 7 filing “raises real questions about the sincerity and actual purpose of the motion,” Merchan wrote in a six-page decision.
Lawyers for Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, had asked Merchan to adjourn the New York trial indefinitely until Trump’s immunity claim in his Washington, D.C., election interference case is resolved.
Trump contends he is immune from prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office. His lawyers have not raised that as a defense in the hush-money case, but they argued that some evidence — including Trump’s social media posts about former lawyer Michael Cohen — is from his time as president and should be excluded from the trial because of his immunity protections.
The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments on April 25 — a week-and-a-half after the start of jury selection in the hush-money case.
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Trump lawyer Todd Blanche declined to comment. The Manhattan district attorney’s office also declined to comment.
Trump first raised the immunity issue in his Washington criminal case, which involves allegations that he worked to overturn the results of his 2020 election loss in the run-up to the violent riot by his supporters at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Merchan, in his ruling, drew a distinction between the Washington case — which he referred to as the Federal Insurrection Matter — and the hush-money case he’s overseeing.
In Washington, Trump is trying to use presidential immunity to get the charges thrown out on the grounds that he has “absolute immunity from federal criminal liability,” the judge wrote. In the hush-money case, he said, Trump is trying to preclude evidence of what prosecutors said was his “pressure campaign” against Cohen and other witnesses.
The hush money case centers on allegations that Trump falsified his company’s internal records to hide the true nature of payments to his former lawyer Michael Cohen, who helped Trump bury negative stories during his 2016 presidential campaign. Among other things, Cohen paid porn actor Stormy Daniels $130,000 to suppress her claims of an extramarital sexual encounter with Trump years earlier.
Trump pleaded not guilty last year to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. He has denied having a sexual encounter with Daniels, and his lawyers argue the payments to Cohen were legitimate legal expenses and not part of any cover-up.