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On Monday, attorneys for Donald Trump filed a motion to delay the start of the former president’s New York criminal trial pending the Supreme Court’s ruling on his claim of presidential immunity, further claiming that he can’t have a fair trial due to “pervasive pre-trial publicity,” asking for the hush money case to be canceled altogether or be subject to “a significant adjournment.”
After taking a brief while to ponder that request, Judge Juan Merchan shot it down on Wednesday, breaking-down his decision in an order, writing, “This Court finds that Defendant had myriad opportunities to raise the claim of presidential immunity well before March 7, 2024. After all, Defendant had already briefed the same issue in federal court and he was in possession of, and aware that, the People intended to offer the relevant evidence at trial that entire time. The circumstances, viewed as a whole, test this Court’s credulity. The Court declines to consider whether the doctrine of presidential immunity precludes the introduction of evidence of purported official presidential acts in criminal proceeding.”
Originally scheduled to begin on March 25 and then pushed to April 15 due to a dump of new documents being presented by federal prosecutors, the trial seeks to put an end to discourse over payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential campaign, which Trump pushed off on Michael Cohen. In a post to social media made in 2018, Trump referred to the payment to Daniels as a “simple private transaction,” claiming, “there was no violation based on what we did.”
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