Trump’s latest attempt to delay criminal trial in hush-money case fails

A New York appeals court judge on Tuesday rejected Donald Trump’s latest bid to delay his hush-money criminal trial while he fights a gag order, clearing the way for jury selection to begin next week.

Justice Cynthia Kern’s ruling is yet another loss for Trump, who has tried repeatedly to get the trial postponed.

Trump’s lawyers had wanted the trial delayed until a full panel of appellate court judges could hear arguments on lifting or modifying a gag order that bans him from making public statements about jurors, witnesses and others connected to the hush-money case.

The presumptive Republican nominee’s lawyers argue the gag order is an unconstitutional prior restraint on Trump’s free speech rights while he’s campaigning for president and fighting criminal charges.

“The first amendment harms arising from this gag order right now are irreparable,” Trump lawyer Emil Bove said at an emergency hearing on Tuesday in the state’s mid-level appeals court.

Bove argued that Trump shouldn’t be muzzled while critics, including his former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen and the adult film star Stormy Daniels, routinely assail him. Both are key prosecution witnesses.

Steven Wu, the appellate chief for the Manhattan district attorney’s office, said there is a “public interest in protecting the integrity of the trial”.

“This is not political debate. These are insults,” Wu said of Trump’s statements.

The trial judge, Juan M Merchan, issued the gag order last month at the urging of Manhattan prosecutors, who cited Trump’s “long history of making public and inflammatory remarks” about people involved in his legal cases.

Merchan expanded the gag order last week to prohibit comments about his own family after Trump lashed out on social media at his daughter, a Democratic political consultant, and made false claims about her.

It’s the second of back-to-back days for Trump’s lawyers in the appeals court.

On Monday, Lizbeth González, an associate justice, rejected the defense’s request to delay the 15 April trial while Trump seeks to move his case out of heavily Democratic Manhattan.

Trump’s lawyers framed their gag order appeal as a lawsuit against Merchan. In New York, judges can be sued to challenge some decisions under a state law known as Article 78.

Trump has used the tactic before, including against the judge in his civil fraud trial in an unsuccessful last-minute bid to delay that case last fall and again when that judge imposed a gag order on him.

Trump’s hush-money criminal case involves allegations that he falsified his company’s records to hide the nature of payments to Cohen, who helped him bury negative stories during his 2016 campaign. Cohen’s activities included paying 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. His lawyers argue the payments to Cohen were legitimate legal expenses.

Trump has made numerous attempts to get the trial postponed, leaning into the strategy he proclaimed to TV cameras outside a February pretrial hearing: “We want delays.”