Yahoo Finance UPDATE 1-Trump seeks to delay hush money criminal trial, move case out of Manhattan
(Adds details from court hearing, paragraph 1-6)
By Luc Cohen
NEW YORK, April 8 (Reuters) -
Donald Trump on Monday sought to put on hold his criminal case on charges stemming from hush money paid to a porn star, a last-ditch effort ahead of the former U.S. president's scheduled April 15 trial.
Emil Bove, a lawyer for Trump, asked a judge with a mid-level state appeals court known as the Appellate Division to stay the case pending Trump's application to move the trial out of Manhattan.
Bove said a survey by Trump's legal team of residents in the heavily Democratic borough found that 61% of respondents thought Trump was guilty, and 70% had a negative opinion of him.
"There is real potential prejudice here to moving forward," Bove said. "Jury selection cannot proceed in a fair manner starting next week in this county."
A lawyer from Bragg's office, Steven Wu, countered that Trump waited too long to object to being tried in Manhattan, where he once lived. The charges were brought last April.
“Defendant could have raised this argument earlier and did not," Wu said.
A criminal trial would be the first of a former U.S. president.
The New York Times and CNN has said Trump would also challenge a gag order by Justice Juan Merchan blocking Trump from speaking publicly about potential witnesses, court staff, individual prosecutors, and family members of the judge and Bragg.
Merchan imposed the order after finding that some of Trump's statements were threatening, and expanded it to cover the family members after Trump disparaged the judge's daughter online.
Trump's campaign has said the order violates his right to free speech under the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment.
Trump is accused of covering up his former lawyer Michael Cohen's $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels in exchange for her silence before the 2016 presidential election about a sexual encounter she said she had with Trump a decade earlier.
Trump has denied any such encounter with Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.
Trump, the Republican candidate challenging Democratic President Joe Biden in the Nov. 5 U.S. election, has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records.
It is one of four criminal cases he faces. The others stem from efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Biden, and his handling of sensitive government documents after leaving the presidency in 2021. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Will Dunham and David Gregorio)
