Former President Donald Trump has roughly 24 hours to make a new legal move in his Manhattan criminal trial, a legal analyst said this week.
“Many of us have been wondering, is he gonna try to go to the Supreme Court and get a stay because 10 days from the start of the trial, they’re hearing the presidential immunity arguments and that’s already on an expedited basis,” Karen Friedman Agnifilo, a legal analyst and former Manhattan chief assistant district attorney, said Wednesday on CNN Newsroom. “So, that is something he can still do, although the clock is ticking.”
“If he doesn’t do that today or tomorrow, I think that gets foreclosed, and he has to show up,” she added.
Newsweek reached out to Trump’s spokesperson via email for comment.
The Context:
Last April, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg indicted Trump for alleged hush money payments made to former adult film star Stormy Daniels, saying that the former president “repeatedly and fraudulently falsified New York business records to conceal crimes that hid damaging information from the voting public during the 2016 presidential election.”
Trump’s trial is scheduled to begin on April 15, and New York law requires defendants to be personally present during a trial for a criminal indictment.
Arturo Jimenez/Anadolu via Getty Images/Getty Images
What We Know:
The former president has continued to deny any wrongdoing in the case and has fought a gag order placed against him by New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, who is overseeing the case.
Earlier this week, Trump suffered a legal loss in his attempts to delay the trial. His most recent attempt centered around challenges to the gag order. However, a New York appeals court denied his attempts on Tuesday.
During a hearing on Tuesday, Trump’s legal team argued the gag order is an unconstitutional imposition against his freedom of speech as he campaigns for president. They had sought to have the trial delayed until a full panel of judges ruled on the gag order.
Views:
Neama Rahmani, the President of West Coast Trial Lawyers and a former federal prosecutor, told Newsweek on Wednesday that Trump “won’t stop trying to delay the New York trial.”
“Whether it’s appealing, suing Judge Merchan directly, or taking other procedural moves to slow the case down, Trump knows that his best defense is delay because if he wins in November, he can’t be prosecuted,” Rahmani said.
“The appellate judges are aware of this strategy and appear skeptical of his filings. They asked why Trump didn’t challenge the gag order weeks ago and why delaying the trial is appropriate even if the order was overboard. The same reasoning applies to his change of venue motion. These are strategic moves for procedural reasons rather than the substantive merits. I don’t think they will be successful. We will be starting jury selection next week.”
What’s Next:
Jury selection for the former president’s criminal trial is expected to start next week.
It is unclear if Trump will continue his attempts to have the trial delayed or if he will take his fight to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.