As I mentioned in a post earlier today, there are reporters whose job it is to monitor court filings and see what developments take place. This morning Lisa Rubin flagged some activity in the Trump hush money case, which is set to go forward for trial one week for today. Understandably, Trump is moving heaven and earth to keep the trial from going forward because he knows that a criminal conviction so close to the election is not going to bode well for him, spin it how he may.
The filings are still not publicly available, but @nytimes is reporting that Trump is indeed seeking a delay of trial through an unusual form of appeal that involves suing the judge directly:https://t.co/cUeJa5OgUW
— Lisa Rubin (@lawofruby) April 8, 2024
Experts are saying that this is an exercise in futility but you well know how desperate Trump is. New York Times:
Donald J. Trump, a week away from standing trial in Manhattan on criminal charges that he falsified records to cover up a sex scandal, has indicated he plans to file a lawsuit against the judge overseeing the case.
Court records showed on Monday that Mr. Trump was filing an action against the judge, Juan M. Merchan, though the papers were not immediately made public. An online court docket where Mr. Trump is expected to file the so-called Article 78 action — a special proceeding that can be used to challenge New York state government agencies and judges — showed that the related paperwork was sealed.
Two people with knowledge of the matter said that Mr. Trump’s lawyers on Monday planned to file the action calling on an appeals court to delay the trial and to challenge a gag order that Justice Merchan recently imposed on the former president. The order prevents Mr. Trump from attacking witnesses, prosecutors and the judge’s own family.
Mr. Trump’s unorthodox move — essentially an appeal in the form of a lawsuit — is unlikely to succeed, particularly so close to trial.
This creative lawyering is not doing Trump any good, but again, it’s well understood that when the stakes are this high people get desperate. And Trump is desperate. Desperate, broke, unstable, trapped, neurotic, we could go on with the adjectives but successful in this particular lawsuit will not likely be one descriptor he can lay claim to. He will try, however.
In a separate filing with the appeals court on Monday, Mr. Trump was expected to ask the court to move the trial outside Manhattan. The request reflects his deep unpopularity in the solidly Democratic borough. […]
This latest effort to stop the Manhattan case — the first prosecution of a former U.S. president, and possibly Mr. Trump’s only criminal case to make it to trial this year — comes as Mr. Trump is separately calling on Justice Merchan to recuse himself from the case.
Trump is huffing and puffing but he’s not going to blow Merchan’s house down. He will, probably, get some soundbites and video for Fox News and the others. That’s always useful.
The judge could rule on the recusal request in the coming days. He rejected Mr. Trump’s first recusal request, filed last year, and is likely to do the same this time.
In a response to Mr. Trump’s most recent request, prosecutors for the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which brought the charges against Mr. Trump, wrote that Mr. Trump “predominantly repeats the same arguments that he made in his first recusal motion more than ten months ago and that this court previously considered and rejected.”
The prosecutors added that the recusal request was based on “a daisy chain of innuendos.”
In Trump world a daisy chain of innuendos and repetitive insinuations about attenuated circumstances (such as Judge Merchan’s daughter working for a Democratic consulting firm being clear and convincing evidence of a Deep State plot) are considered solid lawyering. That’s all they have. But, due process is due process, so let Trump waste more taxpayer’s money in grinding through each and every legal remedy he can come up with until he exhausts them all.
This latest ploy of his may result in a short delay, a few days, but don’t look for it to substantially impact the start of the hush money trial — and the end of the trial, which is the most important part. As a matter of fact, Trump may end up ultimately screwing himself, because the more he causes delay, the closer to November 5 the verdict in the hush money trial happens. Great. We want that verdict (and hopefully, the sentence that goes along with it) to be fresh and foremost in everybody’s mind come Election Day.
trump: “waaahhhh. Judge Merchan doesn’t blow me nice like my judge down in FL does. waaaahhh”.
If dingle berry doesn’t like the venue, perhaps he should not have committed the crime? Just sayin’…
It was reported on ABC news that Judge Merchan denied the appeal request for change of venue. Part of the complaint stated there was too much pre-trial publicity for him to get a fair trial. I think part of the response was that TFG himself generated much of that publicity. I love every bit of this.
It would be so nice if the Judge told Trump, in no uncertain terms, “If you don’t want to be subjected to so much pretrial publicity that it might have an effect on your upcoming trial, then stop putting yourself in front of the press and the media at every opportunity speaking on matters that the court will be hearing. And yes, Mr Trump, that also includes your all-too-frequent posting to your social media site of choice. I will not consider, especially at this late date, any motion to move this trial to another venue nor will I recuse myself from this case.”