Manhattan D.A. Slams Trump for Idiotic Hush Money Trial Delay Tactic
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has two words for Donald Trump’s latest attempt to throw out his New York hush-money trial: no way.
In March, the former reality TV host and his legal team filed a formal request to adjourn his hush-money trial on the basis of too much “pretrial publicity,” arguing that the nature of his charges were too widely known in New York, making it impossible for him to get a fair trial.
But in a Wednesday legal filing, Bragg argued that Trump’s language, which admits the pretrial publicity will never end, reflects his true intentions: to keep the trial at bay indefinitely.
“Defendant appears to acknowledge that there is no end in sight to public coverage of this criminal proceeding, laying bare his strategy of obtaining an open-ended delay of the trial,” Bragg wrote in a 38-page memo. “The answer to defendant’s complaint about pretrial publicity is thus to hold this trial sooner rather than later.”
Bragg also argued that Trump’s insistence on the jury’s inherent bias was undercut by several legal precedents.
“Defendant’s request for an adjournment is based on the fundamentally flawed premise that any amount of pretrial publicity irreparably taints the jury pool,” Bragg continued. “That argument flouts bedrock law that expressly holds otherwise. Pretrial publicity, even when pervasive and adverse, ‘does not inevitably lead to an unfair trial.’”
If anything, Trump could get a fair trial despite all the publicity—as shown in a study commissioned by Trump’s own lawyers, which found that 67 percent of Manhattan’s denizens said they could “definitely” or “probably” set aside their opinion of Trump to give him a fair shake.
And, besides all that, it’s not just the press drawing attention to the first criminal trial of a former president, but Trump himself too. He has incessantly complained about the proceedings at his rallies and on his social media platform, Truth Social. Bragg argued it would be “perverse to reward” Trump with an “adjournment based on media attention he is actively seeking,” pointing to motions filed by Trump’s legal team attempting to protect his right to keep posting online about it.
“Moreover, defendant has made clear that he intends to continue stoking such publicity. In opposition to the People’s motion for an order restricting defendant’s extrajudicial statements, defendant insisted on preserving his ‘uncensored voice on all issues that relate to this case’ and his entitlement to make ‘unfettered’ comments about this case,” Bragg wrote.
