Former President Donald Trump is seeking to delay his hush money trial until the Supreme Court rules on his presidential immunity claims raised in another criminal case.
His lawyers have asked Manhattan Judge Juan Manuel Merchan to adjourn the New York criminal trial indefinitely until the immunity claim in his Washington, D.C., election interference case is resolved.
Trump contends he is immune from prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office, arguing that some of the evidence and alleged acts in the hush money case overlap with his time in the White House and constitute official acts.
Donald Trump (Credits: The Washington Post)
The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments on April 25, a month after the scheduled start of jury selection in Trump’s hush money case. This case is the first of his four criminal cases slated to go to trial as he seeks the Republican presidential nomination for a possible return to the White House.
The hush money case revolves around allegations that Trump falsified his company’s internal records to hide the true nature of payments to his former lawyer Michael Cohen, who helped Trump bury negative stories during his 2016 presidential campaign.
Among other things, Cohen paid porn actor Stormy Daniels $130,000 to suppress her claims of an extramarital sexual encounter with Trump years earlier.
Trump (Credits: CNN)
Trump’s lawyers argue that evidence Manhattan prosecutors plan to introduce at the hush money trial, including messages he posted on social media in 2018 about money paid to Cohen, were from his time as president and constituted official acts.
However, a federal judge rejected Trump’s claim that the allegations in the hush money indictment involved official duties, stating that hush money paid to an adult film star is not related to a president’s official acts. The question of whether a former president is immune from federal prosecution for official acts taken in office is legally untested.
Prosecutors in the Washington, D.C., case have argued that no such immunity exists and that none of the actions Trump is alleged to have taken in the indictment charging him with plotting to overturn the 2020 presidential election count as official acts.
The trial judge in Washington and a federal appeals court have both ruled against Trump, but the Supreme Court’s decision to reconsider the matter has delayed the federal case in Washington and injected fresh uncertainty as to when it might reach trial.
