Lawyers for Donald Trump have asked a federal judge to push back his upcoming civil rape trial so he can have a “cooling off” from “breathless” news coverage of his New York legal battles, according to new court records.
In a letter filed late Tuesday, Trump attorney Joe Tacopina asked Manhattan Federal Court Judge Lewis Kaplan to delay his trial against writer E. Jean Carroll slated for April 25, by at least four months.
“Jurors selected to hear Ms. Carroll’s allegations against President Trump will have the breathless coverage of President Trump’s alleged extramarital affair with Stormy Daniels still ringing in their ears if the trial goes forward as scheduled,” Tacopina wrote.
“To avoid this egregious violation of President Trump’s constitutional rights, the trial should be adjourned for a brief period to allow the media frenzy to recede.”
The upcoming trial is poised to cover the second of two lawsuits 79-year-old Carroll has filed against Trump. In it, she accuses him of raping her inside a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s and slandering her as a liar in remarks he made after he left the Oval Office.
The D.C. Court of Appeals has yet to issue a ruling on Carroll’s first lawsuit against him, filed in 2019, which accuses Trump of defaming her from the White House when he infamously denied raping her because she was not his “type.” The court will rule on whether Trump was speaking in his presidential capacity — and the comments were thus protected — or in his capacity as a private citizen, meaning he can be sued.
Judge Kaplan, who will rule on the request to push back the trial, has criticized Trump for incessantly bogging down both cases with legal roadblocks.
“Taken together,” Kaplan wrote in March 2022, Trump’s legal strategies “strongly suggest that he is acting out of a strong desire to delay any opportunity (Carroll) may have to present her case against him.”
The judge has already factored in how Trump’s criminal case could affect his civil rape trial up the block. In deciding to keep the jurors’ names a secret, Kaplan referred to Trump’s inflammatory comments about authorities involved in the “hush money” case and death threats materializing against the presiding judge and his family. On Monday, Kaplan said he wasn’t comfortable with even the lawyers on the case knowing the jurors’ identities.
The case is one of three ramping up against Trump in his home state as he seeks the Republican nomination for president. He’s due to return to the Big Apple on Thursday for a deposition in the state attorney general’s fraud case against his real estate business, less than two weeks after pleading not guilty to felony charges in Manhattan Supreme Court.
The criminal case against Trump accuses him of falsifying 34 business records to hide the fact he violated elections laws in issuing a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels to secure his White House win in 2016. The charges carry a potential four-year prison term.
Prosecutors say the payoff to Daniels, which bought her silence about an extramarital tryst in 2006, was one of three Trump made as he sought the presidency when he ran against Hilary Clinton.
In court filings, they say he was also involved in payoffs to a Trump Tower doorman thinking of talking to the media about him allegedly fathering a child out of wedlock and Playboy model Karen McDougal, who says they had an affair in 2006 and 2007.
Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, said she would respond to Trump’s request in court filings.