Alvin Bragg (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II), Donald Trump (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office told Donald Trump’s hush-money trial judge on Wednesday that the former president’s eighth attempt to shut down the proceedings is “inappropriate,” adding that “it would be perverse to reward” him based on “media attention he is actively seeking.”
Defense attorneys for Trump in mid-March filed a motion for a “significant adjournment” of the New York criminal trial “until prejudicial press coverage abates,” claiming that “huge amounts of biased and unfair media coverage” of his numerous cases have compromised the potential jury pool.
“[N]o fair and impartial jury can be selected in this County at any time in the near future, including in April of this year,” the defense asserted.
Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg (D) has now responded that if anyone is to blame for negative pretrial publicity, it’s Trump.
“Defendant should also not be heard to complain about the potential prejudice of pretrial publicity when he has constantly stoked and encouraged such publicity,” Bragg said. “Courts have repeatedly rejected any relief when, as here, the ‘defendant willingly and voluntarily participated in the pretrial publicity by giving a statement to the media concerning the incident which formed the basis for the charge.””
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Pointing to Trump’s 2024 campaign rallies, Truth Social posts (some of which have targeted Acting New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan’s daughter), and TV interviews, the DA said Trump has “repeatedly invited public attention to this criminal trial” and should, therefore, not be rewarded with an indefinite delay of a trial set to begin on April 15:
The Court should deny defendant’s eighth request to adjourn the start of this trial—this time, based on a claim of pretrial publicity—because (1) publicity is unlikely to recede and an indefinite adjournment is inappropriate; (2) thorough voir dire can allow the parties to select an impartial jury, as defendant’s commissioned poll shows; and (3) defendant’s own incessant rhetoric is generating significant publicity, and it would be perverse to reward defendant with an adjournment based on media attention he is actively seeking.
Expressing “serious doubts about the reliability” of a survey that the defense used to support its claims that selecting an impartial jury is an impossibility, Bragg said that the best way to deal with that is to go to trial “sooner rather than later.”
“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,” he said. “For example, although defendant asks this Court to adjourn his trial ‘until the prejudicial media coverage subsides,’ he simultaneously acknowledges that publicity is ‘likely to increase’ and predicts that it will not abate ‘at any time in the near future.’”
The DA called it a “fundamentally flawed premise” that “any amount of pretrial publicity irreparably taints the jury pool,” noting that the defense will have an opportunity at voir dire “to ask numerous questions designed to probe bias in this specific case.” He asked Merchan to deny Trump’s request, just as he did on February 15.
In doing so, Bragg reminded the judge that Trump has unsuccessfully argued in favor of unlimited speech about the case while simultaneously “complaining” about others’ speech about him.
“Defendant simply cannot have it both ways: complaining about the prejudicial effect of pretrial publicity, while seeking to pollute the jury pool himself by making baseless and inflammatory accusations about this trial, specific witnesses, individual prosecutors, and the Court itself,” the filing said.
Read the DA’s response here.
