Donald Trump’s rape trial will begin next week as scheduled after a federal judge rejected a request for a one-month delay, saying the former president cannot make public statements to promote pre-trial publicity and then claim it is prejudicial to him and reason to delay.
Lewis A Kaplan, a federal judge in Manhattan, said the civil trial on claims against Trump by the columnist E Jean Carroll will begin as scheduled on 25 April. Trump denies the rape or knowing Carroll.
Kaplan rejected arguments by Trump’s attorney Joe Tacopina that the former president’s recent indictment in New York state court on criminal falsification of business records charges created such negative publicity that a one-month cooling-off period was needed before the rape trial could begin.
Kaplan said: “There was, of course, a great deal of media coverage – some of it invited and, indeed, provoked by Mr Trump – first of the apparently impending indictment, then the indictment itself, and finally the arraignment.
“But the connection that Mr Trump seeks to draw between that coverage and either the need for or the effectiveness of a ‘cooling off’ period is unsupported by any evidence.”
Kaplan said a portion of coverage of Trump’s indictment was “of his own doing” as the ex-president made public statements on his social media platform, in press conferences and in interviews.
“It does not sit well for Mr Trump to promote pretrial publicity and then to claim that coverage that he promoted was prejudicial to him and should be taken into account as supporting a further delay,” the judge said, adding that he was also concerned that the request was a “delay tactic by Mr Trump”.
He noted that it was not necessary to find jurors who had never heard of Trump’s legal woes as long as jurors agreed to be fair and impartial.
“There is no justification for an adjournment. This case is entirely unrelated to the state prosecution,” Kaplan said, alluding to charges brought against Trump on the grounds that he played a role in hush money payments to two women who claimed affairs with him years before the 2016 presidential election. He has denied the affairs.
Tacopina declined comment about Kaplan’s ruling and whether Trump will attend the rape trial. He is required to notify Kaplan by Thursday if Trump plans to show up.
In a footnote, the judge cited other legal threats Trump faces to show that a month-long delay in the trial stemming from Carroll’s lawsuit could make the climate to find a fair jury worse rather than better.
A justice department special counsel is looking into Trump’s handling of classified documents, along with matters relating to the 2020 presidential election and the January 6 attack on the US Capitol. A district attorney in Fulton county, Georgia, is investigating Trump’s actions after the 2020 election. The New York attorney general, Letitia James, has sued Trump, his family and his company for alleged financial wrongdoing.
Carroll sued Trump for defamation after he said she lied when she wrote in a 2019 memoir that he attacked her in the dressing room of a Manhattan department store in 1996. She brought a second lawsuit in November, after New York state allowed victims to temporarily sue over sexual assaults that occurred long ago.