Donald Trump has asked a United States District Court judge to delay his upcoming rape trial in New York by a month, with lawyers asking for a “cooling off” period after the negative mass media coverage surrounding his indictment and arrest in the Stormy Daniels hush money case.
The civil trial, currently scheduled for April 25, comes after former Elle magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll accused the former president of raping her in the mid-1990s and sued him for defamation after he denied the allegation.
In a letter to U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan released Tuesday night, Trump attorneys Joseph Tacopina and Alina Habba request a four-week adjournment in the trial, saying Trump’s right to a fair trial hinges on the “cooling off” period after “the recent deluge of prejudicial media coverage concerning his unprecedented criminal indictment and arraignment in Manhattan.”
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Without the pause, “many, if not most, prospective jurors will have the criminal allegations top of mind when judging President Trump’s defense against Ms. Carroll’s allegations,” the letter reads, adding that a break would help contain any potential contamination of prospective jurors.
Those jurors, it continues, “will have the breathless coverage of President Trump’s alleged extra-marital affair with Stormy Daniels still ringing in their ears if [the] trial goes forward as scheduled.”
Trump’s recent arrest, the lawyers claim, saw a four-fold rise in Google searches for “Jean Carroll Donald Trump.”
Team Trump is now hoping for a late May trial—no earlier than May 23—when a jury is “far more likely to be impartial than one recently inundated with prejudicial media coverage.”
According to Reuters, Roberta Kaplan, a lawyer who represents Carroll, “said she will respond to Trump’s request in a letter to the judge.”
