Judge slams Trump for ‘untimely’ presidential immunity argument in hush-money case

MANHATTAN (CN) — The New York judge overseeing Donald Trump’s upcoming criminal trial denied a bid from the former president to adjourn the proceedings until after the U.S. Supreme Court rules on his presidential immunity arguments in another case.

Trump asked the court on March 7 to push the trial back on these grounds, claiming that the impending Supreme Court decision in his D.C. election subversion case could change which evidence is allowed to be brought in by Manhattan prosecutors. 

But he did so less than a month before the trial was slated to begin, drawing ire from New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan in a Wednesday ruling.

“The fact that the defendant waited until a mere 17 days prior to the scheduled trial date of March 25, 2024, to file the motion, raises real questions about the sincerity and actual purpose of the motion,” Merchan said.

Merchan ultimately found that Trump had “myriad opportunities” to raise such a claim before March 7. As a result, the judge said that he doesn’t need to address Trump’s evidence concerns.

“Defendant’s motion is denied in its entirety as untimely,” Merchan wrote. “The court declines to consider whether the doctrine of presidential immunity precludes the introduction of evidence of purported official presidential acts in a criminal proceeding.”

The Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments on April 25 over Trump’s claims that he should be immune from prosecution for actions he engaged in while president. A ruling isn’t expected until June. 

In his March 7 motion, Trump suggested that proceeding with the New York criminal trial before getting a ruling from the Supreme Court would be an “unnecessary risk.”

“The adjournment would also ‘avoid the unnecessary risk of inconsistent adjudications as to the defenses asserted' by President Trump in state and federal courts relating to the presidential immunity doctrine,” Trump argued.

Trump didn’t suggest in that motion that he should be immune from the criminal charges altogether. Rather, he suggested that a series of venomous tweets about his ex-lawyer Michael Cohen should be removed from the evidence pool.

“The New York Times and a third-rate reporter named Maggie Haberman, known as a Crooked H flunkie who I don’t speak to and have nothing to do with, are going out of their way to destroy Michael Cohen and his relationship with me in the hope that he will ‘flip,’” Trump said in one 2018 post, which he hoped to keep out of prosecutors’ hands.

Tweets like this were “official acts” he took while president, Trump claimed.

“The court should preclude the people from offering evidence at trial that your honor determines, following a hearing outside the presence of the jury, constituted an ‘official act’ during President Trump’s first term in office,” Trump added.

The criminal trial has since been delayed from its original start date of March 25, thanks to another evidence-related complaint from Trump that pushed jury selection back to April 15. 

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg brought the charges against Trump in 2023, claiming that the former president falsified business records to pay hush money to adult film star Stormy Daniels. 

Bragg argues that Trump instructed Cohen to make the payments while he was running for the 2016 presidency in an effort to cover up a past extramarital relationship with Daniels. Trump pleaded not guilty to the 34 counts of falsifying business records, and denied such a relationship with Daniels.

Trump has since made other efforts to delay the trial further, recently claiming that bias from Merchan warrants the judge’s recusal.

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