Dem
51
GOP
49
Not everyone is clever enough to know when they have serious legal exposure, and should probably pay to make an unfriendly case go away. And so it is that Donald Trump and his lawyers are deploying their usual bag of tricks in the defamation case that has been filed against the former president by E. Jean Carroll. There are two broad goals here: (1) to drag things out so long that Trump can try to avoid the suit entirely by virtue of being a presidential candidate in the midst of an election cycle or (2) to muddy the waters a whole bunch, in hopes of creating many and varied grounds for appeal in the event of a loss.
The current line of attack from Team Trump is that his arrest at the hands of Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg has poisoned the well against him, and will mean that The Donald could not possibly get a fair trial while the Bragg matter is underway. Because, of course, before Bragg secured an indictment, Trump was an unknown businessman about whom nobody had an opinion.
Perhaps this argument sounded pretty good in the offices of... well, wherever Trump's lawyers' offices are (in the same strip mall with a Four Seasons Landscaping franchise?). The problem here is that the judge in the case, Lewis Kaplan, did not spend yesterday either being born or falling off the turnip truck. The second problem is that Kaplan did go to law school, and has been a judge for many years, so he knows what a silly Hail Mary pass looks like. And yesterday, the Judge advised Trump in no uncertain terms that he wasn't buying what the former president is selling (in that way, the Trump team's legal argument is like Trump steak, Trump vodka, Trump airlines, etc.).
Here are Kaplan's exact words (well, some of them):
There is no justification for an adjournment. This case is entirely unrelated to the state prosecution. The suggestion that the recent media coverage of the New York indictment—coverage significantly (though certainly not entirely) invited or provoked by Mr. Trump's own actions—would preclude selection of a fair and impartial jury on April 25 is pure speculation. So too is his suggestion that a month's delay of the start of this trial would "cool off" anything, even if any "cooling off" were necessary.
Kaplan also observed, using prose that is only slightly more delicate, that neither Trump nor Carroll is a spring chicken, and that neither of them is getting younger, nor is their memory getting better. So, this matter needs to be adjudicated promptly.
Since Trump is not the settling type (even if his wives are), and since the Judge is not tolerating any of these stall tactics, it would seem that the trial will move forward as scheduled. Jury selection is set to begin next Tuesday. (Z)