Former President Donald Trump’s lawyer had asked a judge to delay the start of a sexual assault and defamation trial for one month to allow a “cooling off” period following the historic indictment charging Trump with falsifying business records.
Donald Trump wanted to be helped
Joe Tacopina, an attorney for Trump, asked the judge overseeing the battery and defamation lawsuit brought by former magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll to delay the trial until the end of May. The trial is scheduled to start on April 25.
Tacopina said the pool of potential jurors will have the criminal charges “top of mind” when they are called due to intense media coverage and that could taint the jury pool.
The controversy sparked around the hush money payment that Cohen admitted that he made to Stormy Daniels during the fall of Trump’s 2016 White House bid to keep her from coming forward about an alleged affair she had with the then-candidate. Trump has denied the affair. Previously, TMZ reported that Daniels was experiencing the impact of Trump’s potential impending arrest and reportedly strengthening her security after receiving multiple threats.
“To be sure, President Trump is a persistent subject of media coverage. But the present situation is unique because, as stated above, the recent coverage pertains to alleged sexual misconduct, the same issue at the heart of this litigation,” Tacopina said in his letter to Judge Lewis Kaplan.
