This content was published on April 17, 2023 – 17:02
minutes
New York, Apr 17 (EFE)
Trump’s lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, had requested a month to postpone the start of the process, scheduled for April 25, with the aim of “calming the waters” after the commotion caused in the city when the former president appeared before a judge on last April 4 accused of falsifying commercial documents.
For Tacopina, this period is necessary to favor a fair and impartial jury selection, especially after the great media coverage around said case that is being followed in the Supreme Court of the state of New York.
“There is no justification for its postponement. This case has nothing to do with the state process,” wrote Judge Lewis Kaplan, who assured that the “suggestion that recent media coverage of the indictment could hinder the selection of a fair jury and impartial on the 25th is pure speculation”.
In addition, in his decision he points out that the media coverage of said event was a “significant or totally” consequence of the “invitation or provocation” of Trump himself.
Kaplan has already been adamant about several requests from the former president’s defense, including several to postpone the trial.
The judge on Friday rejected two requests for a continuance from Trump’s lawyers, who insisted the former president will not get a fair trial because of the bad publicity of his recent Manhattan indictment over irregular payments to a porn actress so that she would not harm his 2016 election campaign.
Nor did it accept a new request from Trump’s team, delivered last Friday, to be able to access in advance some personal data of the jury candidates and to use a written questionnaire in the selection of the panel that will decide the verdict, which means the first phase of the judicial process.
Carroll, 79, accused Trump of rape in a book and a magazine article in 2019, something he denied by publicly calling her a liar and making derogatory comments about her appearance, after which the author decided to launch a legal battle against him for defamation.
At the end of 2022, Carroll added to that lawsuit a new charge for injuries derived from the alleged rape as a legal period opened in New York to seek civil justice in cases related to sexual violence that until then were considered prescribed. EFE
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