Lawyers for former President Donald Trump have 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.
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.
Trump was charged with falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments made to Stormy Daniels to stop her from going public about a past affair days before the 2016 presidential election.
Trump pleaded not guilty to the charges.
“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.
Trump has denied the affair with Daniels. He has also denied sexually assaulting Carroll, who alleges Trump raped her in a New York department store dressing room in the mid-1990s.
She first sued Trump for defamation in 2019 after he denied the rape, said “she’s not my type” and alleged she made the claim to boost sales of her book.
