By Jennifer Peltz and Michael R. Sisak | Associated Press
NEW YORK — A New York appeals court judge Tuesday rejected Donald Trump’s latest attempt to delay his hush money criminal trial, taking just 12 minutes to swat aside an argument that it should be postponed while the former president fights a gag order.
Justice Cynthia Kern’s ruling was the second time in as many days that the state’s mid-level appeals court refused to postpone the trial, set to begin next week, further narrowing any plausible path to the delay that Trump’s legal team has repeatedly sought.
Trump’s lawyers wanted the trial delayed until a full panel of appellate court judges could hear arguments on lifting or modifying a gag order that bans him from making public statements about jurors, witnesses and others connected to the hush-money case.
They argue the gag order is an unconstitutional curb on the presumptive Republican nominee’s free speech rights while he’s campaigning for president and fighting criminal charges.
“The First Amendment harms arising from this gag order right now are irreparable,” Trump lawyer Emil Bove said at an emergency hearing Tuesday in the state’s mid-level appeals court.
Bove argued that Trump shouldn’t be muzzled while critics, including his former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen and porn actor Stormy Daniels, routinely assail him. Both are key prosecution witnesses.
Bove also argued that the order unconstitutional restricts Trump’s critiques of the case — and, with them, his ability to speak to the voting public and its right to hear from him.
Steven Wu, the appellate chief for the Manhattan district attorney’s office, countered that there is a “public interest in protecting the integrity of the trial.”
“What we are talking about here is the defendant’s uncontested history of making inflammatory, denigrating” comments about people involved in the case, Wu said. “This is not political debate. These are…
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