Trump Tries to Stop First Criminal Trial for Stupidest Possible Reason

Donald Trump has asked to adjourn his hush money trial indefinitely on the basis of too much “pre-trial publicity.”

The former reality TV host and his legal team are arguing that the nature of his charges is so widely known in New York that it would be impossible for him to get a fair trial. That is, of course, despite the fact that Trump has used practically all the platforms available to him, including his rallies and his social media company, to draw more attention to the proceedings.

Still, Trump was quick to place blame on practically everyone else for the widely circulated news. In court documents, which were filed last week but released Monday, Trump blamed the district attorney of New York for the “manufactured timing of Weisselberg’s plea,” referring to former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg pleading guilty to perjury.

Trump also claimed that his former fixer Michael Cohen would “spew vitriol” to “anyone who will listen,” and slammed porn actress Stormy Daniels’ latest documentary about her legal saga with the former president, claiming it was filled with “prejudicial, false commentary about this case.”

After surveying 400 residents from New York, Orange, Richmond, Rockland, and Suffolk Counties, Trump’s legal team determined that “many of the potential jurors already wrongfully believe that President Trump is guilty.”

The team also pointed to a “media study” finding, claiming that they had found 1,223 online news articles published between January and February that “included prejudicial discussion of other proceedings involving President Trump and inaccurate and irrelevant discussions of alleged sexual misconduct, including false claims regarding ‘rape.’”

The tactic is, most likely, another attempt to delay the only one of Trump’s criminal trials currently on the docket, with jury selection scheduled to begin April 15.

Judge Juan Merchan has so far batted away several other delay tactics by the GOP presidential nominee, resulting in a ruling last week that Trump’s legal team must first ask for permission to make future filings in an effort to avoid more delays.

Last month, the court overcame a brief delay in the trial after the Southern District of New York offloaded 100,000 pages worth of documents mere days before the trial was scheduled to begin.

Trump is accused of using Cohen to sweep an affair with Daniels under the rug ahead of the 2016 presidential election. He faces 34 felony charges in this case for allegedly falsifying business records with the intent to further an underlying crime. Trump has pleaded not guilty on all counts.

This story has been updated.

The anti-abortion movement in Texas has adjusted course—and it’s headed toward putting abortion and IVF patients on death row.

Leaked video footage of an Abolish Abortion Texas function shows Hood County Republican Party officials in attendance at a meeting supporting the death penalty for women and minors who seek out either procedure. The meeting took place in January, but the video was only shared to X (formerly Twitter) last week.

“There’s no difference in the value of born people and preborn people,” said Paul Brown, the group’s director. “In short, abortion is murder. And that’s starting at the moment of fertilization even prior to implantation. So that Plan B pill, or what’s known as the morning-after pill, which is used to terminate or kill a baby prior to implantation, that is an abortion.”

This is false. Emergency contraception such as Plan B prevents fertilization from occurring.

“Other forms of abortion in this category include what happens in IVF, when a fertilized egg is created and is oftentimes destroyed,” Brown continued. “Those that do are terminating or destroying human life.”

Brown also added that abortions provided for victims of incest or rape will “never be OK,” noting in his speech that “[women’s] lives don’t matter any more than the babies’ they are killing.”

Hood County Constable Scott London, Hood County GOP Chair Steve Biggers, and Hood County GOP chair candidate Greg Harrell attended the meeting, but many more GOP hopefuls have signed a pledge with the anti-abortion group and received its endorsement. That includes state Representative Jay Dean and former Texas House Speaker Tom Craddick, as well as more than a dozen Texas state House candidates.

“The fact that Texas Republicans are meeting with people willing to send pregnant women and doctors to Death Row should terrify every person in Texas. Make no mistake: Texas Republicans will strip women of their basic healthcare rights and will not stop at just banning abortion,” said Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa in a statement.

“They will punish women and doctors for seeking and performing basic health care, they will ban IVF and they will create a hostile and inhumane state. All of these candidates should be ashamed of themselves. This isn’t Texas, but this is the Republican party of Texas.”

The White House recognized Transgender Day of Visibility on Sunday, which should be pretty innocuous—except it fell on Easter Sunday this year. And, as one might expect, the right was outraged.

The White House released a statement Friday calling on Americans to “join us in lifting up the lives and voices of transgender people throughout our Nation and to work toward eliminating violence and discrimination based on gender identity.”

The Trump campaign responded the following day, calling the declaration “blasphemous” and demanding Joe Biden “issue an apology to the millions of Catholics and Christians across America who believe tomorrow is for one celebration only—the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

On X (formerly Twitter), Speaker Mike Johnson, Senator Marsha Blackburn, and Chaya Raichik (a.k.a. Libs of TikTok) all blasted the declaration as attacking Christianity and a conspiracy.

The International Transgender Day of Visibility has taken place on March 31 every year since 2009. The fact that it fell on the same day as Easter this year is a coincidence. To Fox News’s credit, host Howard Kurtz did point this out Sunday, noting that “Biden didn’t pick the date.”

Of course, hours earlier, Fox News was up in arms over the White House allegedly promoting paganism during its annual Easter egg roll, specifically for prohibiting overtly religious designs.

In a statement to the Associated Press, White House spokesperson Andrew Bates reminded everyone that “as a Christian who celebrates Easter with family, President Biden stands for bringing people together and upholding the dignity and freedoms of every American.”

Speaking of blasphemy, the Trump campaign has little room to talk, as over the weekend the former president claimed on Truth Social he was being crucified like Jesus, and invoked the holiday to attack his political and legal enemies. This follows his desperate attempt to raise money by selling “God Bless the USA” Bibles for $60 each.

Representative Nancy Mace is still defending Donald Trump—but won’t parse out her reasoning in the wake of the GOP presidential pick’s judgment in his E. Jean Carroll trial saga.

Instead, the South Carolina Republican took to Fox News on Sunday to defend a viral interview she gave last month with ABC’s This Week, which went south when anchor George Stephanopoulos prompted her to explain a contradiction: How could she, a rape victim, support the presidency of someone who had been found liable for sexual abuse?

Explaining to Fox News host Howard Kurtz, Mace branded the line of questioning as “10 minutes of rape-shaming” and accused the network of flagrantly bringing up the issue while her “underage daughter” was with her.

Except Stephanopolous’s question was based on Mace’s own account, which she brought up during an abortion debate while serving as a lawmaker in South Carolina’s legislature in 2021. Mace said that the video clip This Week played of her own story had “sabotaged” her.

“But at the same time, it really exposed the left because if you don’t succumb to their ideology or prescribe to the way that they think, if you don’t think the way they want you to, they will bully you,” Mace said. “They will shame you. They’ll shame you over being raped.”

“As a man, George Stephanopoulos tried to mansplain rape to me,” she continued. “I don’t need some man telling me how I should feel about rape. I don’t need some man telling me as a rape victim that I can’t vote Republican and vote for the man I believe that can save our country.”

Trump filed a defamation lawsuit against ABC last month to prove that he was just a sexual abuser—not a rapist, as Stephanopoulos had said during the viral interview. Mace also insisted Sunday that Trump “never was” found guilty of rape.

It’s unclear how Trump’s verbiage suit will play out in court, though his unexpected specificity flies in the face of another precedent set by the court. In July, Judge Lewis Kaplan clarified that although New York penal law has a “far narrower” definition of rape, the jury still found Trump to have raped Carroll in the modern sense of the word.

Donald Trump on Friday asked a Georgia state appeals court to remove Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from his election interference case, the former president’s latest attempt to delay legal proceedings.

Judge Scott McAfee ruled two weeks ago that Willis could remain on the case she built against Trump if her special prosecutor resigned. Nathan Wade submitted his resignation that same day, and the case could once again proceed.

Trump and eight of his 18 co-defendants in the case filed an application Friday with the Georgia Court of Appeals asking it to reconsider McAfee’s decision. They argued that Willis had a personal stake in the election interference case and should step down.

“While the trial court factually found DA Willis’s out-of-court statements were improper and Defendants proved an apparent conflict of interest, the trial court erred as a matter of law by not requiring dismissal and DA Willis’ disqualification,” the court filing said. “This legal error requires the Court’s immediate review.”

“If this law means anything, the trial court’s actual findings here establish an actual conflict.”

Willis’s office has 10 days to respond to the appeal application.

Trump and several of his co-defendants accused Willis of having an improper relationship with Wade, who has billed her office—and thus county taxpayers—for more than $728,000 in legal fees. Trump’s team alleges that Willis and Wade began dating in 2019 and that, over the course of their romantic relationship, the couple took extravagant vacations that Wade supposedly paid for in part by billing Willis’s office.

Willis and Wade, who are no longer together, say they didn’t start seeing each other until 2022, after Willis hired Wade for the Georgia case. Willis also says they each paid their own share of the vacation bill.

During the hearings, the key witness against Willis crumbled on the stand, admitting he didn’t know when Willis and Wade began dating, how their relationship began, or even what trips they took together. But the most important thing to remember, Willis has stressed, is that Trump and his co-defendants are currently on trial for “trying to steal an election.”

McAfee chastised Willis for what he described as a “tremendous lapse in judgment.” But he ultimately refused to throw her off the case, saying she must resolve the “appearance of impropriety” by either recusing herself or removing Wade. And again, Wade has already stepped down.

The former president’s strategy has been to delay every single one of his legal battles as long as possible, in the hopes that he is reelected in November and can use his newfound presidential powers to shield himself from prosecution. His accusation against Willis dragged out the Georgia proceedings for weeks, and if the appeals court accepts his application, legal proceedings could take even longer to get going. A trial date has not yet been scheduled.

This story has been updated.