Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks on the phone at the 18th green during day three of the LIV Golf Invitational – Miami at Trump National Doral Miami on April 07, 2024 in Doral, Florida.
Megan Briggs | Getty Images
Attorneys for Donald Trump on Monday filed a last-ditch appeal to change the venue of his upcoming criminal hush money trial and pause a gag order barring him from speaking about likely witnesses or the judge’s family.
The bid to a New York appeals court came one week before jury selection is set to begin in the Manhattan Supreme Court trial, where Trump is charged with falsifying business records to conceal a payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.
The appeal was filed using a legal mechanism that allows a person to directly challenge a court’s actions, a source with direct knowledge told NBC News. Doing so allows Trump to contest the case before the trial has begun.
A website for the New York court system shows the appeal was filed Monday and indicates two pending motions for a stay and a change of venue, though the lawsuit itself was not immediately visible. NBC’s source confirmed that the suit was aimed to move the trial and stay the gag order.
Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on the appeal. Susan Necheles, another lawyer for Trump, declined to comment.
The appeal was first reported shortly after Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg urged presiding Judge Juan Merchan to reject Trump’s latest request for the judge to recuse himself.
Bragg slammed that bid as a bad-faith effort to delay the trial and sidestep a gag order barring Trump from speaking about the judge’s daughter.
Trump’s “rewarmed” arguments for Merchan’s recusal offer nothing new from a prior attempt to get a new judge, Bragg wrote in a court filing.
Rather, Bragg argued, the current recusal motion is a “last-ditch” bid to postpone the trial that appears “transparently reverse-engineered” to justify Trump’s spate of recent attacks…
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