Lawyer of former US president Donald Trump, Joe Tacopina speaks to the press outside the Manhattan Criminal Court in New York on April 4, 2023 after Trump’s hearing.
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds | AFP | Getty Images
A criminal defense lawyer for Donald Trump said Wednesday he expects that the porn star hush money case against the former president to get dismissed without having to go to trial in New York City.
“I feel that we’re not going to get to a jury,” the lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, said in an interview on NBC’s “Today Show.”
“I think this case is going to fall on its merits on legal challenges well before we get to a jury,” Tacopina said.
The lawyer’s prediction came after “Today” host Savannah Guthrie asked if he believed Trump could get a fair jury in Manhattan, where the Republican ex-president is charged in state Supreme Court with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
The indictment alleges Trump illegally covered up efforts to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election by hiding the true nature of payments to his then-lawyer Michael Cohen to reimburse him for a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.
Trump in a social media post before his arraignment on Tuesday called Manhattan a “very unfair venue” for the case, which, he said, “should be moved to nearby Staten Island.”
Trump suffered his biggest margin of defeat in New York City to President Joe Biden in Manhattan in the 2020 election and managed to win just one of the city’s five boroughs: Staten Island.
Tacopina did not answer Guthrie’s question about whether a “fair jury” could be selected for trial in Manhattan.
He said that after “seeing that indictment and knowing what the law is regarding federal election campaigns, I don’t think we’re getting close to a jury.”
But, Tacopina added, “If we get to a jury, I think any person on the right or politically opposed to Trump or in favor of him is going to see this for what it is: It’s a weaponization of the legal system, and it’s…
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