Ex-President Donald Trump recently sought — unsuccessfully — to push out the start date of a trial in New York on account of the recent death of his mother-in-law, citing funeral plans.
The trial was slated to handle the question of the level of financial penalties to impose on the ex-president in connection to a second set of defamation allegations from writer E. Jean Carroll, around which the judge already established liability on Trump’s part — which, while the processes are distinct, roughly mirrors the procedural stage in criminal proceedings when a defendant is found guilty.
Shanlon Wu, a former federal prosecutor, questioned Trump’s attempt to use the death of his mother-in-law for an extension lasting an entire week. Contextually, Trump has consistently been accused of primarily intending delay in legal maneuvers that he’s undertaken.
“I’ve been in plenty of trials where a personal or family loss arises and very few people ask for an entire week of postponement – defendants sometimes granted time to attend a funeral but not just a blanket postponement which smacks of trying to game the system,” Wu said on X (formerly called Twitter).
Trump was not obligated to attend this trial covering Carroll’s defamation allegations, which stem from the former president’s responses to her account of Trump sexually assaulting her in the 1990s. Carroll’s legal claims directly covering that alleged incident were largely upheld by a jury in an earlier trial before this same New York judge, which produced $5 million in financial penalties for Trump.
In rejecting Trump’s push to delay this trial, the judge — Lewis Kaplan — noted that Trump remained free to arrange his schedule per his wishes. “Mr. Trump is free to attend the trial, the funeral, or all or parts of both, as he wishes,” Kaplan said.
Trump skipped the first trial. He denies the allegations from Carroll. The accusation of his reliance on attempted delay also recently emerged from ex-prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, who was discussing Trump’s arguments for wide-ranging legal protections merely by virtue of his time as president that would stop the January 6-related criminal case from Special Counsel Jack Smith.
I’ve been in plenty of trials where a personal or family loss arises and very few people ask for an entire week of postponement – defendants sometimes granted time to attend a funeral but not just a blanket postponement which smacks of trying to game the system. https://t.co/rIBNmNzfnv
— Shanlon Wu (@shanlonwu) January 14, 2024
