'Unusual' and 'unorthodox': Trump to try to sue judge one week before criminal trial

Attorneys for Donald Trump have filed notice saying the ex-president will sue New York State Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan personally, in an effort to delay the start of his criminal trial. He reportedly is also asking for a ruling to move the trial out of Manhattan. Trump is facing 34 felony counts of falsification of business records, which experts say was an effort to cover-up his alleged hush money payments, and thereby interfere with the 2016 presidential election that put him in the White House.

“The lawsuit was not immediately made public, but court records showed on Monday that Mr. Trump was filing an action against the judge, Juan M. Merchan, in an 11th-hour bid to delay the case. An online court docket where Mr. Trump is filing the action showed that the related paperwork was sealed,” The New York Times reports.

Calling the move to sue the judge “unorthodox,” the Times reports the lawsuit would also focus on the gag order Judge Merchan issued, and later expanded, against Trump.

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“Two people with knowledge of the matter said that Mr. Trump’s lawyers on Monday planned to file the action calling on an appeals court to delay the trial and to challenge a gag order that Justice Merchan recently imposed on the former president. The order prevents Mr. Trump from attacking witnesses, prosecutors and the judge’s own family.”

MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin, who had reported on the existence of the sealed filing earlier on Monday, calls it “an unusual form of appeal that involves suing the judge directly.”

The case is expected to become the first criminal trial of a former U.S. president in history. Trial is slated to begin Monday, April 15, with jury selection. It “may be the only one to take place before the Nov. 5 U.S. election in which he is the Republican candidate challenging Democratic President Joe Biden in a 2020 rematch,” Reuters reports.

“The move is unlikely to succeed,” the Times claims.

District Attorney Alvin Bragg has already responded.

“The latest bid by Donald Trump to remove the judge in his criminal hush money case is a bad-faith effort to delay his upcoming trial and sidestep a gag order barring him from speaking about the judge’s daughter, the Manhattan district attorney said Monday,” CNBC reports. “Trump’s ‘rewarmed’ arguments for New York Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan’s recusal offer nothing new from a prior attempt to get a new judge, DA Alvin Bragg wrote in a court filing.”