NEW YORK -- Donald Trump is seeking to delay his March 25 hush-money trial until the Supreme Court rules on the presidential immunity claims he raised in another of his criminal cases.
The Republican former president's lawyers on Monday asked Manhattan Judge Juan Manuel Merchan to adjourn the New York criminal trial indefinitely until Trump's immunity claim in his Washington, D.C., election interference case is resolved. Merchan did not immediately rule.
Trump contends he is immune from prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office. His lawyers argue some of the evidence and alleged acts in the hush money case overlap with his time in the White House and constitute official acts.
The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments April 25, a month after the scheduled start of jury selection in Trump's hush-money case. It is the first of his four criminal cases scheduled to go to trial as he closes in on the Republican presidential nomination in his quest to retake the White House.
The Manhattan district attorney's office declined to comment. Prosecutors are expected to respond to Trump's delay request in court papers later this week.
The hush-money case centers on allegations that Trump falsified his company's internal records to hide the true nature of payments to his former lawyer Michael Cohen, who says he helped bury negative stories during Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. Cohen says the $130,000 he paid porn actor Stormy Daniels was to suppress her claims of an extramarital sexual encounter with Trump years earlier.
Trump's lawyers argue that some evidence Manhattan prosecutors plan to introduce at the hush-money trial, including messages he posted on social media in 2018 about money paid to Cohen, were from his time as president and constituted official acts.
Trump pleaded innocent last year to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. He has denied having a sexual encounter with Daniels, and his lawyers argue the payments to Cohen were legitimate legal expenses and not part of any cover-up.
DEFAMATION SUIT
Just days after Trump posted a $91.6 million bond in the defamation case he lost recently to writer E. Jean Carroll, her lawyer Monday suggested she was considering filing a third defamation lawsuit against the former president.
The lawyer raised the prospect of a new lawsuit after Trump in recent days repeatedly lashed out at Carroll, using the same kind of disparaging language that led to the huge judgment against him in January.
"The statute of limitations for defamation in most jurisdictions is between one and three years," Roberta A. Kaplan, Carroll's lawyer, said in a statement Monday morning. "As we said after the last jury verdict, we continue to monitor every statement that Donald Trump makes about our client."
In a separate court filing, Kaplan told the federal judge overseeing the case that she and Trump's lawyers had reached an agreement on the details of his proposed $91.6 million bond.
The bond -- provided by Federal Insurance Co., an arm of insurance giant Chubb -- would prevent Carroll from collecting her $83.3 million judgment while Trump appeals the defamation verdict. The bond is higher than the judgment because the former president is also responsible for interest.
The judge, Lewis A. Kaplan, who is not related to Roberta Kaplan, must still approve the proposed bond.
Trump has twice attacked Carroll in recent days, using the type of language that has led to two defamation findings against him, most recently a jury's $83.3 million award in January.
On Saturday evening at a rally in Rome, Ga., Trump complained bitterly about the bond he had to post, insisted Carroll's accusations were false and said that she was "not a believable person."
Trump doubled down on those remarks Monday morning during a telephone interview with CNBC, mocking Carroll as "Ms. Bergdorf Goodman," a reference to the luxury department store in Manhattan where Trump was alleged in Carroll's lawsuit to have raped her in the mid-1990s. A civil jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll and defaming her years later.
In the interview, Trump called the decisions against him "ridiculous," without elaboration.
"I got charged -- I was given a false accusation and had to post a $91 million bond on a false accusation," said Trump, who was not in fact charged criminally in the case.
Information for this article was contributed by Michael R. Sisak and Eric Tucker of The Associated Press and by Benjamin Weiser, Maggie Haberman and Ben Protess of The New York Times.