A New York state appellate judge on Monday denied Donald Trump’s bid to delay his 15 April criminal trial on charges stemming from hush money paid to a porn star while the former US president seeks to move the case out of Manhattan.

Associate Justice Lizbeth Gonzalez issued her decision shortly after a half-hour hearing at the Appellate Division in Manhattan, a mid-level state appeals court.

Emil Bove, a lawyer for Trump, said during the hearing that his client was seeking to stay the case pending the application to move the trial on charges brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

A lawyer from Bragg’s office, Steven Wu, countered that Trump waited too long to object to being tried in Manhattan, where he once lived. The charges were brought in April 2023.

Trump, the Republican candidate challenging Democratic President Joe Biden in the 5 November US election, has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records.

Stormy Daniels (Stephanie Clifford) speaks to the press, as her attorney Michael Avenatti looks on, outside the federal court in New York City on 16 April 2018. (Photo: EPA-EFE / Peter Foley)

Bove did not specify where Trump’s team would like the trial to be held. He said a survey taken by Trump’s legal team of residents in heavily Democratic Manhattan, one of New York City’s five boroughs, found that 61% of respondents thought Trump was guilty, and 70% had a negative opinion of him.

“There is real potential prejudice here to moving forward,” Bove said. “Jury selection cannot proceed in a fair manner starting next week in this county.”

Wu said biased jurors could be weeded out during the jury selection process, and that Trump could not cite media attention as a reason to move the trial.

“He himself has been responsible for stoking that publicity,” Wu said.

A criminal trial would be the first for a former US president.

Trump is accused of covering up his former lawyer Michael Cohen’s $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels in exchange for her silence before the 2016 presidential election about a sexual encounter she said she had with Trump a decade earlier. Trump has denied any such encounter with Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.

It is one of four criminal cases he faces. The others stem from his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Biden, and his handling of sensitive government documents after leaving the presidency in 2021. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges. DM