Former President Donald Trump lost a last-ditch effort to delay the start of his Oct. 2 civil fraud trial in New York.
The Empire State’s appellate division rejected Trump’s lawsuit against the presiding judge over New York Attorney General Letitia James’s civil case against Trump’s company, the Trump Organization. The decision means he and other defendants tied to the business will head to trial Monday and comes as he seeks further delay of his two federal criminal cases.
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In a two-page order, the appeals court effectively sets aside for now Trump’s lawsuit against New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron. The suit’s main purpose was to delay the trial and toss out many of James’s allegations against him.
The decision comes only two days after Engoron handed down an order that dealt a huge blow to Trump, finding him liable for committing fraud by regularly overvaluing his assets and stripping him of control over his New York properties.
Next week, the juryless trial in Engoron’s court will resolve other aspects of the case, including whether Trump’s company will face further punishments, including James’s effort to regain $250 million from alleged ill-gotten gains.
James seeks to convince Engoron that Trump’s annual financial statements exaggerated his net worth by upward of $2.2 billion on some of his records. She aims to prove Trump submitted the statements to banks to gain favorable loans.
Trump attorney Chris Kise has countered that such banks made a profit off of the loans and that the former president always made his payments on time.
Meanwhile, Trump’s counsel is pushing a fight in Florida and Washington, D.C., federal courts to delay some of the procedural deadlines in the lead-up to his two federal criminal trials for alleged mishandling of classified documents and efforts to subvert the 2020 election.
Prosecutors with special counsel Jack Smith’s office accused Trump on Thursday of attempting to “intentionally derail” the timing of his trial in the documents case after his attorneys asked for a roughly three-month delay. That request “threatens to upend the entire schedule established by the court” and “amounts to a motion to continue the May 20, 2024, trial date,” prosecutor Jay Bratt wrote in a filing.
Defense attorneys asked the judge presiding over the 2020 elections case to grant a 60-day extension of the current pretrial motion deadline of Oct. 9.
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U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan responded Thursday afternoon, one day after she voided Trump’s attempt to remove her from his case, asking the government to file a response by Oct. 3 and for the defense to reply by Oct. 6.
Trump’s Washington, D.C., trial is slated to begin on March 4, the day before Super Tuesday, as he seeks to gain the nomination to be the Republican contender for the 2024 election.
