Donald Trump has an unexpected list of demands for his Manhattan criminal trial, including a plan to keep key witnesses away from the stand.
Trump is accused of using his former fixer Michael Cohen to sweep an affair with porn actress Stormy Daniels under the rug ahead of the 2016 presidential election. He’s facing 34 felony charges in the case for allegedly falsifying business records with the intent to further an underlying crime. Trump has pleaded not guilty on all counts.
But a list of proposed exclusions submitted by Trump’s legal team to the judge on Monday indicates that it wants Cohen and Daniels nowhere near the courthouse, despite their testimony being central to the entire case. The list also contains several other outrageous requests, including keeping prosecutors from showing the jury quotes from Rudy Giuliani from May 2018 regarding the payments, and excluding the infamous Access Hollywood tape in which Trump confessed to sexual assault by claiming he grabs women “by the pussy.” Trump defended those comments in his first E. Jean Carroll trial, and the video again made a reappearance in his second defamation lawsuit brought by Carroll. After both trials, Trump owes Carroll $88.5 million.
Trump also filed to prevent any mention of Playboy playmate Karen McDougal, with whom Trump had a covert affair beginning in 2006, and one of Trump World Tower’s former doormen, Dino Sajudin, who claimed that Trump fathered an out-of-wedlock child with a former housekeeper. On top of that, Trump’s team asked to ban the use of the phrase “catch and kill,” referring to plans uncovered by the Manhattan District Attorney to kill negative press on both those stories about Trump before the 2016 election.
Meanwhile, the district attorney’s office submitted their own motions in limine, asking that the court exclude a campaign finance expert proposed by Trump’s team, selective prosecution claims, and info stemming from a related case against Cohen in the Southern District of New York.
Speaking to reporters after attending his first criminal trial hearing in person on February 15, Trump claimed he “shouldn’t be in a courthouse.”
“Even if he was guilty of something, there is no crime,” Trump said, speaking in the third person, before demanding “delays,” which he will decidedly not get.
