One of former President Donald Trump’s lawyers made a plea to judges involved in his cases on Thursday, saying they should fight the “complete politicization” of the justice system.
During an appearance on Fox News, lawyer and spokeswoman Alina Habba said she agreed with the notion that the cases against her client and politically motivated and designed to harm his chances for reelection. The cases, she said, are “100 percent” motivated by politics, adding: “This is not what the courts are supposed to be used for ... and it’s disgusting, it’s disgraceful.”
“I really want to say to any of the judges that are out there listening that have anything left in terms of looking at the cases, looking at the facts, looking at law, make our profession proud because what I’m seeing is complete politicization of our legal system,” she added. “It’s not right, it’s an election year, it’s election interference, you shouldn’t be tying up a candidate.”
Her comments came hours after a judge in Manhattan set a March 25 trial date for President Trump’s case in which he is accused of falsifying business records for alleged payments to an adult movie actress at the end of the 2016 campaign. His lawyers attempted to scrap the charges, but Judge Juan Merchan dismissed them.
The former president has pleaded not guilty to the charges, saying they’re part of a longstanding “witch hunt” against him. He also accused the judge of having a political bias against him, according to posts he’s made on social media.
“I don’t think the president can get a fair hearing in New York, I certainly don’t believe—I think he got five percent of the vote in DC—I don’t think he can get a fair trial there at all. He certainly was never going to get one out of Fulton County Georgia,” Ms. Habba said Thursday.
The lawyer was making reference to other charges that were filed against President Trump in Georgia, Florida, and Washington, D.C. He’s pleaded not guilty in those cases, too.
“Maybe Florida he has a fair shot but that case never should have happened especially in light of what we learned from the (special counsel) Robert Hur report about Joe Biden and his classified documents scandal,” Ms. Habba, who is representing President Trump in his New York civil fraud trial, added in the interview.
The March 25 announcement means that the first of President Trump’s four criminal prosecutions to proceed to trial is a case centered on years-old accusations that he sought to bury stories amid his 2016 presidential run. The other cases charge him with plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 election and illegally hoarding classified documents at his Florida estate.
Saying that he had resisted defense lawyer urgings from months ago to postpone the trial, Judge Merchan said, “In hindsight, frankly, I’m glad that I took that position, because here we are and the D.C. case did not go forward.” He said he decided to stick with the trial date after speaking last week with the judge in the Washington case, Tanya Chutkan.
The judge added that the trial is likely to last about six weeks.
“We strenuously object to what is happening in this courtroom,” said Trump lawyer Todd Blanche, who added that “the fact that we are now going to spend, President Trump is now going to spend, the next two months working on this trial instead of out on the campaign trail running for president is something that should not happen in this country.”
President Trump told reporters in New York on Thursday that he would prefer to be campaigning in South Carolina, a state that is soon set to hold its primary election, than in New York City.
“How can you run for election and be sitting in a courthouse in Manhattan all day long? I’m supposed to be in South Carolina right now, where other people are, and where, again—this is where I should be. I shouldn’t be in a courthouse,” the former president said. “We’ll just have to figure it out,” he added. “I’ll be here during the day and I’ll be campaigning during the night.”
Describing the case as “election interference,” President Trump said that it’s “being run by Joe Biden’s White House” and that some Biden administration-associated individuals have allegedly “have been placed into the DA’s office to make sure they do a good job of election interference.”
The New York case has long been considered by analysts to be the least legally perilous of the four indictments filed against President Trump last year, with the alleged misconduct seen by many as less grave than accusations of mishandling classified documents or election-related charges.
The former president is charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. Each count carries a potential punishment of up to four years in prison, but there is no guarantee that a conviction would result in prison time, some legal analysts have said.
