NEW YORK — A New York appeals court judge rejected Donald Trump’s bid Monday to delay his April 15 hush money criminal trial while he fights to move the case out of Manhattan.

Justice Lizbeth González of the state’s midlevel appeals court made her ruling after an emergency hearing where Trump’s lawyers asked to postpone the trial indefinitely while they seek a change of venue. Trump was seeking an emergency stay, a court order that would prevent the trial from starting on time.

Trump lawyer Emil Bove argued that the presumptive Republican nominee faces “real potential prejudice” as a defendant in heavily Democratic Manhattan. Citing defense surveys and a review of media coverage, Bove argued that jury selection, scheduled to start next Monday, “cannot proceed in a fair manner.”

Trump has suggested on social media that the trial should be moved to Staten Island, the only New York City borough he won in 2016 and 2020.

Steven Wu, appellate chief for the Manhattan district attorney’s office, noted that trial Judge Juan M. Merchan already rejected Trump’s requests to move or delay the trial as untimely.

“The question in this case is not whether a random poll of New Yorkers from whatever neighborhood are able to be impartial, it’s about whether a trial court is able to select a jury of 12 impartial jurors,” Wu said. He blamed Trump for stoking pretrial publicity with “countless media appearances talking about the facts of this case, the witnesses and so on.”

In a separate appellate matter, Trump’s lawyers are also challenging a gag order imposed on him in the case, which Merchan recently expanded to prohibit Trump from making comments about the judge’s family. The appeals court signaled it would take up that matter at a later date.

Trump is accused of falsifying his company’s records to hide the nature of payments to his former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen, who helped him bury negative stories during his 2016 campaign. Cohen’s activities included paying porn actor Stormy Daniels $130,000 to suppress her claims of an extramarital sexual encounter with Trump years earlier.

Trump pleaded not guilty last year to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. He has denied having a sexual encounter with Daniels. Trump has also made numerous other attempts to get the trial postponed, echoing a strategy he’s deployed in his other criminal cases. “We want delays,” Trump proclaimed to TV cameras outside a February pretrial hearing in his hush-money case.