NORRISTOWN, Pa. (AP) — The judge in Bill Cosby's sexual assault trial pushed back Thursday at defense demands that he step aside because his wife is a social worker and advocate for assault victims.

Cosby's lawyers are making a last-ditch effort to postpone the comedian's sexual assault retrial by pressuring Judge Steven O'Neill to step aside after losing their bid to overturn his ruling allowing up to five additional accusers to testify.

O'Neill told a pretrial hearing Thursday that rulings he's made that went against Cosby aren't evidence he's being influenced by his wife's work.

The judge's wife, Deborah O'Neill, is a psychotherapist at the University of Pennsylvania and coordinates a team that cares and advocates for student sexual assault victims. Cosby's lawyers emphasized their concern over a $100 donation made in Deborah O'Neill's name to an organization that gave money to a group planning protests outside Cosby's retrial.

O'Neill said the donation was made 13 months ago by the university department where his wife works and that it wasn't a personal donation using her own money or their joint assets.

The 80-year-old Cosby faces charges that he drugged and molested former Temple University athletics administrator Andrea Constand at his home in 2004.

O'Neill presided over Cosby's first trial, which ended in a hung jury last year. Jury selection in his retrial is scheduled for Monday, but the retrial could be delayed indefinitely if he bows out. O'Neill has yet to decide on the request.

O'Neill said Thursday that Cosby's old lawyers raised the prospect of having him step aside in December 2016, but never followed through.

The judge said lawyer Brian McMonagle told him Cosby wanted him to seek a recusal after seeing "something in the news" about Deborah O'Neill's profession. O'Neill said the only news item he could find at the time was one written by a vocal Cosby supporter.

As Cosby's lawyers are battling with O'Neill, they also are counting on him to make critical rulings to bolster their defense that Constand is a money-grubbing liar.

Cosby's lawyers want permission to call a witness who says Constand told her that she was not assaulted but could make up allegations to sue and get money, and they want jurors to hear how much Cosby paid her in a 2006 civil settlement.

They also are still fighting O'Neill's ruling allowing as many as five additional accusers to testify after he allowed just one to take the stand at Cosby's first trial.

Pennsylvania's Superior Court on Wednesday rejected an appeal over O'Neill decision not to let Cosby's lawyers immediately challenge his ruling in a higher court.

Documents made public showed that prosecutors have chosen model Janice Dickinson as one of the women they plan to have testify. She says Cosby drugged and raped her in Lake Tahoe in 1982.

Prosecutors, who have decried the defense attacks on O'Neill as a "thinly veiled attempt to delay and pollute the jury pool," are looking for the judge to keep out talk of a prior investigation into Constand's allegations and a recent political race where putting Cosby behind bars was at issue.

Prosecutors say former District Attorney Bruce Castor's stated reasoning that he did not charge Cosby in 2005 because the case was weak and he wanted him to speak freely in a civil deposition is irrelevant to the case at hand.

They say Castor's unsuccessful campaign against current DA Kevin Steele in 2015 and his ongoing legal skirmish with Constand also are irrelevant.

Steele's predecessor, Risa Vetri Ferman, reopened the investigation in 2015 after The Associated Press fought to unseal parts of Cosby's deposition testimony — including lurid passages about him giving drugs to women he wanted to have sex with. Cosby was charged shortly before the statute of limitations was set to expire.

The AP does not typically identify people who say they are victims of sexual assault unless they grant permission, which Constand and Dickinson have done.—MICHAEL R. SISAK (AP)