Lawyers for Paul Manafort are seeking to delay one of his criminal trials and move the location away from Washington, where they say the bias against their client is so great that a fair trial would be “impossible,” according to court documents filed in federal court on Friday.

The legal team for Mr. Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman, asked a federal judge to move the trial from Alexandria, Va., to Roanoke, Va., about 240 miles away.

Roanoke is in southwest Virginia, in a smaller media market where potential jurors would be less likely to be influenced by news media coverage of Mr. Manafort’s case, his lawyers argued. The defense also suggested that Roanoke offered a pool of jurors with more “balanced” political views.

Voters in the Alexandria area voted two to one in favor of Mr. Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton, in 2016, the defense said. Mr. Trump won the county that surrounds Roanoke.