A New York judge has rejected former President Donald Trump’s bid to throw out criminal charges against him stemming from a hush-money payment to a porn actor, setting a trial date for next month and clearing the way for the first prosecution of a former US president.
Judge Juan Manuel Merchan announced the decision at a hearing in a Manhattan courtroom on Thursday as Trump looked on from the defence table. The former president’s lawyers objected to the judge’s decision for jury selection to begin on March 25, noting that the six-week trial would conflict with Trump’s presidential campaign.
One of the former president’s lawyers, Todd Blanche, called the schedule “unfathomable”, arguing that “we are in the middle of primary season” and claiming that the trial would overlap with dozens of Republican primaries and caucuses.
But Merchan summarily dismissed arguments from Trump’s lawyers, who had derided the case as “a discombobulated package of politically motivated charges”. From the beginning of the hearing, the judge bristled at the pushback from Blanche about the date, at one point instructing him to “stop interrupting me, please”.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg brought the charges last year accusing Trump of covering up a potential sex scandal involving porn actor Stormy Daniels during and after the 2016 presidential campaign. In a statement, Bragg said he was “pleased” by the judge’s decision and was looking forward to the trial.
It will be the first of Trump’s criminal cases to go to trial, but it might not be the last. He faces 91 felony counts across four criminal indictments from prosecutors in Washington, Florida and Georgia, as well as Manhattan, all while he seeks to lock up the Republican presidential nomination.
The trial date in Manhattan leaves the door open for Trump’s federal trial, on charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election, to take place in the late spring or early summer. That case, filed in Washington, is now in the hands of the Supreme Court.
While Trump might portray the Manhattan case as the most trivial — and outdated — it presents a unique threat to his legal strategy. Unlike the federal cases against him in Washington and Florida, which Trump could seek to shut down should he regain the White House, Bragg’s case is immune from federal intervention. Trump would not be able to pardon himself, or otherwise deploy the presidency as a legal shield.
Bragg, 50, was the first to obtain an indictment of Trump and has cast his case as a stark example of Trump interfering in an election. Trump did so, prosecutors argue, by covering up the illegal payoff to the porn actor and hiding damaging information from voters just days before they headed to the polls.
Until recently, the federal criminal case involving accusations of election interference was poised to go to trial first. That case, filed in Washington by special counsel Jack Smith, centres on Trump’s effort to remain in power after his 2020 election defeat.
Bragg had indicated a willingness for the Washington case to jump ahead in line, underscoring its historical significance. But appeals from Trump postponed that trial, initially scheduled for March 4.
Before entering the courtroom on Thursday, Trump suggested he was the real victim of election interference, falsely claiming that Bragg’s case is being brought by “Joe Biden’s White House” to keep him off the campaign trial and stuck in a courtroom.
Here’s what else you need to know about Thursday’s hearing:
- The judge’s decision to set the March 25 trial date was a forceful rejection of Trump’s most battle-tested legal strategies: running out the clock. Facing a lengthy legal docket in courtrooms up and down the East Coast, Trump has sought to use the calendar to his advantage, pushing for appeals and delays until Election Day. If Trump returns to the White House, the remaining cases against him will freeze. Noting this strategy, one of Bragg’s prosecutors on Thursday lamented Trump’s effort “to try to evade accountability in any proceeding”.
- Bragg’s case is best known for its salacious facts: during the 2016 campaign, Daniels threatened to go public with her story of a tryst with Trump, who then authorised a US$130,000 payoff to keep her quiet. Paying hush money is not inherently illegal, but in this case, prosecutors argue that the cover-up crossed a line. If convicted, he could face up to four years in prison.
- The case might come down to the word of Trump’s former fixer, Michael Cohen, who paid Daniels just days before voters went to the polls. Once Trump was elected, he reimbursed Cohen — and that is where the crime occurred, prosecutors say. Cohen, the prosecution’s star witness, is expected to testify that Trump authorised his family business to falsely record the reimbursements as legal expenses. And that is exactly what the company did, describing the repayments in internal records as part of a “retainer agreement”, when in fact, no such agreement existed.
- Trump’s lawyers have argued that Merchan should throw out the case, disputing whether the charges should even be felonies. For falsifying business records to be a felony, not a misdemeanour, Bragg’s prosecutors must show that Trump intended to commit or conceal another crime. The prosecutors have invoked potential violations of federal election law — under the theory that the payout served as an illegal donation to Trump’s campaign — as well as a state election law that bars any conspiracy to promote “the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means”.
- After Merchan’s decision about the trial date, the lawyers discussed details about how jurors would be interviewed, driving home the reality of the coming trial. One of the key discussions focused on whether jurors could be asked whether they believed the 2020 election had been stolen. Prosecutors said that the question was important, because it would indicate a willingness to “blindly rely” on Trump’s statements. The defence objected and the judge withheld a final ruling for now.
- This week is a perilous one for Trump. On Thursday, at the same time Trump was in Merchan’s courtroom, there was a hearing in the Georgia case, in which Trump is accused of seeking to subvert the 2020 election results in that state, concerning a romantic relationship between the two prosecutors leading the case. On Friday, Judge Arthur Engoron is expected to deliver a final ruling in Trump’s civil fraud case. Engoron is weighing the New York attorney general’s request that he penalise Trump nearly US$370 million and effectively oust him from the New York business world.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Jonah E. Bromwich, Ben Protess and Kate Christobek
Photographs by: Jefferson Siegel
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