The former president had wanted a Manhattan judge to further delay his trial on charges related to a porn star’s affair claim as he seeks to regain the White House.
Here’s the latest on the hearing.
Donald J. Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial on charges that he covered up a sex scandal will start on April 15 after a judge on Monday denied the former president’s attempts to delay it further.
For roughly an hour, the judge, Juan M. Merchan, slammed arguments from Mr. Trump’s lawyers that his case should be pushed back any longer because of newly disclosed documents from a related federal investigation. After a 45-minute break, he returned to the courtroom, said that no harm had been done to the former president by the delayed disclosure and set the new trial date.
“Defendant has been given a reasonable amount of time,” the judge said, crisply, referring to Mr. Trump.
The ruling — nearly a year to the day after the Manhattan district attorney’s office accused Mr. Trump of falsifying business records to cover up a hush-money payment to the porn star Stormy Daniels — makes it all but certain that he will go on trial next month. Even as three other criminal cases against him remain mired in appeals and delays, he will be the first American president to stand trial.
After the hearing, Mr. Trump pledged to appeal the judge’s decision, attacking the district attorney’s case as “election interference.”
The trial had originally been set to begin on Monday but Justice Merchan delayed it until April 15, citing the documents from federal prosecutors who previously investigated his longtime former fixer, Michael D. Cohen, who made the payment and is expected to be a star witness against Mr. Trump.
Mr. Trump’s lawyers, casting the disclosure as evidence of prosecutorial misconduct, asked Justice Merchan to delay the trial 90 days, or throw out the case altogether. The district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, argued against further delays, saying that the new materials are largely irrelevant or duplicative.
On Monday, the judge sided with Mr. Bragg’s prosecutors. He suggested that Mr. Trump’s lawyers were dragging their feet and scolded them for what he said were unsubstantiated allegations made against the Manhattan district attorney’s office.
“You are literally accusing the Manhattan D.A.’s office and the people assigned to this case of prosecutorial misconduct and trying to make me complicit in it,” the judge exclaimed.
Almost from the beginning, Justice Merchan seemed skeptical of the arguments of one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Todd Blanche. He pressed him on the number of documents the defense thinks are relevant, saying, “I just want to get a sense of how much time you need.”
A little taken aback, Mr. Blanche consulted papers on the desk before him, and finally came up with “tens of thousands.” Unsatisfied, the judge said that Mr. Blanche was not answering his questions and, eventually, questioned his résumé, asking him how long he had worked as a federal prosecutor. He told Mr. Blanche multiple times that his statements were contradicted by the record.
The judge’s exchanges with the district attorney’s office were far less loaded. One of the prosecutors, Matthew Colangelo, estimated that only about 300 documents were pertinent to the trial, and that “99 percent” were irrelevant, statements that the judge appeared to take seriously.
Even as Monday’s hearing ended in a defeat for Mr. Trump, he won a significant victory in a separate proceeding: A New York appeals court ruled that he did not have to post a nearly half-billion-dollar bond in the civil fraud case that was brought by the state attorney general. Instead, the appeals court said it would accept a far smaller bond of $175 million.
Here’s what else you need to know about Mr. Trump’s busy day:
- Mr. Trump’s failed attempt at a delay underscores the long-running effort to stall his legal entanglements until after the November election, when he hopes to win back the presidency, which would effectively halt the criminal cases against him. With Mr. Trump’s three other criminal trials mired in delays, the Manhattan case might be the only one to move forward before voters head to the polls.
- The Manhattan case stems from Mr. Cohen’s $130,000 hush-money payment to Ms. Daniels, who had hoped to sell her story of a one-night sexual encounter with Mr. Trump. That payment was made just before the 2016 election. After Mr. Trump became president, he reimbursed Mr. Cohen, and therein lay the crime, prosecutors say. Mr. Trump allowed his family business to falsify internal records, claiming that the reimbursement payments were legal expenses. The cover-up hid the scandal from voters, Mr. Bragg contends, casting it as an election-interference case.
- Mr. Trump’s other criminal cases are proceeding more slowly. Georgia prosecutors are unlikely to reach trial on election interference charges until after the presidential election. In Florida, a May trial on charges of mishandling classified documents is likely to be delayed; the Trump-appointed federal judge has not set a schedule despite holding a hearing to do so. And in Washington, a federal case charging Mr. Trump with plotting to overturn the 2020 election awaits the outcome of an April Supreme Court hearing, where the former president’s lawyers will argue that he has absolute immunity from prosecution.
- The appeals court ruling in the civil fraud case staves off a looming financial crisis for the former president. Had the appeals court denied his request — and had he failed to obtain the full bond — Mr. Trump risked losing control over his bank accounts and, eventually, even some of his marquee properties. For now, those dire outcomes might be on hold.