Trump fumes as judge schedules his first criminal case to begin in the middle of the Republican primary: ‘A sad day for New York’
Donald Trump’s “hush money” criminal trial will start in March — smack in the middle of the Republican primary season — a New York judge ruled Thursday, over objections from the former president’s attorneys who argued it would interfere with his bid to regain the White House.
Justice Juan Manuel Merchan said during a Manhattan Supreme Court hearing that jury selection in the estimated six-week-long fudging business records case — the first of Trump’s four criminal cases to head to trial and the first-ever criminal trial of a former US president — will begin March 25.
“Instead of being in South Carolina and other states campaigning, I’m here,” Trump, 77, fumed outside the courtroom after the roughly two-hour hearing wrapped.
“I’ll be here during the day and I’ll be campaigning during the night,” he added. “Biden should be doing the same thing but he’ll be sleeping.”
Merchan issued his ruling at the start of the hearing, which the 2024 GOP presidential frontrunner was forced to attend — and despite Trump lawyer Todd Blanche pleading that starting the trial on the previously scheduled date would be a “great injustice.”
The former president himself groused on his way into the courtroom that the case — in which he is accused of concealing payoffs to hide potential sex scandals from voters in the lead up to the 2016 election — amounted to “election interference.”
“Enjoy it. It’s a sad day. It’s a sad day for New York,” Trump complained to news cameras assembled in a hallway on the lower Manhattan courthouse’s 15th floor.
Merchan said he made his ruling after speaking with DC federal Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing Trump’s federal criminal case alleging that he plotted to overturn the results of the 2020 election after losing to President Biden.
That case was originally set to go to trial on March 4, but has been delayed amid a series of appeals by Trump’s camp.
Trump is charged with 34 felonies in the Manhattan case stemming from his alleged covering up of $310,000 in “hush money” payments made before the 2016 election — including funds that stopped porn star Stormy Daniels and ex-Playboy model Karen McDougal from going public with stories that Trump had secret trysts with them.
Merchan’s ruling means that, barring any last-minute delays, Trump will be forced to abandon the campaign trail to instead sit in the drab Manhattan criminal courthouse and listen to testimony that could reveal salacious details about his sex life and business practices.
Trump’s lawyer Blanche said during the hearing that he objected “strenuously” to starting the trial on March 25 — before the judge dinged him for making a political speech rather than a legal argument.
“The fact that President Trump is going to now spend the next two months working on this trial instead of out on the campaign trail running for president…it should not happen in this country,” Blanche proclaimed near the end of the proceeding.
“Alright, what’s your legal argument?” the judge shot back.
“That is my legal argument,” Blanche replied.
“That’s not a legal argument,” Merchan responded, adding: “I’ll see you March 25th.”
In a minutes-long rant after the hearing ended, Trump insisted he was innocent, saying that there was “no crime” in the case, brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
“I’m gonna have to sit here for months on a trial. I think it’s ridiculous. It’s unfair,” he said.
“It’s a rigged city. It’s a rigged state,” Trump added. “It’s a shame.”
Merchan on Thursday also issued a written decision tossing Trump’s long-shot bid to throw out the felony charges and finding that prosecutors abided by the ex-president’s right to due process.
The judge also noted that the charges Trump is facing — low-level felonies that carry potential prison terms of four years each — are “serious.”
“The people claim that the defendant paid an individual $130,000 to conceal a sexual encounter in an effort to influence the 2016 Presidential election and then falsified 34 business records to cover up the payoff,” Merchan wrote. “In this court’s view, those are serious allegations.”
Trump, wearing a dark blue suit and red tie, did not make eye contact with Bragg as he walked in and took a seat at the defense table at around 9:30 a.m.
He did acknowledge and give a cheeky finger wag toward the journalist and lawyer Jeffrey Toobin, a former New Yorker writer who was suspended from the magazine in 2020 after being caught masturbating on a Zoom call with colleagues. Trump winked at Toobin on his way out of the room.
Bragg entered the courtroom a few minutes earlier than Trump did and took a seat in the gallery’s second row.
Trump sat quietly frowning during the proceeding, occasionally whispering something to one of his four lawyers with him beside him at the defense table.
With the trial date finalized in the first few minutes, the sides moved quickly to discussing other issues — like whether they’ll be able to ask potential jurors about political affiliations or their feelings toward Trump.
“There’s no chance that we’re going to find a juror who has no opinion of President Trump – former President Trump,” Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass said during the hearing.
The businessman and reality-TV-star-turned politician is accused of hatching a plan with his personal lawyer Michael Cohen to have honchos at the tabloid mag National Enquirer pay Daniels $130,000 and McDougal $150,000 for “exclusive” rights to publish their stories — but then bury them.
Trump also signed off on another $30,000 payoff — as part of what is known as a “catch-and-kill” scheme — to silence a former Trump Tower doorman who was trying to sell a story claiming that Trump had fathered a secret child out of wedlock, the court papers allege.
Trump’s crimes unfolded when the then-president lied in internal Trump Organization company records throughout 2017 that reimbursement payments to Cohen for the hush money payouts were actually made for “legal services,” according to an indictment.
To convict Trump on the felony raps, Bragg’s office will need to prove that Trump falsified the records to conceal another crime.
State prosecutors have said the hush-money payments amount to campaign donations and exceed contribution limits. Cohen pleaded guilty in a separate federal case to a campaign finance crime for the same payoffs and was sentenced in 2018 to serve three years in prison.
Bragg’s office has argued in court papers that the payments interfered with the 2016 election by blocking the public’s right to hear “damaging” claims that Trump cheated on his wife Melania.
Daniels had planned to come forward with her story soon after the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape surfaced in which Trump was caught on a hot mic bragging about groping and trying to have sex with several other women who were not his wife.
“You can do anything. … Grab ’em by the p—y,” Trump says in the 2005 clip.
Trump, on the other hand, has claimed that the case against him is “election interference” and “political persecution” because it was unsealed in the months leading up to the start of the 2024 campaign.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to the charges. It’s unclear whether Bragg’s office would seek to jail Trump if he’s convicted.
Thursday’s appearance was Trump’s first time at the Manhattan Supreme Court building on Centre Street — four blocks away from the Brooklyn Bridge — since his arraignment last April.
But he’s been a mainstay by the Manhattan courts since October, when he attended opening statements at a separate courthouse down the block at a fraud trial that could cost him at least $370 million if a judge sides with the New York Attorney General’s Office.
Trump also attended most of a January civil trial in a third courthouse — this one handling federal cases — that ended with a Manhattan jury ordering him to pay a whopping $83.3 million in damages for defaming E. Jean Carroll, the advice columnist whom a prior jury found that Trump sexually assaulted inside a department store fitting room.
Trump was allowed to come and go in the civil cases as he pleased. But he’ll be required to attend every day of the Manhattan criminal trial in person.
