Trump’s New York hush money case to proceed to trial, judge says

by Zach Schonfeld - 02/15/24 9:59 AM ET

NEW YORK — A judge rejected former President Trump’s bid to toss his hush money charges Thursday, paving the way for the first criminal trial of a former president to begin next month.

Judge Juan Merchan said “at this point” he will move ahead with jury selection beginning March 25 as scheduled, a timeline that would enable a jury to return a verdict well in advance of July’s Republican National Convention and November’s general election.

Trump’s lawyers then began insisting the trial be delayed, noting Trump’s other cases, quickly turning the hearing into a fiery back-and-forth.

“We have been faced with extremely compressed and expedited schedules in each and every one of those trials,” Trump attorney Todd Blanche said.

Blanche described the March trial date as election interference, highlighting the upcoming primary calendar and arguing it will get in the way of Trump’s ability to prepare for trial.

“As it stands now, staring on March 1, through the time we expect this trial to end, by my count, there are 42 primaries and caucuses during that time period,” Blanche said.

Merchan, who at one point scolded Blanche for interrupting him, then again insisted the schedule will move ahead as planned.

“At this point, under the circumstances and given all the information before me, we’re moving ahead to jury selection on March 25,” Merchan said.

Top Stories from The Hill

The hush money case marked Trump’s first indictment, but it fell out of focus as the former president’s criminal charges piled up in other cases, which legal observers have viewed as more serious.

Now, the hush money prosecution is poised to again jump out in front, with the trial now less than six weeks away, all as the Republican presidential front-runner continues to move closer to locking up the nomination.

Merchan’s announcement to solidify Trump’s March trial date — which could always still slip — comes after the judge denied Trump’s various attempts to get his case dismissed.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) charged Trump last spring with 34 counts of falsifying business records over reimbursements Trump made in 2016 to his then-fixer, Michael Cohen.

Cohen had paid porn actress Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about an affair she alleged to have had with Trump. The indictment accuses Trump of improperly deeming the reimbursements a legal retainer in order to conceal damaging information from the public ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

Trump, who denies the affair, pleaded not guilty.

The former president urged the judge to dismiss the indictment without a trial, arguing he was being selectively prosecuted, the grand jury process had technical defects and that prosecutors waited too long to bring the case.

Legal experts viewed those arguments as a long-shot effort, but many observers still expected the hush money trial to be delayed to allow Trump to first go to trial in Washington, D.C., on federal charges of conspiring to subvert the 2020 presidential election.

That trial was originally scheduled to begin in early March, a timeline that was all but certain to conflict with the scheduled hush money trial date.

Months ago, Trump’s D.C. judge indicated she was coordinating with Merchan directly about the potential conflict, and Merchan said Thursday that those conversations had been continuing. Bragg separately signaled in public that, if needed, he wouldn’t oppose Trump’s federal cases going first.

Trump has slammed the brakes on his D.C. trial, however, by appealing his claims that he has presidential immunity from those charges. That matter is now before the Supreme Court, and while it remains unclear when the appeal will be resolved, the trial was taken off the schedule in the meantime.

“As you know, there’s a lot of moving parts in the D.C. case. Nobody knows what’s going to happen and when it’s going happen,” Merchan said.

Updated at 10:43 a.m. ET

Tags Alvin Bragg