Donald Trump tried to avoid trial in Manhattan for covering up his hush money payment to Stormy Daniels, but a judge on Thursday said it’s going forward in March as planned.
will face trial next month in New York City for faking documents to cover up his sexual affair with porn star Stormy Daniels, becoming the first American president to face a jury on criminal charges.Trump’s lead defense lawyer, Todd Blanche, immediately called the decision to keep the start of trial on schedule “a great injustice,” citing the absolute deluge of legal trouble that the former president now faces across the country.
Trump, who came to court for the hearing, remained relatively still on Thursday. He leaned back in his chair, wearing a blue suit and bright red tie, avoiding thelast year, the first such criminal case against the former president. The case centers on the way Trump coordinated with his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, to buy the porn star’s silence for $130,000 in the days before the 2016 presidential election–then faked company paperwork at his Trump Organization to disguise the payment.
Blanche pleaded with Justice Merchan to reconsider, calling the decision to start trial next month “an unconstitutional violation” and accusing the judge of robbing Trump of spending his time on the road as he competes in the 2024 Republican presidential primaries.Blanche also tried to justify pushing back the trial by claiming that the "extraordinary media saturation” of Trump news coverage could taint the pool of potential New York City jurors.
Still, Blanche tried to leverage the upcoming classified documents trial as a reason to hold off on this one, claiming that a prolonged battle in New York would keep him from preparing for a May 20 start in South Florida. This trial threatens Trump in a way that Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith’s two cases in D.C. and Florida do not. Those are federal, and Trump could theoretically kill the investigations or pardon himself if his third shot at the presidency manages to win the 2024 election in November. The Manhattan DA is levying state charges, which fall outside the president’s authority in the nation’s federalist system.
In court on Thursday, the judge also reviewed proposed questions for screening potential jurors at the upcoming trial. Although the task of selecting fair-minded jurors in a case involving this kind of divisive politician has presented theoretical challenges, the jury selection process was relatively quick at the Trump Organization tax fraud trial in 2022 and his separate rape defamation trials in 2023 and 2024.at trial.
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