Donald Trump was ordered Monday to stand trial in a criminal case, the first ever against a U.S. president, on April 15 in New York.
The hush money case is perhaps the only one of an unprecedented four indictments against Trump that will go to trial before the November election where he will face President Joe Biden for a new term in the White House.
Trump had sought to delay the New York case, but Judge Juan Merchan rejected his efforts to postpone it or dismiss the entirety of the allegations that he covered up a hush money payment to a porn star just ahead of the 2016 presidential election to hide it from voters before he unexpectedly won the presidency.
Merchan rejected a Trump lawyer’s claim that a lengthy delay in the trial was necessary to give Trump’s lawyers and prosecutors more time to review thousands of pages of newly disclosed documents from a previous federal investigation of the case. A prosecutor told Merchan most of the documents were irrelevant.
“It’s odd that we’re even here,” Merchan said before setting the new trial date in a case that originally had been slated to start Monday.
As he ended the hearing, Merchan said, “See you all on the 15th.”
Trump contended Merchan was being partisan in setting the start of the trial in three weeks. “I don’t know how you can have a trial that is going on right in the middle of the election,” Trump said. “It’s not fair.”
Trump has denied wrongdoing in the case, saying on his Truth Social platform ahead of his courtroom appearance, “No crime. Our Country is CORRUPT!” But if convicted, he could face years in prison.
Aside from the hush money case, Trump, to a degree, prevailed in another of his legal disputes on Monday.
A New York appellate court handed him a financial lifeline, giving him 10 days to post a $175 million bond so he can appeal a civil fraud judgment against him.
The ruling sharply cut the nearly half-billion-dollar bond he had been ordered to post to keep the state attorney general from starting to seize his assets, possibly including some of his marquee New York office buildings, a baronial mansion outside the city, even his jet dubbed Trump Force One.
Trump was under a Monday deadline to post $464 million in cash or secure a bond backed by cash and liquid investment collateral to appeal a February ruling that for years he, his eldest sons and his Trump Organization real estate conglomerate had vastly inflated his assets so he could get better terms on future business deals.
But a five-judge appellate court panel gave Trump more time to pay a smaller amount.
It was a significant victory for Trump and perhaps ends his immediate cash crunch. His lawyers had said he did not have the cash on hand to meet the bigger amount since most of his wealth is tied up in real estate investments that cannot be easily divested.
Trump’s attorneys had previously sought to post a $100 million bond but have not said whether he can meet the $175 million threshold. Trump has claimed to have almost $500 million on hand, although his own lawyer has disputed the claim.
In the hush money case, Trump is accused of having his one-time political fixer, former lawyer Michael Cohen, make a $130,000 hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels just ahead of the 2016 election to keep her from publicly talking about a one-night tryst she claims to have had with Trump a decade earlier at a celebrity golf tournament. Trump has long denied the affair and the criminal allegations.
But prosecutors allege he reimbursed Cohen for the payment and then illegally falsified his business records to claim the payment to Cohen was for legal expenses.
Cohen, who has turned against his one-time boss, is expected to be a key witness against Trump. Cohen pleaded guilty to campaign finance charges in the case and lying to Congress, among other crimes. In all, he spent 13½ months in prison and a year and a half in home confinement.
Trump’s three other criminal cases are proceeding slowly.
Two of them involve allegations that he illegally plotted to upend his 2020 election loss to Biden and another that he illegally took highly classified documents with him to his Florida oceanside estate when he left office in early 2021.
Whether any of the three remaining cases are tried before the election is uncertain and Trump, if he wins the November election, could seek to have them dismissed. In any event, no president has been prosecuted while in office.
He has denied all 91 charges he is facing across the four indictments.
