A judge in New York City has declined Donald Trump’s request to throw out criminal charges against him in connection with his hush-money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 presidential race. And so, the first prosecution of a former American president will begin March 25, 2024. https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1758155510845415699 From the New York Times:
The judge, Juan M. Merchan, announced the decision at a hearing in a Lower Manhattan courtroom as Mr. Trump looked on from the defense table. The former president’s lawyers objected to the judge’s decision for jury selection to begin on March 25, noting that the six-week trial would conflict with Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign.
One of the former president’s lawyers, Todd Blanche, called the schedule “unfathomable,” arguing that, “We are in the middle of primary season,” and claiming that the trial would overlap with dozens of Republican primaries and caucuses.
Early on in the hearing, when a Team Trump lawyer was whining about the court date, the judge curtly instructed him to “stop interrupting me, please.” https://twitter.com/JonFlan/status/1758168700857761891 Trump continues to call this case “election interference” because it will happen during the presidential election primary season. What he never says, though, is he and his lawyers have used delay after delay to try and stop the trial. Some background info on the case from PBS:
The case centers on payoffs to two women, porn actor Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal. Trump says he didn’t have any of the alleged sexual encounters.
Trump’s lawyer at the time, Michael Cohen, paid Daniels $130,000 and arranged for the publisher of the National Enquirer supermarket tabloid to pay McDougal $150,000 in a practice known as “catch-and-kill.”
Trump’s company then paid Cohen $420,000 and logged the payments as legal expenses, not reimbursements, prosecutors said. Bragg charged Trump last year with falsifying internal records kept by his company, the Trump Organization, to hide the true nature of payments.
This will be the first criminal case against Trump to go to trial, but probably not the last as he currently faces 91 felony counts across four criminal indictments. https://twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/1758143760352067762
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