Donald Trump’s trial on charges he falsified business records to hide secret payments to three individuals ahead of the 2016 election campaign will go ahead as scheduled with jury selection starting on March 25, a judge ruled Thursday.
Trump, who was in the courtroom in New York on Thursday, pleaded not guilty last April to 34 counts of falsifying business records in an alleged scheme to bury stories about extramarital affairs.
Payments were made to two women, porn actor Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, as well as to a Trump Tower doorman who claimed to have a story about Trump having a child out of wedlock.
Trump, who is the leading candidate to be the Republican nominee for president in 2024, says he didn’t have any of the alleged sexual encounters with the two women.
Trump’s lawyer at the time, Michael Cohen, paid Daniels $130,000 US 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.
In an interview with ABC television, Michael Cohen said despite denials, Donald Trump most certainly knew about, and directed, payoffs made to two women during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign.
Trump’s legal team has argued that no crime was committed in the case brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
But the case will proceed and make history, as it’s the first time a former president has faced a criminal proceeding.
Judge Juan Manuel Merchan’s ruling on Thursday, which rejected requests for a delay from the former president’s defence lawyers, took advantage of a delay in a separate federal prosecution in Washington charging Trump with plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. That case had a March 4 trial date pencilled in, but that was put on hold pending the outcome of an appeal from Trump.
Over the past year, Trump has lashed out at Merchan as a “Trump-hating judge,” asked him to step down from the case and sought to move the case from state court to federal court, all to no avail. Merchan has acknowledged making several small donations to Democrats, including $15 to Trump’s rival Joe Biden, but said he’s certain of his “ability to be fair and impartial.”
Other trial dates not set in stone
The former president faces 91 criminal charges over four criminal indictments, but it is unclear when the other trials will take place.
Trump faces a four-count criminal indictment alleging he conspired to defraud the U.S. by preventing Congress from certifying Biden’s 2020 election victory. The Supreme Court is expected to weigh in soon on an immunity issue Trump has raised, which was rejected by the U.S. Court of Appeals in D.C. The top court could consider the case or decline to, in which case the district court judge in D.C. would shortly thereafter set a trial date.
Trump also faces a scheduled May 20 trial in Florida on allegations he unlawfully retained government documents after leaving the presidency in early 2021, but the pace of pre-trial rulings and hearings has called into question whether that start date will be kept.
He is also the defendant in a 13-count indictment that details alleged acts he undertook to reverse his 2020 election defeat in Georgia. A date has yet to be set for that trial, and a two-day hearing was underway on Thursday, looking into misconduct allegations levelled at the district attorney overseeing the case.