NEW YORK — Two presidential campaigns ago, Donald Trump faced a brewing sex scandal that threatened to derail his bid for the White House.
On Thursday, a New York judge ensured that the very same scandal will loom over Trump’s latest run for president, scheduling for March 25 a trial that could jeopardize his campaign — and his freedom.
Judge Juan Manuel Merchan rejected Trump’s bid to throw out the Manhattan district attorney’s criminal charges against him that stem from a hush-money payment to a porn actor in 2016. By setting a trial date for next month, Merchan cleared the way for the first prosecution of a former U.S. president in the nation’s history, ensuring that Trump will face at least one jury before Election Day.
The ruling is a crucial victory for District Attorney Alvin Bragg. He said he was “pleased” by the judge’s decision and was looking forward to the trial, where Trump is facing 34 felony charges and, if convicted, a maximum sentence of four years in prison.
Merchan’s decision will reorient the public perception of Trump’s convoluted legal conundrum, drawing the nation’s bleary eyes to Manhattan. Overall, the former president is facing 91 felony counts across four criminal indictments from prosecutors in Washington, Florida and Georgia, as well as Manhattan, all while he seeks to lock up the Republican presidential nomination. Never before has a former president wrestled with even one criminal indictment.
Until recently, Trump’s federal case in Washington was first on the calendar. That case, in which the former president is charged with plotting to overturn the 2020 election, is widely thought to be the most consequential of the Trump criminal prosecutions. But the Thursday hearing cemented the reality that the Manhattan trial will soon begin.
Trump portrays the Manhattan case as trivial and too old to be relevant, but it presents a formidable threat. Unlike the federal cases in Washington and Florida, which Trump could try to shut down should he regain the White House, Bragg’s case is insulated from federal intervention. Trump would not be able to pardon himself or otherwise deploy the presidency as a legal shield.
Merchan’s ruling also represented a forceful rejection of Trump’s most battle-tested legal strategy: running out the clock. Facing a lengthy legal docket in courtrooms up and down the East Coast, Trump has sought to turn the calendar to his advantage, pushing for appeals and delays until November, on the assumption that the cases will halt if he is elected.
Trump attended the Manhattan hearing Thursday, and was more subdued than usual, sitting quietly with his arms at his sides as the judge scheduled the trial. As the hearing went on, he started blankly ahead, at times looking toward the ceiling, his red tie askew.
His lawyers objected fiercely to the judge’s decision that jury selection should begin March 25, noting that the six-week trial would conflict with Trump’s presidential campaign and with other court cases.
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.
But Merchan was impatient with such arguments. From the beginning of the hearing, the judge bristled at Blanche’s opposition to the date, at one point instructing him to “stop interrupting me, please.” He allowed Blanche little leeway to filibuster on behalf of his client, as Trump’s lawyers often do.
Merchan was also curt in denying the defense’s request to throw out the case. Trump’s lawyers had derided it as “discombobulated” and “marred by legal defects and procedural failures.” The judge was unconvinced. He declined to dismiss the charges, without elaborating.
Bragg last year became the first prosecutor to obtain an indictment of Trump. The charges accuse the former president of covering up a potential sex scandal involving porn actor Stormy Daniels during and after the 2016 presidential campaign. Bragg cast his case as an example of Trump’s interfering in an election: Prosecutors argue that he hid damaging information from voters just days before they headed to the polls.
Bragg had been willing for the Washington election interference case to jump ahead in line, underscoring its historical significance. But appeals from Trump postponed that trial, which had initially been scheduled for March 4.
The timing of Bragg’s trial leaves the door open for Trump’s Washington trial to take place in the late spring or early summer. The fate of that case is now in the hands of the Supreme Court.
Bragg’s case is best known for its salacious underlying facts: During the 2016 campaign, Daniels threatened to go public with her story of a tryst with Trump, who then authorized a $130,000 payoff to keep her quiet.
The case might come down to the word of Trump’s former fixer, Michael Cohen, who paid Daniels just days before voters went to the polls. Once Trump was elected, he reimbursed Cohen — and that is where the crime occurred, prosecutors say.
Cohen, the prosecution’s star witness, is expected to testify that Trump authorized his family business to falsely record the reimbursements as legal expenses. And indeed the company described the repayments in internal records as part of a “retainer agreement,” when in fact no such agreement existed.
Trump’s lawyers had argued that Merchan should throw out the case, calling Cohen a liar and disputing whether the charges should even be felonies. For falsifying business records to be a felony, Bragg’s prosecutors must show that Trump intended to commit or conceal another crime.
The prosecutors have invoked potential violations of federal election law — under the theory that the payout served as an illegal donation to Trump’s campaign — as well as a state election law that bars any conspiracy to promote “the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means.” Merchan endorsed that theory of the case.
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