Donald Trump will go on trial next month in Manhattan to face the first-ever criminal charges leveled against a former president, after a judge on Thursday rejected his efforts to have the case thrown out.
Trump flew in for the hearing, entering Judge Juan Merchan’s courtroom at 9:30 a.m. accompanied by a team of defense attorneys led by Todd Blanche, a former federal prosecutor, and Susan Necheles, an experienced criminal defense attorney in the city. Soon after the hearing began, Merchan briskly announced that all the defense’s motions were denied.
“At this point I can inform you that we’re moving ahead to jury selection on March 25,” Merchan said, after mentioning he had two conversations to coordinate with Judge Tanya Chutkan about the pending federal criminal case against Trump in Washington, D.C.
Merchan’s decision means that Trump, the Republican front-runner for president, will be on trial for at least several weeks during the height of the primary campaign, while his rival Nikki Haley tries desperately to hang on.
Blanche protested the March trial date, citing the primary schedule and other trials, including the Mar-a-Lago documents case, which technically has a trial date in May. He said Trump and his team had been placed in an “impossible position.”
“It is completely election interference to say that ‘you are going to sit in this courtroom in Manhattan’ where there is no reason for it,” Blanche said, referring to the campaign schedule. “What about his rights?”
Later, following a word with Trump, Blanche pleaded with Merchan again.
“We strenuously object to what is happening in this courtroom,” he said. “The fact that President Trump is going to now spend the next two months working on this trial instead of being out on the campaign trail running for president is something that should not happen in this country.”
Merchan asked, “What is your legal argument?”
“That is my legal argument,” Blanche replied.
“That isn’t a legal argument,” Merchan said. “See you March 25.”
After court adjourned, Trump reportedly said he would be in court during the day and campaigning at night, slightly contradicting his legal team’s own case minutes earlier that he couldn’t possibly do both things at once.
Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, whose office is prosecuting the case, said in a brief statement he was “pleased” with the decision.
It appeared for months that Bragg’s case would conflict with the trial in the Justice Department’s case against Trump for his power grab after losing the 2020 election. That trial, overseen by Chutkan, is on hold as the Supreme Court considers whether to hear Trump’s appeal that he is immune from prosecution. He lost the same argument in a lower court last week.
The road to Trump’s first-ever criminal trial began last March when a Manhattan grand jury took the unprecedented step of indicting a former president, leveling 34 counts of falsifying business records against him. Trump is alleged to have ordered his former lawyer Michael Cohen to arrange a payment to silence porn star Stormy Daniels’s allegation of an affair with Trump during the closing days of the 2016 election. Cohen has claimed that Trump later reimbursed him for the payments, and prosecutors allege that Trump attempted to disguise the payment’s true purpose in the Trump Organization’s business records.
Genna Contino contributed to this report.
