Former President Donald Trump’s attempt to further delay the hush money trial against him was dismissed on Monday by Judge Juan Merchan, who moved forward with the April 15 start date.
Trump appeared in a Manhattan courtroom Monday morning and requested another delay in the case against him, where he is charged with falsifying business records while covering up an alleged affair with porn actress Stormy Daniels. Earlier this month, Merchan moved the trial start date to April 15 after Trump’s attorneys argued that they needed more time to review a new dump of roughly 195,000 pages of material that could be used as evidence.
During Monday’s hearings, however, the judge was unconvinced when Trump’s lawyers argued that they needed additional time to review the documents. Prosecutors argued that only around 300 pages in the roughly 195,000-page dump were “relevant usable new documents,” while the defense said “tens of thousands” could be important in the case, The New York Times reported.
“We’re not doing our jobs if we don’t independently look at the new material,” Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche told Merchan.
But Merchan, who donated to President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign, didn’t buy the argument, even calling the defense’s assertions that the prosecution violated discovery rules “very confusing.”
Merchan did, however, allow Trump’s legal team the opportunity to file another motion seeking to delay the trial based on pre-trial publicity concerns, CNN reported.
The hush money case, brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and widely viewed as the weakest case against the former president, was the first in a slew of criminal charges against Trump and made Trump the first ex-president to be charged with a crime. After Monday’s court hearing, Trump said the prosecution is fighting over the timing of the trial because they want it to begin before the 2024 election, calling the trial “election interference.”
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“This is a pure case of voter intimidation and election interference, and it shouldn’t be allowed to happen,” Trump told reporters gathered outside the courtroom, adding, “As you know DA Bragg did not want to bring this case. He was forced into it for outside reasons, and it’s a disgrace that it can happen. This was a case that could’ve been brought three and a half years ago, but they decide to wait [until] now, just during the election, so that I won’t be able to campaign.”