Even with the Republican primary ongoing, the judge in the Stormy Daniels hush money case has decided the trial will happen next month and jury selection will begin March 25.
This is the case brought by leftist District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
Here’s more from Newsmax:
Donald Trump’s hush-money trial will go ahead as scheduled with jury selection starting on March 25, a judge ruled Thursday, turning aside requests for a delay from the former president’s defense lawyers.
In leaving the trial date intact, Judge Juan Manuel Merchan took advantage of a delay in a separate prosecution in Washington charging Trump with plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. That case has been effectively on hold pending the outcome of an appeal from Trump.
The decision means that a case centered on years-old accusations that Trump sought to bury stories about extramarital affairs that arose during his 2016 presidential campaign will be the first of the four criminal prosecutions against Trump to proceed to trial. Other cases charge him seeking to undo the election and illegally hoarding classified documents at his Florida estate.
Trump’s attorneys blasted the decision to keep the March date, complaining that Trump will have to stand trial in New York at the same time as he is attempting to sew up the Republican nomination.
“It is completely election interference to say you are going to sit in this courtroom in Manhattan,” said defense lawyer Todd Blanche.
Trump entered the courthouse shortly before 9 a.m.
The case centers on payoffs 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 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.
Trump’s legal team has argued that no crime was committed.
I think Trump will end up being exonerated in this case but it doesn’t help that he has attacked the judge in this case on social media. I wonder if that played a part in the judge’s thinking to allow this case to go forward next month.