- Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg was the first to secure an indictment of a former president, but the pace of preparations for the case slowed after a federal trial was scheduled first.
- The postponement of Trump’s federal election interference case opened the door to New York trial happening first.
A New York judge will meet Thursday with Donald Trump for what could become the first criminal trial against the former president, on charges he falsified business records to pay women hush money.
Despite receiving the least attention of the four criminal cases against Trump, the trial threatens to sideline the likely Republican nominee during the heart of the primary season while he campaigns again for the White House. Trump contends these cases are being waged by Democratic opponents interfering with the election, but prosecutors argue he faces the same legal standards as anyone else.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg was the first to secure an indictment against Trump in March 2023 on 34 counts. New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan had initially scheduled the trial to start March 25, but will have to decide whether that date stands. Merchan is holding a hearing Thursday on Trump requests to dismiss the case.
After Trump was indicted in two federal cases, the New York case took a back seat. But the federal election-interference trial that had been scheduled March 4 was postponed while Trump argues in appeals courts he is immune to the charges, which opened the door to the New York trial going first.
Trump has pleaded not guilty. If convicted, the maximum sentence for each felony count would be four years in prison, but first-time offenders typically get shorter sentences or probation.
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Here is what we know about the case:
Trump trashes ‘zombie case’ as politically motivated
Trump has asked Merchan to dismiss the case and he could get a decision Thursday. Trump contends he didn’t cause false entries into business records and argued that Bragg “filed a discombobulated package of politically motivated charges marred by legal defects, procedural failures, discovery violations, and a stubborn refusal to provide meaningful particulars regarding its theory of the case.”
Bragg’s predecessor as Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance Jr., decided against pursuing charges.
“The charges against President Trump arise from a sprawling on-again, off-again investigation that lasted five years and has cost New Yorkers millions of dollars,” Trump’s lawyers, led by Todd Blanche and Susan Necheles, argued in one filing. “Former Special Assistant District Attorney Mark Pomerantz and his colleagues dubbed the focus of the charges in the indictment the ‘zombie case’ because of how many times they abandoned the theory, only to revive it when other inquiries were even less fruitful.”
Hurdles to starting the trial March 25 include Trump’s lawyers asking for hearings to argue about how long the indictment took, selective prosecution and grand jury leaks − if the case isn’t dismissed.
Trump’s lawyers quoted a state appeals court decision that the federal and state Constitutions “forbid a public authority from enforcing the laws ‘with an evil eye and an unequal hand, so as practically to make unjust and illegal discriminations between persons in similar circumstances.’”
Prosecutor calls Trump’s arguments ‘meritless’
Bragg’s office said the argument that Trump was singled out is “meritless” and he doesn’t deserve an evidentiary hearing. Prosecutors alleged that from August 2015 to December 2017 Trump orchestrated and concealed payments to influence the election by suppressing negative information about him.
“Defendant Donald J. Trump is charged with thirty-four felony counts of falsifying business records in the first degree as part of an expansive and corrupt criminal scheme to conceal damaging information from the voting public in advance of the 2016 presidential election,” Bragg’s team wrote in one filing.
Bragg also brushed aside the argument that the case is politically motivated.
“Defendant repeatedly suggests that because he is a current presidential candidate, the ordinary rules for criminal law and procedure should be applied differently here,” Bragg’s office wrote. “This argument is essentially an attempt to evade criminal responsibility because defendant is politically powerful.”
Trump calls prosecutor ‘a degenerate psychopath’
Trump, the likely Republican nominee campaigning to return to the White House, is expected to attend the hearing, according to his lawyer, Steven Sadow.
The trial that Bragg estimated could last five weeks threatens to take Trump off the campaign trail as states continue to hold primaries. Criminal defendants are expected to attend their trials, in contrast to civil trials where attendance is optional.
Trump has argued Democratic prosecutors in his pending cases are interfering with the election by forcing him to respond to charges. In posts on social media about Bragg, Trump has said indicting an innocent man would “create years of hatred, chaos, and turmoil” and that he would be prosecuted only by “a degenerate psychopath that truely hates the USA!”
Trump has blasted Merchan as a “Trump-hating judge” and asked to have him removed from the case. But Merchan remains presiding over the case.
Trump also wanted to have the case moved from local to federal court , where he could have argued he was immune to prosecution for actions taken while he was president, as he has in other cases. but he was rejected.
“The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the matter was a purely a personal item of the President − a cover-up of an embarrassing event,” U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein wrote in refusing to move the case in July 2023. “Hush money paid to an adult film star is not related to a President’s official acts. It does not reflect in any way the color of the President’s official duties.”
What charges does Trump face in New York?
The 34 counts apply to payments the Trump Organization paid his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, in the guise of a legal fees, according to the indictment and a statement of facts released by Bragg.
Cohen has testified 11 reimbursements went to him – Trump signed nine of the checks – for arranging to silence porn actress Stormy Daniels for $130,000 and Playboy model Karen McDougal for $150,000 about their claims of having had sex with Trump.
Cohen pleaded guilty to a campaign finance violation for his role in the affair and served time in prison.
Bragg’s office said the Trump organization made a total of 34 false entries in business records from Feburary to December 2017 to conceal the covert $130,000 payment. Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, has said she would be willing to testify.
The indictment describes Cohen submitting invoices for payments and making false entries with voucher number into a ledger for the Trump Organization through either the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust or Trump himself.
Under New York law, falsification of business records can be a misdemeanor. But the charges can be elevated to felonies by alleging they were committed with the intent to defraud such as by committing another crime or concealing another crime.
“We cannot allow New York businesses to manipulate their records to cover up criminal conduct,” Bragg said when the indictment was announced.
‘The stakes are very high’: legal expert
Shan Wu, a white-collar defense lawyer who has served as counsel to former Attorney General Janet Reno and as a federal prosecutor, called it a serious case despite the initial legal commentary that the case was the “least important” against Trump or “kind of silly.”
“The stakes are very high,” Wu said of 34 felony counts. “Certainly prison time is a possibility.”
Karen Agnifilo, a former Manhattan prosecutor now in private practice, compared the local charges to mail fraud or wire fraud charges at the federal level.
“This is pretty serious and this is certainly worthy of bringing,” Agnifilo said.
Wu and Andrew Weissmann, a former general counsel to the FBI and prosecutor for special counsel Robert Mueller, each said falsified financial records and hush money were the tools for alleged election interference because Trump is accused to trying to hide information that could have tipped the results.
“It really was about election interference,” Wu said.
More:Former Trump fixer Michael Cohen acknowledges submitting AI-generated fake case citations
