Bragg’s moment in Merchan’s court

HOPE HICKS

Hicks, Trump’s campaign press secretary and a top aide, testified before the grand jury before Trump’s spring 2023 indictment and may take the stand at the trial.

Hicks, 35, claimed in 2019 before the House Judiciary Committee that she was directed to make a public statement denying Trump had had a relationship with McDougal. She said she was never present for a conversation between Cohen and Trump about Daniels or any hush money recipient and that she didn’t know how Cohen had gotten a statement from Daniels denying a tryst or whether Trump knew that Cohen had paid off Daniels.

Hicks also said she never asked Trump whether it was true that he had not been involved with McDougal.

“This was not something that I would have direct knowledge of, so I took his word,” Hicks said.

JUSTICE JUAN MERCHAN

Merchan will preside over the six-week case in his 15th-floor courtroom at 100 Centre St. A frequent target of Trump, the no-nonsense Manhattan Supreme Court judge in the leadup to trial has issued a gag order preventing the presidential candidate from publicly attacking trial participants, which he later expanded to include his own relatives after Trump targeted his daughter online.

Trump’s lawyers are still trying to get Merchan off the case, having failed last year. They claim his daughter’s job at a political firm that advises Democrats meant he had a conflict of interest, which a judicial ethics advisory panel previously determined was not so.

Born in Colombia, Merchan, 61, received his bachelor’s degree from Baruch College and went to law school at Hofstra University. He is no stranger to high-profile cases, presiding over the DA’s fraud case against right-wing strategist and Trump adviser Steve Bannon and previously handling the 2022 tax fraud case against the Trump Organization.

He also presides over Manhattan’s mental health court, which provides treatment options to defendants whose mental illness factored in their cases.

DISTRICT ATTORNEY ALVIN BRAGG

The Manhattan DA has similarly been subjected to Trump’s disparaging online comments since bringing an indictment against Trump and, like Merchan, has been targeted with death threats. Merchan’s gag order encompasses Bragg’s family.

After more than a year of speculation about whether the new DA would bring the first-ever criminal case against a sitting or former U.S. president, Bragg, 50, secured an indictment against Trump on March 30. The indictment alleges that Trump falsified New York business records to disguise a scheme to hide damaging information from the voting public. Trump denies all allegations.

A Harlem native and Manhattan’s first Black DA, the former deputy Attorney General of New York has 20 years of experience in law enforcement, including stints in the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office and City Hall.

TEAM TRUMP

Veteran criminal defense attorneys Todd Blanche and Susan Necheles will lead Trump’s defense at trial.

Trump hired Blanche, a longtime defense attorney and former Manhattan federal prosecutor, after he was indicted in the spring of 2022. Blanche represented Paul Manafort in the Manhattan DA’s case against him for mortgage fraud and other crimes, which the former Trump campaign chairman dodged after an appeals court found the case violated New York’s double jeopardy law because it included crimes Trump had pardoned him for.

Necheles was among the team who repped Trump’s company at its criminal tax fraud trial and is a respected trial attorney with extensive experience in the courtroom.

TEAM BRAGG

The prosecutors handling the case are Susan Hoffinger, Matthew Colangelo, Joshua Steinglass, Christopher Conroy, Rebecca Mangold, and Katherine Ellis.

Hoffinger and Steinglass secured the Trump Organization’s criminal conviction and Weisselberg’s for tax fraud. Steinglass has been at the DA’s office for over 20 years and is one of Bragg’s most experienced trial attorneys in cases involving violence. Hoffinger leads the DA’s Investigation Division and previously ran her own firm for 20 years as a defense attorney, representing dozens of clients charged with crimes similar to those against Trump.

Bragg’s senior counsel, Colangelo, oversees some of the DA’s most sensitive white-collar probes. He came to the office in 2022 from the U.S. Department of Justice, where he was third in command as acting associate attorney general. Trump has repeatedly attacked Colangelo online and in public remarks, claiming his past work for the DOJ is evidence he’s taking orders from President Biden.

Conroy, a longtime prosecutor and senior adviser in the Investigation Division, has extensive experience in the courtroom — from murder cases, Ponzi schemes, insider thefts and stock frauds.

Ellis joined the Manhattan DA’s office in 2018 and is a former legal analyst for Goldman Sachs. She has handled major white-collar fraud cases. Mangold joined the office in 2022 after nine years in private practice representing defendants in highstakes white-collar cases.