Trump gets a split decision in New York
Criminal trial set; bond lowered in civil fraud case
NEW YORK — Donald trump is all but certain to become the first former american president to stand trial on criminal charges after a judge on monday denied his effort to delay the proceeding and confirmed it would begin next month.
the trial, in which trump will be accused of orchestrating the cover-up of a sex scandal surrounding his 2016 presidential campaign, had originally been scheduled to start this week. but the judge, Juan m. merchan, had pushed the start date to april 15 to allow trump’s lawyers to review newly disclosed documents from a related federal investigation.
trump’s lawyers had pushed for an even longer delay of 90 days and sought to have the case thrown out altogether. but in an hourlong hearing monday, merchan slammed their arguments, rejecting them all.
in a particularly low moment for the defense team, the judge questioned the claims of one of trump’s lawyers as the former president looked on.
after a midmorning break, the judge returned to the courtroom, said that the former president had suffered no harm from the late disclosure of the documents and made the april 15 trial date final.
“Defendant has been given a reasonable amount of time,” the judge said.
the ruling, coming nearly a year to the day after the manhattan district attorney’s office obtained an indictment of trump, makes it highly likely that the former president will go on trial next month even as three other criminal cases against him are mired in appeals and other delays.
the former president fared better monday on a civil fraud case that had been decided against him in new York. with trump on the clock to secure a nearly half-billion-dollar bond in this case, a new York appeals court handed him a lifeline, saying it would accept a far smaller bond of $175 million.
the ruling by a panel of five appellate court judges was a crucial victory for trump, potentially staving off a looming financial disaster. Had the court denied his request for a smaller bond in the fraud case, which was brought by the new York attorney general, trump risked losing control over his bank accounts and even some of his marquee properties.
For now, those dire outcomes are on hold. if trump obtains the smaller bond, it will prevent the attorney general from collecting while he appeals the $454 million judgment against him. the appeal in the case, in which a trial judge found that trump fraudulently inflated the values of some of his properties, could take months or longer to resolve. trump has 10 days to secure the bond, and two people with knowledge of his finances said he should be able to, though doing so will effectively drain much of his cash. to obtain the bond — a promise from an outside company that it will cover his judgment if he ultimately loses the appeal and cannot pay — trump will have to pay the company a fee and pledge about $200 million in cash and other investments as collateral.
in a statement, trump said he would “abide by the decision” and either post a bond or put up the money himself.
He added that the appellate court’s decision to reduce the bond “shows how ridiculous and outrageous” the $454 million judgment against him is.
the decision on the criminal case, however, underscored the limits of trump’s favored legal tactics, as merchan took the former president’s lawyers to task for what he characterized as overheated rhetoric and footdragging. He said that the defense’s allegations that prosecutors had made ethical errors were “incredibly serious, unbelievably serious,” and then scolded trump’s lawyers for failing to substantiate their claims.
“You are literally accusing the manhattan Da’s office and the people assigned to this case of prosecutorial misconduct and trying to make me complicit in it,” the judge said.
after the hearing, trump pledged to appeal, attacking the district attorney’s case as “election interference.” He seemed to doubt that the trial would take place, saying, “i don’t know how you can have a trial like this in the middle of an election, a presidential election.”
the manhattan case against trump was brought by the district attorney, alvin l. bragg, and centers on a nondisclosure agreement trump’s former fixer, michael Cohen, arranged with adult film actress Stormy Daniels in the run-up to the 2016 election. trump is accused of falsifying his records to hide the payment he made to reimburse Cohen for the amount Cohen had paid Daniels.