Jury selection in Trump hush money case to start April 15

(NewsNation) — Former President Donald Trump’s trial over alleged hush money payments is scheduled to start April 15 with jury selection, a New York judge ruled Monday. 

This is the first of four criminal cases involving Trump that is going to trial. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee is charged with falsifying business records, to which he has pleaded not guilty. 

A last-minute document dump had initially caused the trial date to be postponed. Lawyers representing Trump had complained in March that they had only recently started receiving more than 100,000 pages of documents from a previous federal investigation into the matter. Prosecutors argued only a handful of those records were relevant; the defense team, meanwhile, said these were potentially important and a painstaking review was necessary.

Judge Juan M. Merchan said Monday, though, that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is not at fault for the late production of documents, and that he complied with discovery obligations. Merchan asked why Trump’s defense team did not bring up concerns about the documents earlier.

“Why did you wait until two months before trial? Why didn’t you do it in June or July?” Merchan asked.

Defense attorney Todd Blanche asked to file a motion to delay the trial on the basis of pretrial publicity, which Merchan allowed. Speaking to reporters after the decision, Trump repeated previous claims of election interference, and that the cases against him were brought for political reasons.

Calling Engoran “crooked,” Trump insisted that there wouldn’t be a trial — though said he would be willing to testify.

“I would have no problem testifying,” Trump said in response to one reporter’s question. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

The hush money case was filed last year. Manhattan prosecutors say Trump paid his then-personal attorney Michael Cohen not for legal work, but to reimburse him for money given to porn actor Stormy Daniels on Trump’s behalf. Daniels was paid, prosecutors say, so she wouldn’t publicize, during the 2016 presidential campaign, her claim of a sexual encounter with Trump from years earlier.

Trump falsely logged $130,000 in payments as legal fees in his company’s books “to disguise his and others’ criminal conduct,” Bragg’s deputies put in a court document.

Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to federal charges, including campaign finance violations related to the Daniels payoff, and is now a key witness in Manhattan prosecutors’ case against Trump.

Also on Monday, there was a development in the civil fraud case against Trump, where a judge found that he lied about his assets and wealth to secure more favorable terms from banks. A New York appeals court agreed to hold off on collecting the more than $450 million he is liable for, as long as he puts up a bond of $175 million within 10 days. Trump’s lawyers asked the court to halt collection because of difficulty finding an underwriter who would issue a bond for that much money.

At the same press conference where he addressed the hush money case, Trump said he’d pay the bond “very quickly,”

NewsNation digital producer Steph Whiteside and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

This story is developing. Refresh for updates.