You’re reading Guardian US’s free Trump on Trial newsletter. To get the latest court developments delivered to your inbox, sign up here.
On the docket: What Trump’s first criminal trial is all about
It’s official: Donald Trump will become the first former president in US history to face a criminal trial.
On Monday, Judge Juan Merchan set a date of 15 April for Trump’s New York hush-money trial, rejecting requests from Trump’s attorneys to delay it by at least 90 days.
At that hearing, which took place on the day the trial had initially been scheduled to begin, Merchan seemed irritated by Trump’s team’s attempts for more delay, pressing them repeatedly on their claims that Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg’s office had dragged its feet on turning over thousands of pages of evidence when it was federal prosecutors’ offices who had those documents.
“It’s odd that we’re even here,” Merchan told Trump attorney Todd Blanche at one point in the hearing. He later declared that Trump’s attorneys had “been given a reasonable amount of time to prepare”.
This sets up the first of what could be Trump’s four separate criminal trials. Since he’s entangled in so many different court proceedings, let’s go over exactly what this specific trial is about.
Trump stands accused of diverting hundreds of thousands of dollars from his business to his former attorney and fixer Michael Cohen in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election in an attempt to conceal stories about extramarital affairs with adult actor Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, then falsely describing the expenses as legal costs in business documents. Trump is facing 34 counts of falsifying business records, a class E felony.
According to prosecutors, Cohen paid $130,000 to Daniels and coordinated with the publisher of the gossip tabloid the National Enquirer to give McDougal $150,000, to keep their accounts of sexual encounters with Trump, which he denies, out of the headlines. Trump’s company then allegedly repaid Cohen $420,000 to cover those costs, fraudulently listing them as legitimate business expenses.
As Bragg put it when he charged Trump last April, Trump “repeatedly and fraudulently falsified New York business records to conceal crimes that hid damaging information from the voting public during the 2016 presidential election.”
Cohen, who has turned on Trump, is expected to testify for the prosecution, and Daniels and McDougal may as well.
Trump is clearly angry that the trial is back on track. After declaring at a Monday press conference that “this is all about election interference, this is all Biden-run”, he posted a conspiracy theory-laden attack on his Truth Social account on Tuesday attacking Merchan and declaring “STOP THE STEAL!” – a Maga catchphrase previously used as a rallying cry for his supporters to overturn his 2020 election loss.
Sidebar: Trump gets a break on his $454m bond
About an hour before Trump’s criminal trial in New York got back on track on Monday, he got some terrific news in another case that likely saved him from a significant financial blow.
That morning, a panel of New York appellate court judges dramatically lowered the bond amount that Trump has to put up in order to appeal his civil business fraud case, dropping it from $454m to $175m.
The surprise ruling makes it much easier for Trump to cover the bond without facing a major financial crisis. Trump’s attorneys had previously said he had roughly $4o0m in liquid assets and had been unable to secure a loan from other companies to cover the full amount of the bond, calling it a “practical impossibility”.
New York attorney general Letitia James had said if he couldn’t put up that money, she would start the process of seizing some of his assets to cover the amount owed the state – including some of his prized real estate properties. She had already begun that process, filing judgments on Trump’s Seven Springs estate and golf course as well as New York City properties including Trump Tower and 40 Wall Street.
This doesn’t mean Trump is off the hook – if he loses his appeal, he’ll owe the full amount. And the silver lining for James and the state of New York is they will now have a significant amount guaranteed in escrow that they will be able to collect if Trump’s appeals fail, rather than having to fight for it in a drawn-out legal process.
But it’s a big relief for the former president, who is now much better positioned to avoid the public embarrassment and personal punishment of having his bank accounts frozen and properties seized by the state. Trump said Monday that he’ll put up the smaller bond amount, which is due 10 days from the ruling.
Briefs
• The company that owns Trump’s Truth Social went public on Tuesday with a price valuing the company at more than $9bn, netting Trump a paper fortune of more than $5bn and, according to Bloomberg, making him one of the 500 wealthiest people in the world for the first time. Trump can’t sell those shares for a while, but the huge windfall could help him cover the $454m he owes after a judge found he inflated his assets in a civil business fraud case, and the combined $88m he’s been ordered to pay E Jean Carroll for defaming her in a pair of civil cases.
• On Tuesday, Judge Merchan ruled against Trump’s attorneys’ request to unseal more documents – and reminded them that he’s requiring them to get his approval before filing any motions in the case. Merchan wrote that the lawyers had “repeatedly tried to delay the start of trial” and warned them that if they showed “willful disregard of its orders”, they could face punishments for criminal contempt.
• Merchan also issued a gag order on Tuesday that bars Trump from making public statements about jurors, potential witnesses in the case, employees of the district attorney’s office and the court or their family members (he exempted himself and Bragg from those prohibitions).
Cronies & casualties
Texas’ Republican attorney general Ken Paxton, a close Trump ally who led a last-ditch lawsuit to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss, reached a deal to avoid trial and end a nine-year investigation into whether he’d committed securities fraud. Paxton agreed to pay $271,000 in restitution and serve 100 hours of community service in exchange for prosecutors dropping felony securities fraud charges. Paxton can now avoid a trial that was scheduled to begin in a few weeks. If convicted, he could have faced decades in prison.
Jeffrey Clark, a former Trump justice department official who worked closely with Trump’s team to try to overturn the 2020 election results, faced a disciplinary hearing on Tuesday where representatives of the Washington DC bar argued that he should be potentially stripped of his law license. Clark, whom Trump attempted to elevate to attorney general in the lead-up to the January 6 Capitol riot, is also one of Trump’s co-defendants in the Georgia election interference criminal case.
What’s Next
27 March One of the architects of Trump’s plot to subvert the 2020 election (and one of his co-defendants in Georgia), attorney John Eastman, is facing possible disbarment in California. The ruling is expected sometime today.
4 April Trump must post a $175m bond for his New York business fraud ruling by this date.
15 April Trump’s hush-money criminal trial will begin with jury selection in New York.
Have any questions about Trump’s trials? Please send them our way at: trumpontrial@theguardian.com
