Donald Trump will go on trial next month for allegedly falsifying business records that covered up hush money payments to an adult film star, what New York prosecutors have called a criminal scheme to bury embarrassing stories of his affairs in the leadup to the 2016 presidential election.
The trial, which was initially set to begin with jury selection on Monday, will mark the first of four criminal trials against him, and the first-ever criminal trial against any current or former American president.
Mr Trump arrived for yet another pretrial hearing in the case inside a 15th floor courtroom in Manhattan on Monday as his attorneys prepared to argue allegations of misconduct from the Manhattan District Attorney’s office in front of New York Justice Juan Merchan.
The judge rejected the accusations and set a trial date for Monday, 15 April. Jury selection will begin that week.
Mr Trump’s attorneys signalled they planned to file a motion to appeal the schedule.
“That’s fine,” Judge Merchan said. “See you all on the 15th.”
Outside the courtroom, Mr Trump fumed over the judge’s decision and labelled the case “election interference” and “voter intimidation.”
Mr Trump appeared in court as he separately faced an imminent deadline to secure nearly half a billion dollars for an appeals bond to block enforcement of a mammoth judgment against him in a civil case.
The former president and his attorneys signalled they were coming up empty handed at the end of a 30-day grace period to post a $464m appeals bond after Mr Trump and his co-defendants lost a months-long trial on allegations of fraud – opening the door for the state’s attorney general to begin seizing his assets as he fights to overturn the ruling against him.
In the middle of Monday’s hearing in criminal court, a state appellate court extended that deadline by another 10 days and lowered the threshold for bond to $175m.
Last year, in the first criminal indictment against him, a grand jury charged the former president with 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection with repayments to his then-lawyer Michael Cohen, who arranged a hush-money scheme to prevent the release of potentially compromising stories about Mr Trump and his affairs.
The case from the the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg could rely on Cohen’s testimony that Mr Trump authorised his business to falsely file payments as legal expenses, part of an alleged effort to quash stories that could interfere with then-candidate Trump’s campaign, according to prosecutors.
Mr Trump, Cohen and David Pecker, the former owner of the National Enquirer, allegedly worked in concert to “identify, purchase, and bury negative information” about then-candidate Trump to boost his electoral prospects,” according to prosecutors.
Former Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg – who was separately prosecuted and convicted on tax fraud charges in 2022 – had agreed that Cohen would be paid “$420,000 to reimburse him for the payment to Daniels,” according to court documents.
