SAN FRANCISCO
Lee Heidhues 3.25.2024
Donald Trump’s strategy to avoid his criminal reckoning is delay delay delay.
Trump has failed in his home town New York. It is all too familiar with this man who has evaded accountability for decades.
Trump’s strategy in his effort to stop prosecution of his payoff to porn performer Stormy Daniels just before the 2016 election has wilted.
Excerpted from The New York Times 3.25.2024
Donald J. Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial on charges that he covered up a sex scandal will start on April 15 after a judge on Monday denied the former president’s attempts to delay it further.
The flurry of activity is unfolding nearly a year to the day after the Manhattan district attorney’s office filed an indictment of Mr. Trump, accusing him of falsifying business records related to a hush-money deal with a porn star, Stormy Daniels.
The judge, Juan M. Merchan, appeared unmoved by Mr. Trump’s request for more time to prepare for his criminal trial on charges linked to conduct that could have derailed his stunning victory in the 2016 presidential election.
For roughly an hour, he slammed arguments from Mr. Trump’s lawyers that his case should be delayed further because of newly disclosed documents from a related federal investigation, saying that he found no harm had been done to the former president by the delay. After a 45-minute break, he returned with the new trial date.
Justice Merchan suggested that Mr. Trump’s lawyers were dragging their feet and scolded them for accusing Manhattan prosecutors of misconduct without seeming to substantiate their allegations.
Arrogance personified
“You are literally accusing the Manhattan D.A.’s office and the people assigned to this case of prosecutorial misconduct and trying to make me complicit in it,” the judge exclaimed incredulously.
He noted that many of the new documents were not relevant to the case. “This court is of the opinion that there are really not significant facts to be resolved,” Justice Merchan said, a sign that he might be close to finalizing a trial date.
The judge also pressed one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Todd Blanche, on the number of documents the defense thinks are relevant, saying, “I just want to get a sense of how much time you need.”
A little taken aback, Mr. Blanche consulted papers on the desk before him, and finally came up with “tens of thousands.” Unsatisfied, the judge said that Mr. Blanche was not answering his questions.
One of prosecutors, Matthew Colangelo, estimated that only about 300 documents were pertinent to the trial, and that “99 percent” were irrelevant.
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