The Trump Docket: The Trump trial train has left the station

Background: Former President Donald Trump arrives for a press conference at 40 Wall Street after a pre-trial hearing at Manhattan criminal court, March 25, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura, file). Insets top to bottom: Stormy Daniels arriving at the 2024 AVN Awards at Resorts World Las Vegas in Las Vegas, Nevada, on January 27, 2024 (DeeCee Carter/MediaPunch /IPX); Michael Cohen, former personal attorney to former President Donald Trump, is seen on March 15, 2023 outside Manhattan Criminal Court in New York City (zz/Siegfried Nacion/STAR MAX/IPx 2023); Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg speaks during a news conference, Wednesday, Sept. 13, 2023, in New York (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer).

Starting Monday in New York, for the first time in U.S. history, a former president will face criminal a trial.

Former President Donald Trump is charged with 34 felony counts alleging he falsified records in an attempt to hide a tryst he had with adult film star Stormy Daniels just before the 2016 election by paying her off.

Trump has tried and failed for months to avoid this moment. But now, the moment has come and proceedings will begin with jury selection on April 15. Attorneys for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office and defense attorneys for the former president will go toe-to-toe over this initial process as they sort out jurors. That is expected to last at least a day or two but could potentially go longer.

Trump’s criminal trial comes just 10 days before the Supreme Court will hear arguments on whether he has immunity from criminal prosecution altogether — and a favorable ruling on that immunity claim is his last-best hope of avoiding charges as well as a potential conviction carrying jail time as a penalty.

Legal analysts have steadily proclaimed this week that there are simply no viable legal escape routes left for Trump to stop the trial unless he goes nuclear. Former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance called him “desperate” to halt proceedings on MSNBC this week and noted that in her many years as an attorney, she has seen clients engage in “late-in-the-game tactics” like pretending to fall ill or abruptly firing their attorneys.

The former U.S. Senate chief minority counsel Jeff Robbins told ABC that not only does he expect the trial to go forward as planned on Monday but that he fully expects a “slugfest” between prosecutors and Trump’s defense team. Robbins does expect Trump to be convicted.

Criminal defense attorney Katie Cherkasky appeared on Fox News on Friday and she too acquiesced that Trump’s options to stop the trial are few, far between and potentially “extreme.”

“I think that Donald Trump still has the right to fire his defense team if he wanted to do so at the last minute. That is something that the Supreme Court has been very clear [on], a defendant is entitled to counsel of his selection,” Cherasky said, according to Newsweek. “I think that would be an extreme decision, but certainly not off the table here.”

Should all go according to plan Monday, the trial in Manhattan is expected to last about six weeks.

Law&Crime takes a look at this and other developments in Trump’s cases in Florida, Georgia, Washington, D.C., and New York.

NEW YORK

CRIMINAL

There’s nowhere left to hide. An appeals court refused Trump’s last-ditch effort to stop his criminal hush-money trial and so it will go forward on Monday, April 15 with jury selection.
New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan “forewarned” the jury that there would be no direct questioning of jurors about their political party affiliation, past or future but they will be asked if they “ever worked or volunteered for an anti-Trump group or organization,” and potentially, if they are supporters of the pro-Trump conspiracy theory known as QAnon, the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, Three Percenters, “Boogaloo Boys,” or Antifa.
OF NOTE: Trump tested the legal limits of his gag order in the hush-money case while simultaneously lashing about his losses in two civil defamation trials involving writer E. Jean Carroll.

CIVIL

Claims of “erroneous” jury instruction and an instruction at trial to exclude Trump’s commentary about his ‘state of mind’ anchored the former president’s argument for a new defamation trial involving E. Jean Carroll. He was ordered to pay her $88.3 million and now wants a do-over.
OF NOTE: Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg was sentenced this week and on the eve of that sentencing, a court-appointed monitor was ordered to investigate whether the former president’s legal team ‘facilitated’ Weisselberg’s perjury.

GEORGIA

CRIMINAL

Still fighting, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis asked an appeals court this week to rebuff Trump’s latest attempt to have her removed from his racketeering and election subversion trial altogether.
Meanwhile, the former chairman of the Georgia Republican Party and Trump’s co-defendant David Shafer lost his motion to dismiss the charges in the fake electors indictment on prejudicial claims. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee found there was “no legal basis” girding his arguments.

FLORIDA

CRIMINAL

Special counsel Jack Smith asked U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon to ignore “false factual allegations” made by Trump’s co-defendant and valet Waltine Nauta this week about claims of vindictive prosecution. None of these claims were new, according to Smith, and Nauta was merely trying to join his former boss’ habitual practice of delay.
Speaking of false claims — a transcript emerged this week showing that Nauta led Trump to believe he was out for a jog when in fact he was being interviewed by the FBI. 

Earlier this week, Cannon begrudgingly reversed herself and agreed to keep potential government witness names secret in the still-unscheduled trial.

OF NOTE: Longtime Trump attorney Evan Corcoran, an expected witness for the government in the Mar-a-Lago case, is reportedly no longer part of the former president’s legal team. 

WASHINGTON, D.C.
SUPREME COURT

Presidents should not be allowed to get away with murder, literally, or figuratively, special counsel Jack Smith argued to the U.S. Supreme Court this week. It was part of his sweeping opening brief ahead of oral arguments fast approaching on April 25.
The high court will resolve the question of “whether and if so to what extent does a former president enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office[.]”
A group of retired 4-star generals, retired admirals, generals and secretaries from branches of the U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force filed a thundering amicus brief siding with Smith this week and warning the Supreme Court that Trump’s immunity arguments are an “assault” on democracy and if permitted, would threaten national security irreparably. 

The American Civil Liberties Union weighed in this week with its own friend-of-the-court filing, writing that Trump “seeks the power to engage in criminal activity and forever evade the accountability that all others must face” and if the high court rules with him, it will allow the presidency to be turned into a monarch and Trump will be afforded the ability to “transform the government of laws into a fiefdom for himself.”

OF NOTE: On April 16, oral arguments get underway in Fischer v. United States. The case could have huge ramifications for hundreds of Jan. 6 rioters as well as impact some of the criminal charges Trump faces in his four-count election subversion indictment.

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