New York judge to begin Donald Trump ‘hush money case' trial on April 15

livemint.com:

Donald Trump's hush money trial to begin on April 15, enabling his first criminal trial to begin this spring following a last-minute delay, as reported by The Hill. Trump, who has looked to postpone all four of his criminal cases beyond the election, requested the judge toss his case over new documents recently turned over, or at least sanction Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) and postpone the trial. However, during a hearing on Monday, Judge Juan Merchan rejected all of those requests and ruled in favour of Bragg by refusing to push the trial deeper into the campaign season, setting jury selection for April 15.

"The court finds that the people have complied and continue to comply with their discovery obligations," Merchan said. Trump's trial had long been scheduled to begin on Monday, but at the last minute, Bragg's office agreed to a multi-week delay, according to The Hill. This comes after the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York turned over more than 100,000 pages of records in recent weeks.

Following this, the parties traded blame for why the documents did not come to light earlier. Rather than begin the trial on Monday, the parties instead convened to sort out the document kerfuffle. Trump attended the hearing alongside a roughly half-dozen of his lawyers, who were occasionally whispering to them but otherwise sitting stone-faced.

Moreover, he sat back in his chair for most of the hearing, looking ahead towards the judge, The Hill reported. After the hearing, Trump repeated familiar claims that Bragg's case was brought to keep him from campaigning for the presidential elections, scheduled for November. "This is a case that could have been brought three and a half years ago and now