Donald Trump may have received good news in his civil fraud case on Monday, but he also received bad news in his hush-money case. A New York judge said the latter trial would begin on April 15 despite the former president's attempts to delay it. Judge Juan M. Merchan scolded Trump's lawyers as he weighed when to schedule the trial after a last-minute document dump, per the AP. Merchan bristled at what he suggested were baseless defense claims of "prosecutorial misconduct," appearing unpersuaded by Trump team arguments that prosecutors had until recently concealed tens of thousands of pages of records from a previous federal investigation.
Prosecutors said only a handful of those new records were relevant to the case, while defense lawyers contended that thousands of pages were potentially important and require a painstaking review. Merchan told defense lawyers that they should have acted much sooner if they believed they didn't have all the records they felt they were entitled to. "That you don't have a case right now is really disconcerting because the allegation that the defense makes in all of your papers is incredibly serious. Unbelievably serious," Merchan said.
"You're accusing the Manhattan district attorney's office and the people involved in this case of prosecutorial misconduct and of trying to make me complicit in it. And you don't have a single cite to support that position." Trump appeared in person at the hearing. The hush-money case, filed last year by prosecutors in Manhattan, has taken on added importance given that it's the only one of the prosecutions against Trump that appears likely for trial in the coming months. (More Trump hush money trial stories.)
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