Donald Trump was ordered Monday to stand trial in a criminal case, the first ever against a U.S. president, on April 15 in New York.
The hush money case is perhaps the only one of an unprecedented four indictments against Trump that will go to trial before the November election where he will face President Joe Biden for a new term in the White House.
Trump had sought to delay the New York case, but Judge Juan Merchan rejected his efforts to postpone it or dismiss the entirety of the allegations that he covered up a hush money payment to a porn star just ahead of the 2016 presidential election to hide it from voters before he unexpectedly won the presidency.
Merchan rejected a Trump lawyer’s claim that a lengthy delay in the trial was necessary to give Trump’s lawyers and prosecutors more time to review thousands of pages of newly disclosed documents from a previous federal investigation of the case. A prosecutor told Merchan that most of the documents were irrelevant.
“Oddly, we’re even here,” Merchan said before setting the new trial date in a case that originally had been slated to start Monday.
As he ended the hearing, Merchan said, “See you all on the 15th.”
Trump contended Merchan was being partisan in setting the start of the trial in three weeks. “I don’t know how you can have a trial that is going on right in the middle of the election,” Trump said. “It’s not fair.”
