On Wednesday, Judge Juan Merchan parried the latest effort by Donald Trump — one of at least eight — to derail his rapidly approaching Manhattan trial for interfering with the 2016 election via an alleged cover-up of hush money payments. Trump’s increasingly frantic attempts to avoid it are the surest testament to the importance of this prosecution, and his latest failure reveals his desperation. As one of us explains in a forthcoming book, the former president knows he faces likely conviction.
Trump’s latest failed maneuver was an attempt to adjourn the trial by arguing that it could not proceed until the Supreme Court rules on whether former presidents enjoy absolute immunity. He contended that some of the evidence Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg plans to use implicates Trump’s official conduct as president — and if the Supreme Court rules that former presidents enjoy absolute immunity for official conduct, that evidence must be prohibited.
The judge’s rebuke of Trump and his counsel underscored the baselessness of Trump’s stalling tactics.
Even if absolute presidential immunity existed — which, as we’ve previously explained, it doesn’t — Merchan rightly recognized that Trump’s motion was too little, too late. As an initial matter, Merchan noted, Trump filed his request to adjourn the trial months after “the 45-day period [after arraignment and before commencement of trial] provided by statute.” New York courts have discretion to vary that stricture. But Trump offered little in the way of justification for his tardiness. As Merchan pointed out, Trump was long ago “well aware that the defense of presidential immunity, even if unsuccessful, might be available to him.” There was absolutely no reason Trump could not have at least tried to bring it up more promptly.
Merchan condemned the obvious dilatory intention behind Trump’s motion — noting that the “fact that the Defendant waited a mere 17 days prior to the scheduled trial date of March 25, 2024, to file the motion, raises real questions about the sincerity and actual purpose of the motion. After all, [Trump] had already briefed the same issue in federal court and he was in possession of, and aware that, the [DA] intended to offer the relevant evidence at trial the entire time. The circumstances, viewed as a whole, test this Court’s credulity.”
Those harsh words likely stem in part from the fact that Merchan has had to deal with and reject numerous other delaying maneuvers by Trump. At different points, Trump has argued the trial should be dismissed or delayed because of insufficient evidence, statute of limitations violations and even conflicts with other cases against him. All those efforts have failed.
The former president did receive a brief reprieve last month after federal prosecutors from the Southern District of New York produced almost 200,000 documents in the period shortly before the trial was originally scheduled to begin. But that delay came at a high price for his and his lawyers’ credibility after the judge granted the extension.
Trump made the extraordinary claim that Bragg and his team had engaged in prosecutorial misconduct and that they were “seeking to make the Court complicit in that unethical strategy.” But at an evidentiary hearing, Merchan blasted Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche for failing to support those allegations. Merchan further noted that the DA “went so far above and beyond” to produce evidence to Trump that “it’s odd that we’re even here.”
The judge’s rebuke of Trump and his counsel underscored the baselessness of Trump’s stalling tactics. It is not wise to lose the judge before the trial has even started, both because of the myriad decisions affecting the defense he will have to make during its pendency and because if Trump is convicted, Merchan will mete out the sentence.
Trump’s strategy of frivolous delay continues in each of his criminal cases.
A similar tale can be told about the other unsuccessful delay efforts (comprehensively surveyed in an upcoming book from one of this piece’s authors about the Manhattan case) as well as those Trump has advanced in the three other criminal cases pending against him. They include his meritless but extremely time-consuming absolute immunity challenge to the federal election interference charges. Then there are his efforts to disqualify Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis that have so far failed, but not before occasioning substantial delay.
And finally, facing federal charges for allegedly mishandling classified documents, Trump has asserted a stream of specious bases to dismiss or delay that case. Perhaps his most ludicrous request was asking the court to delay the trial “until at least mid-November 2024,” blaming in part the other federal criminal case that he was elsewhere trying to stall. Even U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon — whose handling of the case has repeatedly favored Trump’s strategy — had no choice but to deny that request (albeit on the grounds that it was premature).
Trump’s strategy of frivolous delay continues in each of his criminal cases, including the Manhattan one. There, Trump has renewed his argument about prejudicial “pretrial publicity,” with his legal team claiming new “data and … analysis.” But as Bragg astutely noted in his opposition this week, those new developments are of Trump’s own making. His “own incessant rhetoric is generating significant publicity, and it would be perverse to reward [him] with an adjournment based on media attention he is actively seeking.” That’s going nowhere.
The former president is also attempting again to force Merchan’s recusal from the case, citing his adult daughter’s professional activities for Democrats. But under New York law, a judge is generally not conflicted out by the activities of his adult children unless they had a substantial interest in the proceedings, like being a witness or party in the case. (And as any parent can tell you, the idea that a child’s politics automatically reflect the parent’s is ludicrous.) The facts and the law remain materially unchanged from when Merchan denied Trump’s first recusal request. The judge based his ruling on an opinion from the New York State Advisory Committee on Judicial Ethics, which found “nothing in the inquiry to suggest that the outcome of the case could have any effect on the judge’s relative, the relative’s business, or any of their interests.” Nothing of any consequence has changed since then, so this motion too is futile.
Trump’s one constant throughout all of his prosecutions is his attempt to delay proceedings. As the Manhattan trial inexorably approaches, he will surely become even more frantic. But that is a profound sign of weakness — indeed, it shows that Trump now recognizes that he is finally facing his reckoning.