A stately neoclassical New York criminal courthouse overlooks a small park that used to be a public sewer. On the building’s 15th floor, Donald Trump was impassive and found himself once again surrounded by his lawyers, his big red tie pressed against the defense table in front of him.
He sat quietly in the criminal division of the New York Supreme Court in Manhattan on Monday morning, leaning back in his chair or hunching his shoulders forward to listen to lawyers in the room, rarely looking away or looking away. nothing in particular.
The former president cannot interrupt you behind the courtroom doors, cannot argue with the prosecutors in front of him, or argue with the judge in front of him. He can only sit and watch in a crowded room of journalists and others he calls his enemies, whispering into the ears of his lawyers as a judge eviscerates their arguments.
But on the other hand, Mr. Trump lashed out at him for “witch hunt,” “hoax,” “election interference,” “voter intimidation,” and “disgrace.” After a two-hour hearing, he immediately went to his 40 Wall Street estate and held a rambling 21-minute press conference attacking New York Judge Juan Merchan and the Manhattan prosecutor who opposed him in court.
It’s been a familiar scene over the past few months, as the GOP nominee likely to face President Joe Biden in November has used courtrooms across the country as an extension of his campaign and media attention to rewrite the narrative of crime, corruption and fraud. In the lawsuits, judgments and indictments against him.
He uses courthouse settings to portray himself as the victim of political persecution, telling his supporters that what he claims is a conspiracy against him will come for them unless he stops them.
Mr. Trump began exploiting this dynamic in his civil fraud case, just a few doors down from criminal court; The months-long trial here gave him wide access to a stable of photographers and video cameras gathered in a hallway on the days he planned to show up. above. His campaign fundraising messages chronicled his days in court.
He lost that case. On Monday, a state appeals court granted him additional time to obtain bond to block enforcement of the judgment against him and gave him 10 more days to find at least $175 million to prevent New York Attorney General Letitia James from seizing and freezing his assets. his accounts.
Mr. Trump agreed to the postponement, which came in the middle of a separate hearing in Judge Merchan’s courtroom.
Mr. Trump is accused of falsifying business records in connection with an alleged secret money scheme to cover up a sex scandal that threatened his 2016 presidential campaign.
His attorneys asked for either a 90-day continuance or a complete dismissal of the case, accusing the Manattan County District Attorney’s Office of violating its obligations to the defense during the discovery process.
But Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Todd Blanche, noted that the judge frequently stumbled over questions about serious allegations from Mr. Trump’s legal team against the district attorney, and at one point asked him to pause to look at his notes. At another low point, the judge invoked Mr. Blanche’s own background (including a decade of experience as a federal prosecutor) to suggest that he should have known better.
Now, the former president faces the prospect of a criminal trial in his hometown within 20 days, down from the courthouse that found him liable for fraud and ensnared him in the trap of nearly half a billion dollars.
Mr. Trump will become the first American president to face a criminal trial when jury selection in the hush money case begins April 15.
Judge Merchan rejected attempts by the former president’s lawyers to further delay the trial, which prosecutors described as a type of election interference case – a case that preceded the alleged criminal conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election results – and a scheme that stretched the limits of what he could do. After successfully getting himself out of trouble for decades, he got away with it.
Mr. Trump is now eyeing the start date of another trial and cannot avoid returning to the Manhattan courthouse as a guilty defendant after pressing for delays, appeals and requests to dismiss the cases against him. He could see himself losing tens of millions of dollars.
“I shouldn’t be suing,” Mr. Trump told reporters from 40 Wall Street lobbies on Monday.
“I don’t know if we got one. I’ll appeal right away. I can tell you that,” he said. “We didn’t do anything wrong, just like I didn’t do anything wrong in the other case.”