After several failed attempts to delay, Trump is finally seeing the official start to one of his four criminal trials.
Donald Trump has become the first former president in United States history to face a criminal trial after leaving office, a distinction he tried but failed to avoid.
Monday is the official start of his New York state-based trial, with jury selection beginning this morning. It’s likely that the selection process will last one to two weeks, and that the remainder of the trial will last around six weeks total.
If no further delays come about during the trial, a verdict on Trump’s guilt or innocence might be rendered sometime around June at the earliest, several weeks before the Republican National Convention in July, where Trump is set to be named the GOP’s official 2024 presidential nominee, and months out from Election Day in November. If the verdict against him is guilty, he’ll become the first nominee of a major political party to be nominated for a presidential ticket after being convicted of a felony.
At several junctures last week, Trump’s team of lawyers attempted to delay the start of the trial, which deals primarily with his attempts to hide from the public “hush money” payments he made to women he allegedly had extramarital affairs with prior to the 2016 presidential race. However, his lawyers’ arguments in favor of delaying the trial fell apart in front of the judge overseeing the trial, Judge Juan Merchan, and by appellate judges affirming his rulings.
Trump’s legal team, for example, tried to argue that pre-trial publicity made it impossible to seat a jury from New York City — but Steven Wu, a lawyer for the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, said in rebuttal to that claim that Trump was “trying to have it both ways,” as the former president was complaining about publicity while also holding news conferences before and after pre-trial hearings and frequently invoking the case during his political rallies and online.
Even though the trial has now begun, it’s likely Trump’s legal team will attempt to push for every delay possible during the main trial phase, questioning the introduction of evidence from the prosecution, demanding that unnecessary or unrelated evidence be included for their defense, and making other similar motions.
