The Weekend Wrap: March 31, 2024

"See you all on the 15th"

Welcome to the Weekend Wrap! Here are the week’s white collar highlights:

Trump Prosecutions

New York State Case - Hush Money/False Business Records

The first criminal trial of a former president in U.S. history will begin on April 15 in a New York state courtroom.

On Monday, which was the original trial date, Judge Merchan held a hearing regarding the 100,000+ pages of documents that the defense received a couple of weeks ago from federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York. The documents relate to the federal investigation and prosecution of former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, who orchestrated the Stormy Daniels hush money payment and will be a key state witness at trial. The defense claimed that this last-minute “document dump” represented egregious misconduct by the state prosecutors. They urged that the case be dismissed, or at least be postponed for another 90 days.

Judge Merchan wasn’t having it. People who were in the courtroom said he was visibly angry. He said the defense had accused prosecutors of serious misconduct and discovery violations but had no legal authority to back up their claim that state prosecutors were obligated to turn over documents in the control of federal authorities. He grilled Trump’s attorneys about why they had waited until relatively the last minute before requesting the documents, and why the defense hadn’t said anything about their failure to receive the documents at their last court hearing in February. He also noted that, as the government pointed out, it appears the great majority of the documents are redundant, irrelevant, or actually harmful to the defense.

Merchan is clearly done with Trump’s efforts at delay. What’s more, the defense appears to have burned a lot of bridges with the judge when it comes to their credibility, which will not help them at trial.

Merchan set the new trial date for April 15. As the hearing was ending, Trump’s attorney said something about filing a new motion to continue the trial based on adverse publicity. The judge essentially said, “go ahead.” But then in a sign of how any such motion would fare, as the hearing adjourned Merchan said, “See you all on the 15th.”

Looks like it’s on!

If you want more details about the New York prosecution, the folks at Just Security published this exhaustive report that tells you probably more than you want to know about every aspect of the case. They are a little more gung-ho about the strength of the case than I am, but it is a useful guide. And if you want a refresher on some of my concerns about the case, here’s the post I wrote right after it was indicted:

New York's Trump Indictment Raises More Questions Than It Answers

Gag Order: Judge Merchan also issued a gag order that prohibits Trump from making public statements about potential witnesses and jurors. It also prohibits statements about court personnel (other than the judge), counsel (other than the DA himself), and staff and family members of counsel, if done with the intent to influence their work on the case.