Fight for every piece of evidence. Push for any possible delay. The approach has been successful so far in Trump’s three other pending criminal cases, potentially leading up to or after the November presidential election. Surprisingly, in Manhattan, in a court known for long delays before many criminal trials, the former president and alleged Republican will face his first day in court.
Trump’s defense strategy in New York is unique from the other three cases in one respect — he seeks to deny involvement in key conversations about secret cash payments made through his former lawyer and go-between, Michael Cohen. according to people familiar with his plan, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
Prosecutors, who charged him with falsifying business records, say details of those conversations will help prove Trump illegally classified Cohen’s reimbursement as a legal fee rather than a campaign expense. The purpose of the payments, according to prosecutors, was to hide from voters in 2016 any allegations of an extramarital affair with Stormy Daniels, an adult movie star.
In Florida, where Trump is accused of mishandling classified documents — and in the District of Columbia and Georgia, where he is accused of obstructing election results — his attorneys argued essentially that Trump engaged in the conduct at issue, but that the conduct did not constitute crimes. He pleaded not guilty to all four counts.
Denial is only one part of Trump’s strategy for New York; delay is another. Three times last week, his lawyers rushed to an appeals court, trying to delay the looming trial; three times their appeals were rejected.
“He believes that as a matter of policy all cases should be after the election,” said David Schoen, a former Trump lawyer.
Many people on trial do their best to delay the trial, knowing that witnesses’ memories may fade, prosecutors may switch jobs, or public interest may evaporate. What Trump brings to this delay effort is a megaphone and a new argument — the unprecedented nature of putting a former president and current candidate on trial and the still-murky possibility of getting out of jail without cards if re-elected.
“Almost all defendants out on bail seek to delay their trial forever, and judges and prosecutors know that defendants, for the most part, must be dragged kicking and screaming to trial,” said Ron Kuby, a veteran attorney in New York. York.
What’s most surprising about Trump’s delay tactics, Kubey said, is that they haven’t worked well in New York compared to so many other defendants.
Trump is also trying to smear his accusers — everyone from New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Murchan to District Attorney Alvin Bragg to key witnesses like Cohen and Daniels.
Again, Trump stands out from other criminal defendants — even famous ones — in that his continued ravaging of the justice system and the people involved in bringing charges against him appears to have strengthened his standing in the polls and rallied his Republican base.
“Attacking the system, the fairness of it, the motivations of the people who persecute you, that’s not new,” Kuby said. “But never before in history has anyone been as successful at this as Donald Trump, in terms of mass buy-in to his message. I have never seen this before in any case with any defendant.
Murchan grew increasingly frustrated with Trump’s suggestions for a delay, expressing particular displeasure with Trump’s lead attorney, Todd Blanche.
When Blanch was hired a year ago, he told other lawyers on the defense team that the immediate goal was to delay all criminal cases, according to people familiar with his order, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
The lawyers stepped up their efforts to prepare numerous pretrial motions in each case, poring over each indictment for everything that would drag out the trial with answers, hearings, rulings and appeals.
In many court proceedings, opposing counsel reduce themselves to basic facts to avoid wasting time on minor details that are not actually contested. In Trump’s legal team, a decision was made to predict nothing — and fight for everything, according to people familiar with the discussions.
One of Blanche’s partners, Emile Beauvais, took a particular interest in the classified documents case, where Trump’s team was pleased with Judge Eileen M. Cannon’s speed in making decisions — even when they were not favorable to Trump. The case was adjourned indefinitely while the judge considered motions involving the handling of classified evidence and numerous defense claims that Trump should not have been charged. The legal team plans to fight for every classified document, people familiar with the strategy say.
On Saturday, Trump’s lawyers filed documents asking Cannon to delay the May 9 deadline she recently set for new filings in the case — arguing that they would need at least a week to prepare in a highly classified evidence room, in time they are to be tried in New York. The filing seeks to delay the deadline until three weeks after the New York trial ends.
The Georgia case was also delayed by multiple motions to dismiss and temporarily derailed by allegations of misconduct by the Fulton County district attorney. Meanwhile, Trump’s federal election obstruction case in the District of Columbia has been frozen while the Supreme Court weighs his request for immunity.
As Trump’s defense team strategized for the 2024 court calendar, they were least concerned about the New York case, people familiar with the talks said. But they won a reprieve there, too, thanks to another part of their legal strategy: making sweeping requests for access to potential evidence held by the government.
Originally scheduled to begin in March, the trial was pushed back to mid-April after federal prosecutors — who had previously indicted Cohen and investigated Daniels’ payment — suddenly turned over more than 100,000 pages of material.
Trump’s team had subpoenaed the documents from federal prosecutors, asking for far more than the local district attorney had originally requested.
After those reams of documents were provided, the defense said local prosecutors had failed in their duties.
Trump’s lawyers asked for — and got — a postponement of the trial to review the material. His lawyers have made similar far-reaching requests for potential evidence in the other cases, and it remains to be seen whether those efforts will pay off for his defense team.
In New York, the strategy comes with a price: Murchan has lost patience with Blanche’s accusations of prosecutorial misconduct. He demanded to know why the attorney, himself a former federal prosecutor, had not subpoenaed the material months earlier.
The judge chastised Blanche for what he called “a pattern where I read certain information, I hear certain information, and then I hear your interpretation of it, and it’s really different from my interpretation. And this has frankly been going on for months.”
Barring one last delay attempt, Trump will enter Manhattan Criminal Court on Monday and lawyers will begin jury selection.
The huge public profile of the accused and his sharply polarizing nature will make this trial difficult, said Jeffrey Bellin, a law professor at William & Mary and a former federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C. — not because jurors shouldn’t know who Trump is or have an opinion about him, but because jurors shouldn’t let these opinions to influence their decision making.
“I can’t think of a similar American trial in recent memory with as difficult a jury selection as this will be,” Belin said. “There are other trials with famous defendants, say the Bill Cosby trial or similar cases. But there are people who don’t have strong feelings about Bill Cosby… they’re not going to feel strongly about him being innocent or guilty in the way that many people not only know who Donald Trump is, but have strong feelings about what should happen in these cases.”
In the city that made Trump famous but where he is now deeply unpopular, his legal team is seeking a mistrial as much as anything else, according to people familiar with the defense strategy. Criminal lawyers like to say that prosecutors have to convince 12 jurors, but defendants only have to convince one, and that may be especially true in the Trump case.
Trump’s continued comments on the case may be aimed at shaping public perceptions, including about prospective jurors, Belin said. However, this carries risks. Defendants typically don’t lash out at judges, which can come back to bite them during sentencing. Denigrating the case and those involved may also frustrate the jury.
In a civil trial earlier this year in Manhattan, Trump’s behavior and demeanor did not appear to sit well with jurors who ordered him to pay $83 million to writer E. Jean Carroll after she accused him of sexually assaulting her and sue for defamation.
As he sat in the courtroom, Trump occasionally grumbled, complained and became angry — so much so that the judge threatened to throw Trump out for defying his orders to remain silent while Carroll testified.
Trump is already putting the hush money case on thin ice with Murchan, who has imposed a gag order barring Trump from criticizing witnesses, court officials and some others. However, the former president is expected to speak frequently outside court, as he did during a separate civil business fraud trial brought by Attorney General Letitia James (D).
In that case, James won a judgment of nearly half a billion dollars against him.
