Trump’s criminal case in New York may collide with the 2024 campaign
The judge presiding over Donald Trump’s criminal case said he intends to move swiftly, but between the slow-moving New York court system and Trump’s tendency to push for delays in legal matters, analysts expect the case to linger and collide with the 2024 presidential campaign.
It will be many months before the former president, who is running for office again, is due back in court to face 34 counts of falsifying business records in the indictment unsealed this week.
Trump’s lawyers have until August to file challenges to the case accusing him of hiding a payment to an adult-film actress before the 2016 presidential election to keep her quiet about a sexual relationship she says she had with Trump years earlier. Those filings may coincide with the first Republican debate of the primary season, which is also scheduled for August.
One of Trump’s lawyers, Joe Tacopina, said Wednesday that he did not expect any significant developments before July.
“It’s going to be a long time before anything happens,” Tacopina said in an interview. “We’re going to be methodical.”
Trump watched Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s post-arraignment news conference on the plane ride back to his home in Florida and complained about the prosecutor. He is likely to continue attacking Bragg and New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, although some in his orbit wish he would stop the attacks — particularly at the judge — according to the advisers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share private discussions.
On Tuesday, prosecutors floated a trial date in January, right before the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses on Feb. 5. But Trump’s legal team suggested a spring 2024 date would be more “realistic,” which the judge sounded open to.
Prosecutor Christopher Conroy provided a schedule for handing over to the defense discovery documents such as grand jury witness testimony and noted the urgency of the matter.
“We understand there is an intense public interest in moving this case along as expeditiously as possible,” Conroy said.
By next spring, the Trump campaign could be dug in for a long delegate fight or, if the early states go its way, have already sewn up the nomination. Either scenario could provide a reason for the Trump legal team to seek further delay.
Trump’s lawyers can be expected to “take every tactic to delay the trial. This has been the Trump legal modus operandi in virtually every case,” Neal Katyal, a former acting solicitor general who has closely tracked litigation involving the former president, said in an email. “Here, delay allows him to fundraise off the indictment without having to face the day of reckoning in the legal system.”
Trump on Wednesday posted a message on Truth Social in which he said his campaign had raised $10 million since the indictment was announced last week.
Katyal said that Trump’s typical delay tactics may not succeed in this case and that he may simultaneously confront other legal troubles with ongoing investigations in Washington and Georgia into his handling of classified material at his residence and club, Mar-a-Lago, and his efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election.
Also Wednesday, former vice president Mike Pence decided not to appeal a judge’s ruling that requires him to testify before a grand jury as part of the special counsel’s investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Trump’s team expects there will be movement on the other investigations by the summer — investigations they have feared more than the New York one. Trump has been angered and annoyed, according to the advisers, by reports he’s received about his lawyers and close aides testifying due to court orders as part of special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the potential mishandling of hundreds of classified national security papers.
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