Trump’s big day in court

Prosecutors in all four of the cases against Donald Trump are racing against time to try to get to trial before Election Day.

But to do so, they each have to clear a series of legal and procedural hurdles — and soon, we’ll get a better idea of which, if any, will make it.

Today, two of those prosecutions will go in the spotlight via high-stakes hearings where we’ll get a sense of how seriously judges are taking Trump’s efforts to get indictments thrown out.

In Fulton County, District Attorney Fani Willis’s prosecution of Trump for trying to steal Georgia’s 2020 election has been sidetracked by allegations about Willis’s personal life.

Embarrassingly, a judge will hear testimony on exactly when Willis’s relationship with Nathan Wade, a prosecutor she’d brought on to the case, began. One of Trump’s co-defendants has asserted that Willis improperly financially benefited from the prosecution because she’s been paying Wade’s attorney fees, and he’s paid for vacations they took together. Trump wants Willis disqualified from the case.

Meanwhile, in Manhattan, where District Attorney Alvin Bragg has charged Trump with falsifying business records related to hush money paid to Stormy Daniels, a judge will assess whether to move forward with a planned March 25 trial — or throw the charges out entirely.

The New York case is the least substantively important of the four Trump cases, but it’s lately seemed likely to go to trial first because of procedural delays in the federal cases.

But there have been questions about whether Bragg’s rationale for charging Trump with felonies will survive court scrutiny — and on Thursday, we’ll get to hear what that case’s judge thinks about those arguments.

Thursday, in short, could be a make-or-break day for the two state-level prosecutions against the former president.

When Willis had Trump and 18 co-defendants indicted last August, her case was widely hailed as the most sweeping effort to hold him and his allies to account for the attempted 2020 election theft. Four of those defendants have already pleaded guilty.

But another defendant, Michael Roman — a former Trump campaign opposition research specialist — struck back in a filing from his attorney arguing that Willis should be removed from the case.

Roman’s attorney asserted that Willis and Wade had a “clandestine personal relationship,” and argued that was inappropriate for a few reasons: asserting Wade was unqualified for the job, that Willis overpaid him, and that she benefited financially from his hiring when he paid for vacations they took together.

In response, Willis’s office claimed there was no impropriety. Wade said in an affidavit that he’d indeed “developed a personal relationship” with Willis — but only after he joined the investigation in 2022. (Roman’s attorney fired back by saying she had a witness who would testify otherwise.)

On Monday, Judge Scott McAfee gave some insight into how he’d approach the topic. “I think it’s possible that the facts alleged by the defendant could result in disqualification,” he said. But, he went on, Wade’s qualifications for the job weren’t relevant. The key question, in his view, was whether “a personal relationship resulted in a financial benefit to the district attorney.”

To assess that, he said, he wanted to determine when the relationship between Willis and Wade formed and whether it is still ongoing. If McAfee does decide to remove Willis’s office from the case, the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia would get to choose her replacement — and the case’s future would hinge on whom they choose.

So the high-minded case about the sanctity of elections may now hinge on tawdry testimony about the district attorney’s love life and travel — testimony that will take place Thursday and likely Friday.

Manhattan DA Bragg was the first prosecutor to have Trump indicted back in March of last year, but his case was quickly superseded in the public discourse by the election-stealing and classified documents cases, which were more substantively important. Now, though, it may be the case with the best odds of a speedy trial.

To recap: In October 2016, Trump attorney Michael Cohen paid hush money to Stormy Daniels so she wouldn’t come forward alleging a sexual encounter with Trump. Trump later reimbursed Cohen through the Trump Organization, with payments he categorized as legal expenses.

This, Bragg asserts, violated state law against falsifying business records (because they were hush money payments, not legal fees). Some legal commentators questioned Bragg’s rationale for charging these as felony counts rather than misdemeanors. To do so, Bragg had to argue that Trump falsified these records with the intent of committing or concealing another crime.

For some time, though, it wasn’t totally clear even to prosecutors on the case which crime would fit the bill, with some fearing judges could throw out the charges before trial.

So on Thursday, Judge Juan Merchan is set to finally weigh in on these questions. Most legal commentators expect him to let the charges stand, but we won’t know for sure until we hear it from him (and Trump may appeal afterward).

Merchan is also expected to let us know whether he’ll stick to the March 25 trial date in the case. If he lets both the charges and the date stand, then unless Trump wins a quick appeal, the former president will face his first criminal trial next month.

Which means the question of whether Trump will run for office as a convicted felon may hinge on the simultaneously tawdry yet technical matter of whether reimbursements for hush money covering up a sex scandal abided by New York bookkeeping law.

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