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President Donald Trump will have to deal with yet another trial right in the middle of the 2024 election season, something that the president has pointedly called “election interference.”
On Monday, New York Judge Juan Merchan set the trial date for the so-called “hush money” case after the pretrial hearing focused on arguments regarding around 100,000 pages of evidentiary documents, CBS News reported.
The trial date has been set for April 15, 2024. Shortly after the pretrial proceedings, Trump headed to 40 Wall Street in New York, where he delivered a short press conference. He explained, “This is ALL about election interference.”
Trump railed against “Biden and his thugs” whom he believes are responsible for propagating the ongoing and numerous trials in multiple venues during a critical presidential election year.
Per CBS, Trump’s legal team asked for a delay in the trial proceedings or an outright dismissal based on Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s failure to hand over tens of thousands of pages of documents to the defense.
Trump was originally indicted in the “hush money” case last spring, kicking off the first of many rapid-fire indictments to come shortly after he announced his 2024 presidential reelection campaign at the close of the 2022 midterms.
He has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts in the case related to allegedly “falsifying business records” linked to a “hush money” payment that Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, made to Stormy Daniels, a porn actress, via Reuters.
President Trump has repeatedly and emphatically denied having been involved at any point with Stormy Daniels. In fact, Daniels herself denied reports that she was involved with Trump in an alleged letter penned in 2018 which appeared to bear her signature. It read, “I am not denying this affair because I was paid ‘hush money’ as has been reported in overseas owned tabloids. I am denying it because it never happened.”
Via The Washington Post, Michael Cohen additionally denied any reports of such an affair, calling it “completely false.” Cohen was sentenced in 2018 to three years in prison for campaign finance violations and other crimes.