Donald Trump had a look of fatigue about him on Thursday morning as he entered the Manhattan courtroom where – in less than two months – he will be the first former US president to face a criminal trial.
The six-week trial will not be about Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, nor his hoarding of classified documents – accusations for which he has been indicted elsewhere. Rather, Trump’s fast-approaching trial is for an alleged hush-money scheme involving the adult film star Stormy Daniels and the Playboy model Karen McDougal.
Despite the made-for-tabloid nature of this case, the hearing largely focused on housekeeping matters; indeed, it was as business as usual as a Trump-related court proceeding could probably get. It also stood in stark contrast to the legal chaos playing out in Trump’s Georgia election interference case the same morning, where a judge is weighing whether prosecutors should be booted from that proceeding due to improper romantic relations.
As Trump strode toward the well in Judge Juan Merchan’s New York courtroom, the ex-president pointed to a row of journalists in the gallery, with a motion one colleague described as similar to a finger gun. This gesture was more playful than menacing, a sort of greeting to a reporter in the gallery, remarkable in its mundanity.
Trump, who sported a scarlet tie and navy suit, then sat at the defense table, without fanfare. Within moments, Merchan said he had denied Trump’s moonshot motion for dismissal and would not delay the trial.
“Defendant’s motions to dismiss have been denied,” Merchan told the court. “We’re moving ahead to jury selection on March 25.”
Trump – who is hardly one to play his cards close to the chest – did not appear to have any dramatic reaction to these blows. Indeed, what stuck out during the proceeding was Trump’s demeanor.
Throughout the approximately 100-minute hearing, Trump appeared to behave himself. He whispered to his lawyers, as defendants are wont to do, but absent were the tantrums that characterized his comportment at E Jean Carroll’s defamation trial against him or the New York attorney general Letitia James’s civil fraud proceedings.
Trump did complain about the impending trial as he entered court, even before it was set in stone, saying: “They wouldn’t have brought this – no way – except for the fact that I’m running for president and doing well … I’m running for election. How can you run for election and be sitting in a courthouse in Manhattan all day?”
Theatrics inside the courtroom were carried out by his lead attorney, Todd Blanche, not Trump himself. And the leitmotif, that Trump is a victim, has been invoked by the ex-president and his team routinely – it’s par for the course at this point.
“As the court is aware, we are in the middle of primary season,” Blanche said. “It is completely election interference to say: ‘You are going to sit in this courtroom in Manhattan when there is no reason for it.’
“What about his rights?”
At one point, Merchan told Blanche: “Stop interrupting me, please!” But even this rebuke paled in comparison to that handed down by the judge in Carroll’s case, who told Trump attorney’s Alina Habba: “You are on the verge of spending some time in the lockup. Sit down!”
Trump, as one might expect, also used this appearance to drum up support. After court, Trump told reporters that he would balance campaigning with court, saying: “We’ll just have to figure it out … I’ll be here during the day, and I’ll be campaigning during the night.”
There was also Trump’s perfunctory call for money.
“Crime in New York is OUT OF CONTROL, but Biden & his cronies in New York have orchestrated this entire WITCH HUNT TO TARGET ME,” Trump said in a fundraising email that went out just before his hearing wrapped. “This is the MOST critical moment of the Witch Hunt – if you’ve been holding out – this is your moment.”
