Former President Donald Trump boards his airplane after speaking at a campaign event in Manchester, New Hampshire, April 27, 2023.
Jabin Botsford | The Washington Post | Getty Images
Donald Trump will go on trial beginning March 25 for the New York criminal case in which he is accused of falsifying business records related to a hush money payoff to porn star Stormy Daniels, a judge said Tuesday.
That trial is set to begin amid the presidential primary season and less than eight months before the 2024 election. Trump, who has pleaded not guilty, is currently seeking the Republican nomination for that race.
Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan announced the schedule for the trial as Trump appeared in court via a video hook-up for a hearing in the case.
Merchan warned Trump that he could be sanctioned if he violates an order that restricts his ability to make public evidence and other material related to the criminal case.
The judge earlier this month issued that protective order after the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office raised what it called substantial concerns that Trump would “inappropriately” use the material or post it on social media.,
A spokesman for Trump’s campaign and an attorney for Trump in the case did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Trump was indicted in late March by a grand jury, which accused him of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
Those records mischaracterized the nature of payments connected to reimbursements Trump and his company, the Trump Organization, made to his former attorney Michael Cohen after Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 shortly before the 2016 presidential election.
Daniels, in exchange for that money, agreed to keep quiet about her allegation of having had sex with Trump on time a decade earlier, months after his wife Melania had given birth to Barron Trump. Donald Trump denies having sex with the adult film star.
The indictment says those payments to Daniels and one by the publisher of The National Enquirer to Playboy model Karen McDougal were part of an effort to keep their claims of sexual trysts with Trump from affecting his chances against Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.
– Additional reporting by CNBC’s Kevin Breuninger
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