Donald Trump's did a great job in court today during the Hush Money trial. And by "good job" I mean "good job pissing off the Judge."
Here is what went down. The hearing involved wild and unsubstantiated accusations of prosecutorial misconduct by D.A Alvin Bragg's office. Those accusations include discovery violations, called Brady violations. And the Judge was having *none* of it.
Trump's team tried to get a delay, his standard tactic when dealing with legal trouble. Delay, Delay, Delay. But the Judge was not going to allow that to happen. He assured both sides that the trial would move forward on the schedule he set after allowing for a brief delay. Originally set to go to trial in late March, the new trial date was set.
So what IS this trial (I know, a lot to keep track of)? This trial is actually a criminal trial - Trump's first non-civil case to go to court. And it deals with campaign finance violations related to Trump's hush money payments to Stormy Daniels.
What was Trump's lawyer whining about? He is mad that SDNY, not the DA's office, was late producing a batch of evidence. How much are we talking about? About 300 pages of material. Not a big deal.
Judge Merchan read through DA Bragg's filings explaining the delay and concluded that the DA was "not at fault for the late production of documents from the U.S. Attorney’s office.” Toddler Trump made annoyed faces while sitting at the defense table.
Trump's lawyers did not stop, which did not go well with the Judge and led to many crazy exchanges. You would think a competent lawyer would stop after ONE exchange with a Judge, but Trump's lawyers leave their brains at the door when they walk into a courtroom, apparently.
Here are some tweets about the tone in the courtroom:
In fact, at one point the Judge told Trump's lawyer that the prosecutors were doing the best they could to get the material to Trump's team, saying they “went so far above and beyond what they’re required to do, it’s really odd that we’re even here and that we’re taking this time."
After asking the DA's team how many documents were actually relevant to the trial, he was told it was about 300. And with this, the Judge set the trial to begin in three weeks on April 15th, which is very bad news for Donald Trump.
