Donald Trump's hush money trial begins April 15th

Donald Trump will face his first criminal trial against a former US president on April 15th, but a judge ruled that he was an adult film star. Judgment regarding hush money paid to Stormy Daniels.

Mr. Trump faces four criminal charges, but this may be the only one he faces in court before the November election.

Lawyers for presidential candidates sought to delay or dismiss the lawsuit.

He maintained that the charges did not amount to a "crime" and pleaded not guilty to all 34 charges.

In their bid to take back the White House, the former president and his defense team have sought to postpone as many trials as possible.

But Judge Juan Melchán ruled on Monday that there was no reason to delay Trump's hush money trial any further, despite defense arguments, and set the trial to begin on April 15. commanded.

After sitting alongside his lawyers in court all Monday morning, Trump told reporters the incident should be viewed as "election interference."

"But this is purely a case of voter intimidation and election interference, and that should never happen."

The trial was originally scheduled to begin Monday after jury selection, but in 2018 's trial was postponed as thousands of documents were submitted last week. A federal investigation into payments to Daniels was announced.

Judge Marchand instead held a hearing Monday to consider whether there was any irregularity in last week's sudden release of more than 100,000 pages of documents related to the federal prosecutor's case.

Mr. Trump's team had argued that the Manhattan District Attorney's Office committed misconduct by not doing enough to force federal prosecutors to turn over documents in a timely manner. They claimed that prosecutors tried to "conceal" evidence.

The release of the documents follows a request from Trump's lawyers in January for documents from a federal lawsuit. Judge Machan asked why the defense had not discussed the long wait times with him sooner.

The Manhattan District Attorney's Office agreed to postpone document review for 30 days, but prosecutors said at the hearing that they believed only 300 documents needed new review.

They said they would be ready to go to trial in mid-April.