New York judge on Thursday rejected Donald Trump’s attempts to dismiss charges of covering up hush money payments to a porn star, setting the stage for the first criminal trial of a former US president to begin on March 25.
At the same time, Trump’s representatives attended a fiery hearing in Atlanta, pushing to have the prosecutors bringing separate charges of election fraud and racketeering against Trump disqualified from the case.
They are just two of four criminal cases facing the Republican frontrunner as he campaigns to retake the White House, with his legal teams thus far failing to push the actual trials until after the November 5 vote.
Trump, who has seized on his legal woes to rev up his supporters and denounce Democratic opponent Joe Biden, reiterated his claim that the charges were “just a way of hurting me in the election.”
“How can you run for election if you are sitting in a courthouse in Manhattan all day long,” he said as he arrived.