Trump Indicted by Manhattan District Attorney

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The case was initially assigned to an Obama appointee, Ronnie Abrams. However, she has recused herself in the past in Trump-related cases because her husband briefly worked on Mueller's team, and now it has been moved to another judge, Clinton appointee Alvin Hellerstein. While it doesn't say that she recused herself, I'm sure that is what happened. And Hellerstein won't be any better for Trump than Abrams would have been. In order to be successful, Trump would need to establish that he hired Cohen to take care of the hush money business before he became president as part of his official duties as president. Truly nonsensical.

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Meanwhile, it appears that Trump's attorneys are committing malpratice.

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Meanwhile back in the Manhattan case.

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And, in fact, the judge did remand the case back to state court.

Lisa Rubin
@lawofruby

A federal judge has officially rejected Trump’s efforts to move the Manhattan DA’s felony false business records case to federal court. Why? Because there was no evidence Trump was acting under color of law in hiring Michael Cohen as his personal lawyer. 1/
And as predicted, the nail in the coffin was the testimony, on cross examination, of Trump’s own general counsel, Alan Garten. The old adage proves true: Putting up a witness whose testimony is not totally known to you in advance is rarely a good idea. FIN

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Yet another loss for Trump (although it is an order from the judge in the E. Jean Carroll cases, it relates to this case).

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Lot's of talk about recusal today (I'll be making another post shortly). In the Manhattan case, Judge Merchan has refused to recuse himself.

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First to be filed, and very likely, the last to be tried.

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Trump's lawyers have been busy. In addition to attempting to get the 1/6 case dismissed, they are also trying to get this case dismissed.

Trump’s Lawyers Press Judge to Toss Stormy Daniels Hush-Money Case

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This case is presumably going to move back into the spotlight soon, with all of the other cases bogged down and perhaps unlikely to move forward before the election. The last thing I remember happening was Trump filing that massive "omnibus" motion to dismiss that I refer to in my previous post, but I have no idea what is happening with that, as I can't access that court's documents. I don't recall ever even hearing about Bragg's office filing a response, though they must have done so. Weirder still, the summary of the case (which I can access) lists under motions pending: "There are no motions on record for this case." There is still a hearing scheduled for February 15, 2024, and the trial is still listed as being scheduled to start March 25, 2024. But who knows what will happen?

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Trump has dueling hearings on Thursday, on in this case, and the other in the Georgia case. There had been reports that he intended to attend the Georgia hearing, which is more salacious (as it relates to the attempt to dismiss the case or at least get Fani Willis off the case because of her relationship with the special prosecutor, Nathan Wade), but is not likely to have much immediate impact on him. The hearing in this case, on the other hand, could determine whether he goes to trial next month. So, apparently he will attend this hearing instead.

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Here's a good summary of the hearing tomorrow, with links to the various filings of the parties regarding Trump's motion to dismiss. I had only seen the original motion previously. I would be shocked if Judge Merchant grants the motion on any of these bases, and presumably the trial date of March 25 will be confirmed (and Trump will go on social media rampage.