Delay Tactics And Quick Trips: Takeaways From Two Trump Case Hearings In New York And Georgia

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump ’s unprecedented tangle of overlapping trials was on full display Thursday with simultaneous court hearings in New York and Georgia.

In Manhattan, a judge ruled that Trump’s hush-money case will begin on March 25, making it the first of his indictments to go to trial. So there are 39 days before he becomes the first former president in U.S. history to be tried on criminal charges.

By that time, Trump could very well have won enough Republican delegates to be his party’s presumptive nominee.

In Atlanta, attorneys grilled a special prosecutor on the Georgia election interference indictment against Trump over the prosecutor’s romantic relationship with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, trying to get Willis and her office thrown off the case.

Tuesday’s hearings previewed what a general election campaign will look like as Trump flies back and forth from courtrooms and campaign rallies and blurs the lines between the two.

On his way into court into New York, Trump proclaimed his innocence but posed what will be the fundamental question of the presidential campaign going forward.

“How can you run for election if you’re sitting in a courthouse in Manhattan all day long?” he asked.

Here are other takeaways from two courtrooms on Thursday:

DELAY, DELAY, DELAY

As they have with all of his cases, Trump’s lawyers vigorously argued to delay the proceedings, citing the political calendar and Trump’s other cases, including one in Washington over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election that is effectively on hold pending the outcome of an appeal.

Trump attorney Todd Blanche repeatedly cast the March 25 date as unfair and unrealistic, asking Judge Juan Merchan to hold off on making