Judge rips Trump lawyers seeking to delay hush money trial: 'You don't have a case right now'

• Donald Trump is attending a New York court hearing where his lawyers will try to push off his hush money trial date.
• Judge Juan Merchan is expected to set a new trial during or following the proceedings in Manhattan Supreme Court.
• The hearing comes as Trump faces a financial reckoning from New York Attorney General Letitia James, who can soon start to collect on a $454 million fraud judgment against him in a separate civil case.

A frustrated New York judge tore into attorneys for Donald Trump in a hearing Monday over their request to delay Trump's trial on charges of falsifying business records in a scheme to silence women who say they had affairs with him.

"That you don't have a case right now is really disconcerting," Judge Juan Merchan told the former president's lawyers, referring to their claim that the prosecutors in the case suppressed evidence.

"You are literally accusing the Manhattan [District Attorney's] office and the people assigned to this case of prosecutorial misconduct," Merchan said. "You are saying the people assigned to this case are taking part in prosecutorial misconduct, and you don't have a single cite to support that allegation."

Trump was in the courtroom listening along as Merchan delivered the stern assessment to his legal team.

Trump called the case "a witch hunt" and "a hoax" as he walked into the courtroom in Manhattan Supreme Court.

The hearing came as Trump faces a financial reckoning from New York Attorney General Letitia James, who, as soon as Monday, can start to collect on a $454 million fraud judgment against him in a separate civil case.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee has been unable to get a bond to stop that penalty from coming due while he appeals.

The hush money