Judge Merchan brought the parties into court early on Monday, and said that due to issues that have come up over the weekend closing arguments at the Trump criminal trial won’t happen until after Memorial Day.
Anna Bower of Lawfare posted from inside the courtroom:
First, Justice Merchan thanks the parties for coming in early. There were issues that came up over the weekend, he says.
As a result of some of those issues, it’s become apparent that we WON’T be able to move to summations tomorrow.
We will finish up evidence, the pre-charge conference, and so on this week, Justice Merchan continues.
And then we’ll move to closing arguments next week, after the long weekend.
Now we’re moving on to issues regarding objections to evidence that might be introduced during the continued cross examination of Michael Cohen.
The prosecution objects to the introduction of an email sent to Michael Cohen by Robert Costello’s law partner back in 2018.
The new schedule means that the jury might not get the case until sometime in June, and that is without any further issues or delays.
June is important because Trump has a debate date with President Biden on June 27. If Trump is convicted, which seems more likely than not, he is not going to have as much time to let the possible guilty verdict blow over and work its way through the news cycle.
The longer this case, the bigger the risk becomes for Trump that he will go straight from the courtroom to the debate stage. It is possible that Trump could have sentencing hearing than have to debate President Biden, or Trump could go from the debate to his sentencing hearing.
The longer this trial goes, the higher the probability that it will impact pushed up timeline of the presidential campaign.
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