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In every major court battle Donald Trump has waged, the former president has reverted to a now-familiar script: cue the legal tsunami.
With Trump now facing a criminal indictment in New York, legal analysts expect defense attorneys to act quickly – and loudly – in pursuing a dismissal, a possible change of venue and perhaps a challenge to the judge slated to preside at his arraignment.
Trump attorney Joe Tacopina has maintained that the legal team is “not considering anything until I see the indictment,” which is set to be unsealed Tuesday.
Yet the former president has already suggested that the judge, Juan Merchan, may be biased against him.
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Merchan, the acting Supreme Court justice in Manhattan, presided over the fraud trial of Trump’s namesake real estate company and the related Trump Payroll Corporation ending in a December conviction and $1.6 million in fines.
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The judge also oversaw the sentencing of former Trump financial chief Allen Weisselberg, whose testimony in the fraud case helped secure the convictions.
“The Judge ‘assigned’ to my Witch Hunt Case, a ‘Case’ that has NEVER BEEN CHARGED BEFORE, HATES ME,” Trump claimed on his social media site shortly after the indictment was disclosed Thursday.
Legal analysts said there was no shortage of avenues to pursue for a defendant known for his efforts to slow-walk the legal process, especially when he has been at possible risk.
“It is an understatement to say that he (Trump) has a litigious style,” said Joshua Ritter, a former Los Angeles County prosecutor. “You’re going to see challenges to everything, every step of the way.”
Ritter said defense attorneys could follow their client’s lead and take direct aim at Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who Trump has publicly disparaged as motivated by political animus.
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An attempt to disqualify the prosecutor or the judge, Ritter said, is a likely a losing argument. Though attorneys may attempt to make the case, nonetheless in an attempt to appeal to a different audience: the court of public opinion.
“I do not see this thing going smoothly from this point on,” Ritter said.
If the charges, as expected, center on the falsification of business records related to the 2016 hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels to silence her about an alleged affair years earlier, Sarah Krissoff, a former federal prosecutor, said Trump lawyers will likely explore claims that the alleged violations are too old or exceed the statute of limitations of two to five years, depending on the specific charges.
Even then, however, Krissoff said there are exceptions to the law that allow for the extension of the time limits that could play in favor of prosecutors.
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Perhaps the most anticipated of Trump’s pre-trial actions is a possible challenge to holding a trial in Manhattan, where a jury would be drawn from a Democratic political stronghold and where Trump maintains a particularly outsized profile.
“The presumption is always that you will be tried fairly where you are charged,” Krissoff said. “Trump is so well known that it wouldn’t matter whether the trial was held in Manhattan or Prague.”
Cyrus Vance Jr., the former Manhattan prosecutor who launched the initial Trump inquiry, said the defense could also seek a delay to accommodate the upcoming election and prepare an assault on the credibility of the state’s key witness, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen.
“Of course, Cohen will be attacked heavily,” Vance said Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press. “But the flip side of that, of course, is Cohen worked for Mr. Trump. And they obviously had a working relationship. So we often find in criminal cases that the witnesses who are involved aren’t necessarily…priests or nuns.”
On the eve of his arraignment, the Trump campaign announced a new addition to the former president’s legal team.
Todd Blanche, an experienced white collar defense lawyer from New York, will join Trump’s existing group led so far by Tacopina.
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Blanche’s past clients also are no strangers to Trump, including Paul Manafort, the former president’s campaign manager.
Manafort was charged in New York on similar fraud offenses that were the basis of two prior convictions in federal court. Blanche led the legal team that won the 2019 dismissal of the state fraud charges.
At the time the charges were dismissed, Blanche also raised the specter of a political prosecution.
“We have said since the day this indictment was made public that it was politically motivated and violated New York’s statutory double jeopardy law,” Blanche said, referring to the similar charges brought both in federal and state court. “This indictment should never have been brought, and today’s decision is a stark reminder that the law and justice should always prevail over politically-motivated actions.”
Contributing: Josh Meyer
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