From New York Times, I'm Michael Balbaro. This is the Daily.

Today, for Donald Trump, 2024 was supposed to be dominated by criminal trials.

Instead, he's found ways to delay almost all of them.

My colleague, Alan Foyer, on how Trump did it. It's Thursday, April 11th.

So, Alan, we are on the cusp of the very first criminal trial of former President

Donald Trump, which begins next week.

So all eyes are going to be on Lower Manhattan.

Yeah, and you'll definitely remember this case, Michael.

It's often short-handed as the Hush Money case.

It involves allegations that Trump used illegal accounting techniques to hide the fact that he had paid off a porn star.

Prosecutors say he wanted to cover up a sexual affair that they had had so that the scandal

didn't blow up Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.

Right. You know, that case, which has always been a weird mix of like tabloid and election

interference stuff, it's sometimes written off as the runt of the various cases Trump is facing even

though that's not quite true. Nonetheless it is the exception in one important

way it is actually going to go in front of a jury before the election takes place,

before voters go to the polls. Let's not forget, Trump is facing four criminal cases in four separate cities and in three of them

he and his legal team have managed in various ways to throw sand into the gears of these

proceedings to essentially grind them down to all but a halt. Right it appears

that Trump has found a way to push back basically 75% of the criminal cases brought against him until it looks like, for now, after voters are going to decide whether or not to reelect him

which if it stays that way would be a pretty astonishing accomplishment of a kind in

I'd argue both illegal and a political sense.

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