Donald Trump's Miserable Week

After collecting a series of legal losses, seeing the stock for his Trump Media & Technology Group plummet and President Joe Biden gaining ground in the polls, there's little doubt that Donald Trump just had a rather awful week.

In Georgia, Fulton County Superior Judge Scott McAfee upheld on Thursday the criminal indictment against the former president, rejecting Trump's claims that his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the state were protected under the First Amendment. McAfee's decision makes the date of the trial loom closer, something which Trump's attorneys were likely trying to avoid.

While a date hasn't been set yet, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis suggested she would be ready to go to trial as soon as August.

In New York, Judge Juan Merchan rejected on Wednesday Trump's request to delay the start date for his trial related to the payment of "hush money" to adult film star Stormy Daniel ahead of the 2016 election. Trump had tried to use presidential immunity to say that he shouldn't be prosecuted based on "official acts"—including the tweets he posted while he was president—but Merchan said he waited too long to raise the issue.

The start date is currently set for April 15—which means that Trump will officially be facing his first criminal trial while running for the White House.

Newsweek contacted Trump's 2024 campaign and the office of his lawyer Alina Habba for comment by email on Saturday morning.

Still in New York, the state's attorney general, Letitia James, challenged the validity of the $175 million bond Trump posted earlier this week in the civil fraud lawsuit against him, which threatens his real estate empire and business in the state.

While Trump obtained a reduction on the huge bond he was required to pay and which he did not appear able to secure, James cast doubt on whether the Los Angeles-based company which underwrote the bond, Knight Insurance Group, should be authorized to provide a surety in New York.

More bad news for the former president came from the federal judge overseeing his classified documents case in Florida. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon on Thursday rejected his lawyers' request to have the case dismissed on the claim that the Presidential Records Act allowed him to turn classified documents into personal records and keep them in his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago.

The case, where Trump faces 40 charges, is now expected to go to court, though it's unclear when the trial will start as Cannon has not yet decided when it will begin.

But it's not only on the legal front that Trump received bad news this week.

Shares of Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) plummeted 21 percent on Monday, closing at $48.66. This was below the company's opening price of $49.90 per share the previous Monday, when it made its New York debut, and well below its peak of $79.38 reached on March 26. The primary asset of the media group is Trump's social media platform Truth Social.

Newsweek wrote that Trump's net worth fell by just over $2 billion as the result of his media company's plummeting shares.

This week also saw Biden making a comeback in polling, with two recent surveys by Morning Consult and the Marquette University Law School putting him ahead of his Republican rival in terms of the popular vote.

The Morning Consult survey, conducted between March 29 and 31, put Biden ahead of Trump, at 44 percent against the former president's 42 percent. The Marquette University Law School survey put Biden ahead with 52 percent against Trump's 48 percent.

A rematch between Trump and Biden has been widely expected for November 2024 after the two became their respective party's presumptive presidential candidates in March.

The former president is also still trailing Biden in terms of fundraising. While Trump and the Republican National Committee (RNC) raised more than $65 million in March—an improvement compared to previous months—according to The Hill, the amount is unlikely to fill the existing gap with Biden, who in one single event in New York in March raised over $25 million.

The Biden campaign has not yet disclosed its figure for March, but the New York event raised more than double what Trump did in the entire month of February, according to Bloomberg, which cited federal filings.