Donald Trump Faces Two Potential Legal Nightmares in a Day

Donald Trump faces two major updates Monday in his ongoing legal battles. As the former president argues that the trial date in his falsifying business case should be further delayed, or the case thrown out entirely, he faces a deadline in his civil fraud case to pay a cash bond or risk his assets being seized.

The former president has pleaded not guilty to 34 charges in relation to payments he arranged his then-lawyer Michael Cohen pay adult film star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election to keep an alleged affair she had with Trump a secret. The money Trump repaid Cohen was listed in Trump's official company records as "legal fees."

Trump has denied the affair with Daniels and said the case is politically motivated against him as he is the presumptive Republican nominee in the 2024 presidential election.

The trial was originally due to begin on March 25. However, the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, which filed the case against Trump, said it was open to postponing the trial by as much as 30 days to sort through more than 100,000 pages of evidence that federal prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York had turned over.

Also on Monday, a 30-day deadline given to Trump to pay a financial guarantee in New York expires. In February, Trump was fined $354 million, rising to $454 million with interest, after Judge Arthur Engoron ruled he had filed fraudulent financial statements that inflated the value of his properties and assets for years.

If Trump does not pay a cash bond by Monday, which amounts to 120 percent of the $454 million judgment against him, New York Attorney General Letitia James' office could start the process of seizing his properties to recover the penalty.

Trump's lawyers previously said it was a "practical impossibility" for the former president to raise the cash needed to post the bond. Trump also recently said he had about $500 million in cash, but he added that he planned to use the money to fund his latest White House campaign.

If no payment is made by Trump, James may take steps to have his bank accounts frozen to recuperate some of the cash, before starting the potentially lengthy and arduous process of seizing and liquifying his properties.

Newsweek contacted Trump's legal team for comment via email.

In a New York court Monday morning, Trump is expected to hear arguments about why his falsifying business records trial should be delayed again.

Judge Juan Merchan agreed to postpone the trial until around mid-April, with Monday's hearing set to determine a new trial date if necessary.

Trump's lawyers are expected to argue that the trial should be postponed beyond April, or that the case should be dismissed entirely, because of new Cohen-related evidence that arrived days before the trial was originally due to begin.

In previous court filings, Trump's lawyers accused the state of New York of making "numerous untimely and inexplicably" delayed disclosures in the case and of obstructing efforts to obtain discoverable materials from the U.S. attorney's office or Cohen, who is set to be a key witness in the criminal trial.

"This misconduct weighs in favor of a severe remedy," Trump's lawyers wrote.

In court filings, Bragg's office urged Merchan not to delay the case any further, saying fewer than 270 documents of the 31,000 pages that had been produced on March 13 were relevant to the case, most of which were "inculpatory and corroborative" of existing evidence.

Monday's hearing is also expected to include a discussion between the parties as to who is to blame for the evidence being made available only now.

Catherine Christian, a former Manhattan special assistant district attorney, said Merchan "definitely" had to delay the trial, but she added it was unlikely that the judge would dismiss the case entirely.

"The indictment is not going to be dismissed," Christian told The Hill. "No witness is going to be precluded. No attorneys are going to be sanctioned. But it's legitimate that this trial should not have started on Monday."