For Donald Trump, a tale of two New York court cases today. One, he scored a major, if temporary reprieve. A panel of appellate judges, appellate, I should say, judges, gave the former President 10 days breathing room to post bond in the corporate fraud judgment, reducing the amount he needs to cover from $454 million to $175 million. But then the bad news, Manhattan Judge Juan Mershane told the former President he will go on trial starting April 15th on charges as he falsified business records to cover up a hush money payment that was meant to hide his affair with the porn star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 election. That all but ensures Mr. Trump will become the first ever former American President to go on trial for criminal offenses. Here he is responding after that ruling. But this is a pure case of voter intimidation and election interference, and it shouldn't be allowed to happen. This was a case that had been brought three and a half years ago, and they decided to wait now, just during the election, so that I won't be able to campaign. Let's start then in New York, where Neta Tawfik has been braving the cold for us this afternoon.

Neda, good to see you. So a disappointment for Donald Trump because they've been trying to further delay. And some news today that he intends to testify in this trial.

Yeah, well, look, Donald Trump's lawyer, as the district attorney has said, has long sought to delay these trials, and they said, enough is enough before this pre-trial hearing today. And it wasn't a great day for Donald Trump's lawyers because the judge repeatedly shot down their accusations of prosecutorial misconduct, saying, I don't even know why we're here. The district attorney's office has gone above and beyond to get all the materials in their possession to Trump's legal team. This was all about some extra documents that came from federal prosecutors. But ultimately, the district attorney says that a delay of 30 days of this trial is more than enough for Donald Trump's team to go through that. And so the judge agreed and set April 15th as the start of this trial, which is significant because there was a big question if any of Donald Trump's four criminal trials would actually start before the November presidential election. So that is where it stands now. Donald Trump's lawyer say that they will keep appealing that. They don't feel that Donald Trump should be here on trial during an election campaign. But as it stands now, he certainly will be.

He spoke there, as we heard, again, calling this a witch hunt, and he has certainly made these campaigns into these court hearings and cases into something of a campaign stop along the way.

The general feeling is that this is the lesser of the criminal trials that he faces. But jury selection on April 15th, it is a jury of his peers that will make the decision whether there is a two-tier justice system in the United States is immaterial once they get in that courtroom.

Yeah, that's exactly right. I can't stress enough how much legal experts say the jury selection process, just how important it's going to be. I mean, Donald Trump's team knows that they just need one juror to have a hung jury jury in this case to get him acquitted of the charges against him. They will be looking through every potential juror that comes up for questioning and picking who they want to exclude, who they want to keep to try to form, in their view, a jury that might be more sympathetic to their arguments. The same will be true from the district attorney's office as well. They want a jury that's going to be looking at the facts, not have any biases, not have an informed opinion about Donald Trump one way or the other. So certainly is going to be a situation where we could have a week or longer for jury selection because that's how much importance both sides are going to be putting on that.

Neda, thank you for that. Let's bring in US federal prosecutor, former US federal prosecutor, Joe Moreno. Joe, always good to see you. Can we start with the New York case, first of all? The trial was delayed for 30 days for discovery reasons because the prosecution had come up with some new documents. Do you have any problem as a prosecutor with the way that was done?

Well, Christian, it's a little unclear about how important those documents were. It seems like the judge was not impressed beyond the 30 days he gave was to say, Okay, there's really no harm to the defense that it took this long to get these documents from federal prosecutors because there's really not much relevant in there that either helps or hurts the defense. I'm not surprised that the case going forward. I do think, however, to your point, that this is maybe the weakest of the various criminal cases. I believe this case is very weak. And so it's not inconceivable that Donald Trump could have the last laugh here because if he gets acquitted, to your point, even one juror holds out, he could come away with this and say, This is a big victory for me. See, I told you so.

Yeah, indeed so. Politically, it could be very important for him in the midst of all these cases. In terms of the diary, Joe, if we're looking at jury selection on the 15th of April, where do you think a verdict comes in the calendar before November?

I'd say it takes two weeks for jury selection. It takes 4-6 weeks to have the trial. You're probably looking at mid-June for a verdict with a sentencing there maybe three months later.

Okay, so possibly, potentially sentencing later. If it ever did come to that, that puts the judge in an extraordinary position just ahead of an election.

Sure. Well, look, this case is premised on financial accounting irregularities in Donald Trump's company, which are misdemeanor crimes at best. Okay. Alvin Bragg is trying to tie them to campaign finance crimes, which is a stretch, and so there's going to be a lot of back and forth on that. They are felonies, so it's conceivable that Donald Trump could get jail time. Again, that goes to how How the jury perceives this. Are they as serious as Alvin Bragg says they are, or are they misdemeanors, and basically, a slap on the wrist would be sufficient to address them?

Okay, so let's set that aside for a second. The good news for Donald Trump today, given the immense difficulties he's had raising an eye-watering bond of over $450 million, is that it's less than half he's being asked to find, and he has 10 days to do it. What was the basis for that decision? And does that mean he's off the hook for the total amount?

Well, he's off the hook temporarily. He doesn't have to come up with the roughly half a billion dollars just to maintain the status quo. It's a lot less than that now. It does not indicate, though, that he's off the hook in the long run. It just basically gives him a chance to breathe and say, Okay, I can put down a much smaller amount of cash in order to stop any property forfeitures while the appellate process goes on, and that will take several years. In the meanwhile, he has to put a lot less cash on the table. He is again permitted to run the company, which Judge Engaron had barred him from for three years, and he's allowed to take out additional debt. It doesn't mean that banks will actually give him that debt, but it allows him to me some more freedom to borrow against his property. So yes, absolutely a short-term victory. Now, whether it really leads to a longer-term one, that's years away from being decided.

I wonder if actually the Democrats are breathing a sigh of relief today, because I've been listening to the polls to Frank Luntz, who says, The one thing Conservatives consistently ask him is why Democrats can't be Donald Trump at the ballot box. And if you've got a situation where LaTisha James, the attorney general, is going to claim a Donald Trump property, does that look like overreach for the House, and are they implicated by virtue of that?

I have heard that speculation, Christian, that people say that might be a step too far, that people say it's one thing to try to hold Donald Trump accountable for crimes he may or may not have committed. It's quite another thing to grab his property, particularly when the appeals are still pending. I think the concept is maybe Democrats did get a pass on this because that's That's a step that may really anger voters to the point where they might say, I might not have voted for Donald Trump before, but this process seems so unfair to me that he might get my vote, or I might just stay home and not vote for anyone.

It seems to me, Joe, when you look at the four cases in the round, this one will go. Fannie Willis in Georgia says that the train is coming, that she still intend on trying this before, if she can, before the election. He's getting Some favors from the judge in Florida. The documents case doesn't seem to be coming to trial. Then you've got the problems Jack Smith's encountering in Washington. Is it actually possible that he doesn't face any of these issues before the ballot in November?

Well, anything is possible, but I would say it's highly, highly unlikely any of these cases will go to trial before the election. I think the Alvin Bragg case is the only one because it's relatively simple. It was the first one to be charged. Really, the fact pattern in the law is not that complicated. Now, again, there will be appeals that will take years, but the trial itself is probably three or four weeks. But as far as the other ones, you're absolutely right. There are both legal issues as well as complex factual issues that have to get worked out. The idea that any of those would have happened this year was pretty aggressive, and I don't see it happening.