Former President Donald Trump will be sidelined from the campaign in the middle of the Republican primary schedule to spend possibly weeks in a Manhattan courtroom.
The March 25 trial date became official Thursday when a judge refused to throw out charges brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg Jr. for alleged hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016.
Cameras won’t be permitted in the courtroom during the trial, the first of four criminal cases featuring 91 charges against the GOP front-runner. But Trump indicated he’ll use the public attention as his campaign stage as he fights to avoid a conviction before Election Day.
Asked about how he would campaign during the New York trial, Trump said, “I’ll do it in the evening.”
While most of the states and territories will have already held their Republican nominating contests by the date, there are 17 other caucuses and primaries that are scheduled for after March 25.
Republican strategist Doug Heye noted that the majority of states will have voted before the trial and thus it “won’t have much effect on GOP primaries voters in those remaining states who would back Trump even if convicted.”
In April alone, following the start of the trial, Connecticut, Delaware, New York, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, Puerto Rico, and Pennsylvania will hold their Republican presidential primaries. Both Wisconsin and Pennsylvania are set to be pivotal swing states in the 2024 presidential election.
Fellow GOP strategist Susan Del Percio echoed Heye but noted that while the primaries will remain unaffected, the extensive coverage of his trial will “keep his legal troubles front and center and hurt him with independents, especially women.”
Trump’s legal troubles will weigh much more on the general election, agreed Columbia University political science professor Robert Shapiro. “Compared to the federal charges he faces and if he does not get immunity, those federal cases, much more so than the New York ones, will not only affect his campaigning, but they may have a direct negative effect on voters,” he explained.
“If he loses support, it will not be for lack of campaigning,” he predicted. Shapiro said Trump’s other federal cases, if he is not ruled to have presidential immunity, “will not only affect his campaigning, but they may have a direct negative effect on voters.”
He said Trump will be able to continue his campaign from the courtroom, repeating “his claims of innocence and political prosecution.” This will generate significant media coverage, as it has in the past, he noted, and Trump “will be able to continue a very visible campaign for the presidency.”
The concern, however, will be how general election voters receive this type of campaign.
“The trials are a big reason why Trump is the riskiest nominee Republicans could choose,” Heye said.
Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley seized on the opportunity to demonstrate the split screen of her campaign as opposed to Trump’s. “Donald Trump is in court today. There will be a verdict on another case tomorrow. And he has a trial starting March 25,” she said Thursday. “Meanwhile, he’s spending millions of campaign donations on legal fees. All of this chaos will only lead to more losses for Republicans up and down the ticket.”
A Haley campaign spokesperson called it “a tale of two campaigns” in an email, pointing out that “Nikki was making her way to Texas to raise more money and campaign in the Super Tuesday state” while the former president appeared at the courthouse in New York.
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While the overwhelming majority of Republicans believe the criminal cases against Trump have been investigated unfairly, per a YouGov survey released earlier this month, both independents and adults as a whole tend to believe they were done so fairly by pluralities.
Trump himself expressed that his team was hoping to delay his trials, speaking Thursday morning at a Manhattan courthouse. “We want delays, obviously. I’m running for election. I can’t — how can you run for election if you’re sitting in a courthouse in Manhattan all day long?” he asked. “I’m supposed to be in South Carolina right now, where other people are, and where, again, this is where I should be. I shouldn’t be at a courthouse.”
