Judge Juan Merchan announced this Monday that The criminal trial against former President Donald Trump will begin on April 15 (2017-2021) in New York by 34 crimes related to irregular payments to a porn actress in 2016a trial that was scheduled for March 25.

Trump went to the hearing in person, dressed in a blue suit and a red tie, and from there he repeated to the press that his various trials in New York are a witch hunt by the Democrats.

The former president has tried until the last moment, without success, to get a Manhattan judge to further delay his trial to make it coincide with electoral or even post-electoral dates that would possibly have made it impossible to hold.

Both the Manhattan Prosecutor’s Office, which is prosecuting the case, and Trump’s defense, had been in favor of the postponement given the large amount of documents provided by federal authorities this month.

Trump’s lawyers previously argued that the Manhattan Prosecutor’s Office had violated the rules governing the analysis and selection of evidence and therefore asked that the entire indictment be dismissed or, alternatively, that several testimonies be excluded and the trial be postponed to least 90 days.

Court allows Trump to reduce his bail

In parallel, This same Monday, a New York appeals court has authorized the former president to pay a lower bail than that established initially in a civil fraud case.

The former president must now pay bail of 175 million dollars within ten days (instead of 464 million), while the appeal for the sentence that requires him to pay 454 million dollars is resolved.

This is an important lifeline for the former president, who, along with some of his children and his company, was fined after Judge Arthur Engoron noted that Trump and the other defendants fraudulently inflated the value of their assets.