Orange Thanos variant Donald Trump receives his first criminal trial court date

Donald Trump‘s attempts to dodge justice are falling on deaf ears, after Judge Juan Merchan denied the former president’s attempt to see his upcoming criminal trial dismissed. Merchan informed Trump and his team in the mid-February decision that the “defendant’s motions to dismiss have been denied,” and announced that jury selection will begin on March 25.

Trump’s disintegrating team attempted to argue that proceeding with a trial at this time — while Trump is in the midst of another bid for president — was a “great injustice,” but Merchan remained unconvinced. He brushed aside laughable allegations of “election interference” in magnificent style, simply promising the desperate group that he’d “see [them] March 25th.”

Nearly every fresh detail that emerges in the current case against Trump, which will see him face a criminal trial over the alleged falsification of business records during the 2016 presidential election, paints the Trump team in a worse light. More than anything, it is their claims of “election interference” that reveal them as humorously hypocritical, considering election interference is one of the charges Trump faces in a completely separate criminal trial.

That trial has been put on hold, pending Supreme Court considerations of Trump’s claims of presidential immunity, but the case regarding hush money paid to Stormy Daniels is officially on, and Merchan isn’t budging. He likewise brushed aside Trump lawyer Todd Blanche’s complaints about the trial date, after noting that Blanche himself suggested a mid-March start. Blanche himself noted that starting in March would “minimize disruption,” since few primaries are scheduled for the month.

This will serve as Trump’s first official criminal case, followed by the still-pending election interference case, a federal case examining whether Trump mishandled sensitive documents and attempted to conceal them from investigators, and a final case examining claims of election interference specifically in Georgia. In the Stormy Daniels case alone, the former president faces 34 felony charges.