The Daily Fuckup

Donald Trump’s trial calendar took another turn on Feb. 2, 2024, when the federal election-interference case in Washington was postponed. The immediate effect was not to end the race among his criminal cases, but to tilt it. With the Washington trial pushed back, the Manhattan hush-money case was the one most likely to reach a jury first. That was still a likelihood, not a certainty.

The New York case had its own date already sitting on the calendar. The court’s public case page and update materials said jury selection and trial remained set for March 25, 2024. The Washington delay did not change that date. It did, however, make the New York case harder to dislodge as the next Trump trial to move.

That distinction matters. A calendar can point in one direction without locking it in. Judges can grant adjournments. Lawyers can keep filing motions. Appeals can slow one case and speed up another. On Feb. 2, the sequence was shifting, but it was not finished.

The Manhattan case concerns allegations that Trump’s business records were used to hide damaging information during the 2016 campaign. It is narrower than the federal election case, but it still carried the political and legal weight of a public jury trial in the middle of a presidential year.

What changed on Feb. 2 was not the substance of the case. It was the timing. Trump’s push to slow the Washington proceedings created more room for the New York prosecution to stay on track. That left the Manhattan case in the best position at that moment to become the first of his criminal prosecutions to go to trial — but only if the calendar held.