The Daily Fuckup

By April 7, 2024, Donald Trump’s Manhattan criminal case was not in post-immunity litigation. It was still in the run-up to trial, with jury selection scheduled to begin on April 15 and the defense’s pretrial presidential-immunity bid already knocked out as untimely on April 3. The chronology matters because the immunity fight did not arrive at this stage in the way the original draft suggested. The first immunity motion in the hush-money case was filed on March 7, and Justice Juan Merchan denied it on April 3 under New York’s timeliness rule, saying Trump had multiple earlier chances to raise the issue. ([nycourts.gov](https://www.nycourts.gov/Reporter/3dseries/2024/2024_50468.htm?utm_source=openai))

That meant April 7 was a waiting period, not a new immunity milestone. The case was still headed toward trial, and the defense had not yet obtained the later opening it would try to use after the Supreme Court’s July 1, 2024 immunity ruling in Trump v. United States. Only after that decision did Trump’s lawyers send Merchan a July 1 letter seeking leave to file a motion to set aside the verdict under CPL 330.30(1), arguing that the Supreme Court’s ruling showed the prosecution had improperly relied on evidence of official acts. ([nycourts.gov](https://www.nycourts.gov/LegacyPDFS/press/PDFs/Letter-to-JusticeMerchan-immunity-decision.pdf?utm_source=openai))

So the cleaner version of the story is not that April 7 brought a fresh immunity flare-up. It is that the case had already moved into a hard procedural phase before trial, with one immunity theory rejected as too late and another still months away. Trump’s team had made the argument in March, lost it in April, and would later try again after the high court’s July ruling changed the legal landscape. That sequencing is the point. The New York case did not get its post-immunity fight on April 7. It got it later, after the Supreme Court spoke, and the earlier April record shows just how far ahead the defense was already trying to run the clock. ([nycourts.gov](https://www.nycourts.gov/Reporter/3dseries/2024/2024_50468.htm?utm_source=openai))