The Manhattan district attorney is quietly preparing for a trial against Trump

Federal prosecutors have charged Donald J. Trump with conspiring to undermine American democracy and mishandling nuclear secrets. But with these cases in limbo, Manhattan prosecutors are preparing as if they will be the first to try the former president on criminal charges — for covering up a possible sex scandal.

The Manhattan district attorney's office has begun contacting witnesses to prepare them for trial, including Michael D. Cohen, Trump's former fixer, according to people with knowledge of the matter. He and at least two others involved in buying a porn star's silence about her story of a tryst with Mr. Trump are expected to meet with prosecutors in the coming weeks.

As the potential trial approaches, District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg has added one of his own most experienced trial lawyers on the team tasked with prosecuting Mr. Trump.

And in recent public appearances, Mr. Bragg has advanced the loftiest possible view of the case, portraying it as a clear example of election interference, in which a candidate defrauded the American people to win the White House in 2016. did this, prosecutors argue, by concealing an illegal payout to the porn star, thus concealing damaging information from voters just days before they went to the polls.

“The case — the core of it — is not about money for sex,” Mr. Bragg said in a radio interview last month, taking issue with the news media's longstanding characterization as a hush-money case. “We would say it involves conspiring to corrupt a presidential election and then lying in New York corporate filings to cover it up.” That is the heart of the matter.”

With this rebranding, Mr. Bragg is seeking to increase the importance of his allegations and draw a parallel with the highly consequential federal case in Washington, DC, in which Mr. Trump is accused of seeking to overturn the 2020 election. That trial will begin on March 4, three weeks before Mr. Bragg's case, but an appeal could extend into late spring or summer.

If the federal case is postponed by several months, Mr. Bragg would most likely be the first prosecutor to put a former U.S. president on trial, even though he has indicated he is willing to wait. Although he was the first to win an indictment against Mr. Trump, Mr. Bragg has said he will not “stand on ceremony” but will only encourage federal lawsuits to get ahead of his line.

Mr. Trump's role includes four 91-felony indictments, a civil fraud trial and a defamation case that together could cost him hundreds of millions of dollars. The cases play out against the backdrop of the battle for the Republican presidential nominee, which Trump is on course to pursue after a victory in the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday. His legal troubles have become a key part of his campaign as he portrays himself as a political martyr fighting the Democratic elite.

During the civil fraud trial this month, he delivered his own closing statement, combining his biggest hits from the campaign trail — his accusers are leading a “witch hunt,” the case is a “fraud against me” — with specific attacks on the case. against him. “We have a situation where I am an innocent man,” he said.

And when the judge during the defamation trial threatened to throw him out of the courtroom, the former president responded, “I would love it.”

While Trump is making the most of his varied campaign trail and courthouse appearances, delays are one of his most tried-and-true legal strategies. He has tried to bypass all four trials, hoping to complete the election without ever facing a jury.

But if Mr. Trump is to be judged — and he likely will be at least once before the election — there are advantages for him if Mr. Bragg is judged first. The prosecutor's indictment has boosted the former president's online fundraising this spring, sending his base into turmoil.

Even some Democrats have argued that the prosecution in Manhattan pales in comparison to that in Washington. They say the federal case would spotlight the worst day of Trump's presidency, when a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and include testimony from former senior aides who exposed the electorate to danger would remember. of having Mr. Trump in the Oval Office.

Mr. Trump may be more willing to face the witnesses in the Manhattan case, including Mr. Cohen, his former fixer-turned-adversary. In the final days of the 2016 presidential campaign, Mr. Cohen made the $130,000 hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels. Mr. Cohen has said he was acting on orders from Mr. Trump, who later repaid him by signing some White House checks.

Mr. Bragg has seized these checks and other documents and accused Mr. Trump of lying about the refund to Mr. Cohen to conceal its true purpose. The former president's company incorrectly classified the refund in its internal records as a “legal expense,” leading Mr. Bragg to charge Mr. Trump with 34 crimes for falsifying business records.

Mr. Trump, whose lawyers in the case include Susan R. Necheles and Todd Blanche, takes every opportunity to attack Mr. Cohen's credibility, calling him a “liar” and a “rat.”

And yet the jury in heavily Democratic Manhattan might well be sympathetic to Mr. Bragg's case. In 2022, a Manhattan jury convicted Mr. Trump's company of tax fraud, and some of the same prosecutors who led that trial will also handle the case against the former president himself.

Susan Hoffinger, head of the agency's investigative division, leads the team. Joshua Steinglass, a respected trial lawyer who, along with Ms. Hoffinger, led the successful effort to convict Mr. Trump's company, was recently added. They will be joined by Chris Conroy, who worked on the case longer than any other member of the team, and Matthew Colangelo, a former senior official at the Department of Justice.

The Manhattan case also poses a unique threat to Mr. Trump. Unlike the federal cases against him, which Mr. Trump could try to drop if he were to regain the presidency, Mr. Bragg's case is immune from federal intervention. In Manhattan, Mr. Trump would not be able to pardon himself, and if convicted he could face up to four years in prison.

Mr. Trump tried to have the case moved to federal court, but that failed. The federal judge who reviewed Mr. Trump's request ordered it stay in state court and appeared to endorse the legal theory underlying the prosecutor's case.

The state court judge overseeing the case, Juan M. Merchan, is expected to set the trial date at a Feb. 15 hearing.

By then, a Washington appeals court may have ruled on Trump's bid to have the federal election case dismissed. If the court rules against Mr. Trump, which is likely to happen, the case could go to trial even if Mr. Trump appeals to the Supreme Court. In that case, the federal special prosecutor who brought the case, Jack Smith, could appear before Mr. Bragg. (Because defendants have the right to attend their own trials, the two would not take place simultaneously.)

But if Mr. Smith's case remains stalled, Judge Merchan could stick with his current plan to start the trial in Manhattan on March 25. And if Mr. Bragg does indeed go first, his attempt to portray Mr. Trump as undermining the integrity of the presidential election could become even more important as he tries to convince the public of the validity of his case.

A lawsuit summarizing the case listed two other hush money payments during Trump's first campaign: one to a former Playboy model, Karen McDougal, who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump, and another to a doorman trying to sell. an embarrassing story about the candidate in 2015.

That pattern has led prosecutors to accuse the former president of something far more important than covering up sordid tabloid stories.

“It is a case of election interference,” Mr. Bragg said in a speech recent television interview.