It's been a busy day on the legal front for former President Donald Trump. While a New York appellate court considered the fate of his appeal bond in the civil fraud case brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, Trump and his legal team were in a Manhattan courtroom Monday morning to seek dismissal or postponement of the criminal "hush money" case brought against him by Alvin Bragg. 

READ MORE: 

NY Appeals Court Reduces Trump Bond in Civil Fraud Appeal and Extends Deadline

Trump Appears in NY Courthouse Seeking Criminal Trial Delay or Dismissal in Hush Money Case

Trial Judge Juan Merchan has now issued an order setting the trial in the Manhattan case for April 15. 

A New York judge has scheduled an April 15 trial date in former President Donald Trump’s hush money case.

Judge Juan M. Merchan made the ruling Monday. The judge earlier had scolded the former president’s lawyers as he weighed when to reschedule the trial after a last-minute document dump caused a postponement of the original date.

Merchan had bristled at what he suggested were baseless defense claims of “prosecutorial misconduct,” appearing unpersuaded by Trump team arguments that prosecutors had until recently concealed tens of thousands of pages of records from a previous federal investigation.

Prosecutors said only a handful of those newly records was relevant to the case, while defense lawyers contended that thousands of pages are potentially important and require a painstaking review. Merchan, who earlier this month postponed the trial until at least mid-April, told defense lawyers that they should have acted much sooner if they believed they didn’t have all the records they felt they were entitled to.

So the case, which originally was set to begin Monday with jury selection, will now proceed in three weeks, barring any additional delays. 

Judge Merchan has already ruled on a number of pre-trial matters, which, as detailed here, did not go particularly well for the Trump team. 

Without getting too much into the weeds, the prosecution caught the breaks here; the Trump team did not. That does not mean all is lost. These are just preliminary evidentiary rulings that will set some of the guardrails at trial — and some of them may be revisited, depending on how the evidence develops at trial. 

Further, on a personal/observational note, the cases in which I lost most motions in limine tended to be the ones I wound up winning — not always, and mine were in the civil context, but sometimes, trial judges err on the side of cutting the most breaks to the side they think has the weaker case. (Frankly, that cuts down on the likelihood of the case being reversed on appeal.) That may not be at all what is going on here — based on the tenor of the judge's remarks in Monday's rulings, he doesn't seem to have a lot of patience for the defense — just noting it. 

At present, it appears the case will proceed to trial in April. And it appears that the Trump team has their work cut out for them.

RELATED: 

Trump Legal Team Moves to Postpone NY 'Hush Money' Trial Until SCOTUS Rules on Presidential Immunity

(Updated) Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg Agrees to 30-Day Delay of 'Hush Money' Trial

NEW: Judge Agrees to 30-Day Delay in Trump NY 'Hush Money' Case