Trump’s ‘hush money’ trial to start April 15 after judge denies his bid to further delay case — as ex-prez’s fraud bond reduced to $175M

Donald Trump will go on trial in Manhattan April 15, a judge ruled Monday — denying the former president’s bid to further delay or toss the “hush money” criminal case against him.

The 77-year-old’s lawyers had sought to dismiss the case in Manhattan Supreme Court due to a last minute document dump.

But Justice Juan Manuel Merchan, at the end of a 70-minute hearing, found that prosecutors had given Trump a “reasonable” amount of time to sift through thousands of pages of newly disclosed evidence relating to Manhattan US Attorney Damian Williams’ case against Trump’s ex-fixer Michael Cohen.

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“This court finds that the DA is not at fault for the late production of documents,” Merchan said from the bench, as Trump shook his head twice, and then looked down.

Dressed in a navy blue suit and his customary red tie, Trump sat quietly in the courtroom throughout the hearing.

Prior to entering the courtroom, he declared: “This is a witch hunt, this is a hoax.”

After the hearing wrapped, he told reporters in the hallway that it was a “disgrace” that the case would go to trial during the presidential campaign.

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“This is a case that could have been brought three and a half years ago. And now they’re fighting over days because they want to try and do it during the election. This is election interference. That’s all it is. Election interference and it’s a disgrace,” he said.

Trump pleaded not guilty last year to 34 felony counts after allegedly covering up $130,000 in “hush money” payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against Trump is now slated to be the first of his four criminal cases to head to trial, and will be the first-ever criminal trial of a former US president.

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Merchan’s ruling Monday came after the judge grilled prosecutors and Trump’s lawyers about why 46,000 pages of evidence about Cohen was only turned over by the Manhattan US Attorney’s Office this month.

Cohen, who squared off with Trump as a witness in his civil case last year, is expected to be a star witness at his criminal trial.

On Monday, prosecutors argued there’s little new material in the trove and no reason to delay the trial any further, with Assistant District Attorney Matthew Colangelo saying the number of relevant, usable documents “is quite small” — around 300 or fewer.

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“We very much disagree,” Trump’s lawyer, Todd Blanche, hit back, saying the number of relevant files totaled in the thousands.

But Merchan repeatedly ripped Blanche during the hearing, saying Trump’s lawyer had falsely accused Bragg’s office of “prosecutorial misconduct” despite the DA’s “due diligence” to turn over relevant files to the defense.

“You just heard one set of facts and interpreted it as the people not doing anything….I read it as the people going so far above and beyond what they were required to do that it’s odd that we are even here in the first place,” the judge told Blanche.

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Merchan also questioned why Trump’s legal team had only asked the feds for the files in question in January — two months before the initial trial date — despite having the opportunity to do so last summer.

Trump is charged with lying in his company documents throughout 2017 that he was paying Cohen for “legal services” when he was actually reimbursing his formal loyal lawyer for paying off Daniels.

The charge, known as “falsifying business records,” is by itself a misdemeanor. But it becomes a felony when done to cover up another crime. Federal prosecutors have said Cohen’s payoff to Daniels was illegal because it dwarfs the $2,700 limit on personal contributions to a candidate.

Trump, at a press conference later in the day Monday, blasted Manhattan prosecutors for going after him for what he called “not even a crime.”

“We’re being tried for something that’s not even a crime,” he said. “They say at most it’s a misdemeanor, but there’s no misdemeanor either. So, we have violent criminals that are murdering people, killing people. We have drug dealers all over the place and they go free and they could do whatever they want, but they go after Trump with this not even a crime.”

Trump has repeatedly tried to push back all four of his criminal cases until after November’s presidential election.

Monday’s ruling came minutes after Trump got an 11th-hour reprieve from a New York state appeals court in his separate civil fraud case, in which he was found liable for drastically inflating the value of his assets.

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Trump will need to come up with a bond for $175 million  — down from an initial total of $454 million — in order to pause enforcement of the judgment in that case while he appeals, the appeals court ruled.