A New York judge on Monday ruled that prosecutors can introduce a variety of damaging evidence in Donald J. Trump’s coming criminal trial, including references to the infamous “Access Hollywood” recording in which Mr. Trump boasts about groping women.
Mr. Trump’s lawyers had sought to keep the tape out of evidence, and, the judge, Juan M. Merchan, struck something of a compromise. He ruled that it was unnecessary for prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorney’s office to actually play the tape for a jury, but that they could question witnesses about it.
In other rulings on Monday, the judge strengthened the prosecution’s hand heading into the trial, which is tentatively set to start in mid-April. Jury selection was originally scheduled to have begun March 25, but the judge last week delayed the trial at least three weeks after more than 100,000 investigative records came to light.
Unless the judge delays it again, it almost certainly will be the first of Mr. Trump’s four criminal cases to be heard by jurors, and will be the first prosecution of a former American president in the nation’s history.
Some of the evidence prosecutors want to introduce does not directly relate to the core accusation in the case — that Mr. Trump covered up a potential sex scandal involving the porn star Stormy Daniels to clear his path to the presidency in 2016. But it strikes at the heart of Mr. Trump’s potential motive for approving a hush-money payment to Ms. Daniels. He did that on the heels of the “Access Hollywood” recording being made public, a development that upended Mr. Trump’s campaign in the weeks before Election Day.
The judge withheld a decision about some of the most damaging pieces of evidence that prosecutors want to introduce: three public accusations of sexual assault lodged against Mr. Trump after the tape was released. Persuading the judge that allegations of sexual assault should be allowed could be difficult, given that judges are supposed to carefully evaluate evidence that could unfairly harm a defendant in the eyes of the jury.
Justice Merchan will allow prosecutors to introduce evidence about two other hush-money deals during the 2016 campaign, one of them involving a former Playboy model. He will also allow prosecutors to call Ms. Daniels to the witness stand, should they want to.
And he denied Mr. Trump’s request that the prosecution’s star witness be barred. The witness — Michael D. Cohen, the former president’s onetime fixer — paid Ms. Daniels $130,000 during the campaign to keep her from telling her story of a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump.
When Mr. Trump reimbursed Mr. Cohen, prosecutors say, his family business falsely described the repayments in internal records as “legal expenses,” continuing the cover-up.
The judge barred Mr. Trump’s lawyers from impeaching Mr. Cohen’s credibility by introducing statements from federal prosecutors who in 2018 secured a guilty plea from Mr. Cohen to campaign finance violations. The recent release of more than 100,000 records that delayed the case came from those same federal prosecutors.
Mr. Trump’s lawyers cannot mention the federal prosecutors’ decision not to charge Mr. Trump in 2018, Justice Merchan ruled, nor can they argue that the current case against him is novel, unusual or unprecedented, as he so often does.
Mr. Trump, who recently clinched the Republican nomination for president, has denied any wrongdoing and has cast his legal woes as politically motivated. In the Manhattan case, he has claimed that the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, a Democrat, is out to get him.
But the judge will prevent his lawyers from using those claims as a defense at trial. The former president’s lawyers cannot attack Mr. Bragg’s motivations, or suggest that he brought the case to interfere with Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign.
Outside court, Mr. Trump can still make those claims, though prosecutors have separately asked Justice Merchan to impose a gag order on the former president barring him from attacking witnesses in the case. The judge has yet to rule on that request.
