Donald Trump’s legal woes come to a head in his hometown of New York

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For decades, Donald Trump excelled at navigating New York’s institutions. This week, he was legally outmanoeuvred in the city that knows him best. 

On Thursday, a Manhattan judge dismissed allegations of election interference from Trump’s defence team, setting a criminal trial in the “hush money” case in the middle of primary season on March 25 — the first time in US history that a former president will be in the dock.

A day later, a court across the street ordered Trump and his businesses to pay at least $355mn for committing persistent fraud by vastly overstating the value of his real estate empire, tearing apart the former president’s carefully curated image as a savvy businessman in the process.

The twin decisions have shifted the momentum against Trump, who had been basking in the glow of shortlived legal victories last week, as the US Supreme Court appeared poised to throw out an attempt to keep him off the ballot in November, and a special counsel issued a politically damaging report about the mental acuity of his 81-year-old opponent Joe Biden.

Financially and politically they will pile pressure on the former president as he gears up for a fiercely fought and expensive general election. They also demonstrate the limits of Trump’s go-to legal strategy of attempting to delay proceedings by any means possible, including the lodging of appeals at every stage and the playing of various pending cases off each other, to complicate the scheduling of any potential trials.

By choosing to file civil fraud charges against Trump in 2022, rather than pursue a criminal case over the alleged falsification of financial statements, New York state attorney-general Letitia James was also able to try the former president and his businesses in front of a single judge, rather than a jury, and had a lower standard of proof than prosecutors in…