The ruling by Judge Juan Merchan that President Trump will stand trial at Manhattan on April 15 for hush money payments to Stephanie Clifford, the adult film star known by her nom de porn of “Stormy Daniels,” underscores the challenges the former president faces in securing an acquittal before the election.

“See you all on April 15,” Judge Merchan of the New York state supreme court told the courtroom on Monday, the Sun reported. That date all but assures that a verdict will be brought in before November, or even in advance of the summer. 

Mr. Trump on Tuesday lashed out at Judge Merchan on his social media platform, Truth Social, saying that the judge is “a true and certified Trump hater who suffers from a very serious case of ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome.’ In other words, he hates me!”

That outburst appeared to induce Judge Merchan on Tuesday to issue a gag order on Mr. Trump. The jurist cited the “imminency of the risk of harm” in imposing a prior restraint on the former president’s speech that bars him from discussing Ms. Clifford, his erstwhile attorney, Michael Cohen, or other witnesses in the case. He is also prohibited from mentioning prosecutors other than Mr. Bragg. He will be permitted, for now, to criticize Judge Merchan.

Mr. Trump has been doing exactly that, claiming that Judge Merchan’s daughter is “a senior executive at a Super Liberal Democratic firm that works for Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff.” Mr. Trump then railed against the judge for his “vicious” treatment of the ailing, 76-year-old longtime Trump Organization chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, who was sent to New York’s notorious Rikers Island after refusing to cooperate with prosecutors and flip on his boss.

As for the Stormy Daniels case, District Attorney Alvin Bragg alleges that Mr. Trump falsified business records in 2016 to mask $130,000 in hush money payments paid to Ms. Clifford to purchase her silence with respect to one sexual encounter she claims they had in 2006, when he was newly married to Melania Trump. Those payments were executed by Mr. Trump’s former attorney, Michael Cohen. 

Mr. Trump has denied all the allegations, including that he had a sexual encounter with Ms. Clifford. He maintains that he had no knowledge of the $130,000 in payments and has distanced himself from Cohen. The disgraced lawyer pleaded guilty to felonies as part of the federal investigation into these same actions. The Department of Justice chose not to charge Mr. Trump.  

Of possible concern for Mr. Trump could be not only Judge Merchan’s decision, but also his tone. Rejecting Mr. Trump’s assertion that Mr. Bragg withheld documents from the former president, the judge found that the “district attorney of New York County is not at fault for the late production of documents” and that he “made diligent, good-faith efforts” to fulfill his discovery obligations, a constitutional imperative for the government.

A judge sympathetic to Mr. Bragg’s point of view could be particularly helpful for the district attorney, whose case is far from straightforward. It relies on creatively transforming a misdemeanor — falsification of business records — into a felony by showing that the fudging was in the service of a second crime. Mr. Bragg has not yet adumbrated what he will argue constitutes that second offense.

This is unusual, as New York prosecutors usually charge the second crime along with the predicate misdemeanor. By remaining coy on the second charge, Mr. Bragg will have to debut it at trial if he hopes to convict Mr. Trump of a felony. That will likely necessitate an involved set of jury instructions, all of which will have to be approved by Judge Merchan. 

While the judge is responsible for clarifying matters of law — like the nature of the charges — the jury will be tasked with handing up a conviction or an acquittal. Here Mr. Bragg could enjoy home-field advantage, as Manhattan in 2020 delivered 84.5 percent of its vote to President Biden and only 14.5 percent to Mr. Trump. Juries in the civil suits brought against Mr. Trump by the writer E. Jean Carroll have brought in large judgments against him. 

In the defamation damages trial in the Carroll case, Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled against Mr. Trump on a crucial issue. He did not allow him to rebut the writer’s allegations that the future president raped her at Bergdorf-Goodman some time in the 1990s, ruling that the sexual assault was a settled fact due to an earlier finding. Mr. Trump’s legal team argued, unsuccessfully, that Judge Kaplan was conflicted because he had mentored Ms. Carroll’s lawyer when they worked at the same firm many years ago.

Furthermore, Justice Arthur Engoron ruled against Mr. Trump in the recent civil fraud suit brought against him and his organization by the New York attorney general, Letitia James. The judge found that Mr. Trump’s companies were guilty of “persistent fraud” without a trial, then levied a judgment that ultimately reached half a billion dollars. 

Judge Engoron, who ruled that Mr. Trump was liable in the absence of a jury, demanded the immediate posting of an enormous bond. Mr. Trump had to appeal to a higher court to get the amount of bond he was required to post reduced to $175 million.

Judge Merchan’s firmness with respect to the trial date — he allowed but a small postponement from March 25 — stands in marked contrast to the significant obstacles that prosecutors have encountered in Mr. Trump’s other criminal cases. The January 6 one is in deep freeze, awaiting word from the Supreme Court on whether the 45th president is entitled to immunity. 

The racketeering case out of Georgia is not officially suspended, and the presiding judge, Scott McAfee, has scheduled a hearing on Thursday to dispense with pretrial motions. The Georgia Court of Appeals, though, is weighing whether to disqualify the district attorney of Fulton County, Fani Willis. Judge McAfee ruled she could stay on after the resignation of her lover and handpicked prosecutor, Nathan Wade.

Timing is unsettled with respect to the Mar-a-Lago documents case. Judge Aileen Cannon has not yet set a trial date, though Special Counsel Jack Smith is pushing for an August start. Judge Cannon’s pace, though, has been deliberate, and she has so far been resistant to the special counsel’s rush. He has also accused her of “manifest injustice” and “clear error,” setting the stage for a possible appeal to remove her from the case.

This article has been updated from the bulldog.