NYC lawyer asks judges to let him work on Trump trials starting the same day

A Manhattan lawyer is trying to move heaven and earth to represent a pair of conflicting cases going to trial the same day — one against a Colorado businessman accused of stealing from Trump supporters, the other against a Trump company for stealing from New York’s taxpayers.

Attorney John Meringolo is scheduled to go to federal court with Timothy Shea in the We Build the Wall crowdfunding scam case against him on Oct. 24.

Shea is charged with pocketing donations from supporters of Trump’s signature immigration policy to build a wall on the southern border. His case ended in a mistrial on June 7, after a holdout juror refused to convict, alleging a government “witch hunt.”

The same day Shea’s retrial starts, the Trump Organization and Trump Payroll Corp. are slated to go on trial across the street in Manhattan Supreme Court on tax fraud charges. In that case, prosecutors say the company engaged in a 15-year tax evasion scheme that hid millions in taxable income from authorities.

Meringolo said lawyers for Trump’s family real estate business asked him to help defend the case following the recent guilty plea of chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg. The company’s veteran bookkeeper has agreed to testify against his former employer for less prison time.

In a flurry of correspondence filed over the past two weeks, Meringolo has tried to bend the courts’ schedules so he can represent both cases — telling the presiding judges he’s the best man for the job.

On Sept. 2, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, presiding over the Trump Organization case, told Meringolo that the answer was no. The judge cited the lawyer’s conflicting schedule and described his eleventh-hour arrival to the case at a Monday hearing as “bizarre.”

“That motion I received last week, or the notice of appearance, frankly, was almost bizarre, and it was dealt with appropriately,” said Merchan. “I’m repeating, we are not delaying this trial.”

Meringolo then turned to federal Judge Analisa Torres, overseeing the We Build the Wall case, and asked her to push its start back by three weeks.

“I have been retained to represent the Trump Payroll Corporation in its criminal trial scheduled to begin on the very same date as Mr. Shea’s retrial,” Meringolo wrote Torres on Wednesday.

He added that Trump’s family company desperately needed his last-minute services as Weisselberg’s cooperation “drastically changed the scope of the trial.”

Torres will rule on Meringolo’s request.

Two others charged in the federal We Build the Wall crowdfunding scam, Brian Kolfage and Andrew Badolato, pleaded guilty in April. The fourth person accused, right-wing strategist Steve Bannon, was pardoned by Trump.

The Manhattan district attorney — not bound by the federal pardon — filed new charges against Bannon and We Build the Wall as an entity in a state court indictment on Sept. 8. Merchan is also the judge in that case.