Fox News reported that jury selection in former President Donald Trump's New York hush-money case began on Monday.

While Trump has regularly declared his innocence, Trump admitted over the weekend that his legal team has had insufficient time to prepare. 

"Only gave us a short period of time"

According to the Washington Examiner, Trump's acknowledgement came in a post he put up Sunday on Truth Social.

"Judge Juan Merchan, perhaps the most highly conflicted Judge in New York State history, only gave us a short period of time to read and study hundreds of thousands of pages of documents that D.A. Alvin Bragg illegally hid, disguised, and held back from us," Trump wrote.

Trump laments ‘short period of time’ to prep for hush money trial https://t.co/mZXpbymFWp

— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) April 15, 2024

"Of course, and as the Judge knows, we need far more time than that," the 2024 Republican candidate went on to complain.

Judge pushed trial start date back by 30 days

"They could have started this Fake Biden Trial many years ago, not right in the middle of my campaign for President, and time would not be a problem," he insisted.

While Trump's Manhattan trial was previously scheduled to start on March 25, Judge Juan Merchan moved last month to grant Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's 30-day delay.

As Fox News noted, that reprieve was sought following the release of new evidence from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York.

The material included a batch of 84,000 pages of documents which were turned over to the defense team on March 4 along with another 31,000 pages that were provided a week later.

The evidence concerns a federal investigation into Trump's alleged payment of hush-money to former adult film star Stormy Daniels.

Merchan denies claims of bias

In his indictment last year, Bragg asserted that Trump falsified business records at his company by reporting the alleged payoff as legal expenses.

Meanwhile, Merchan rejected arguments from Trump's attorneys that they would need at least 90 days to sort through the new material.

Merchan told the Associated Press in March that preparations for Trump's trial have been "intense" and stressed that he wishes "to make sure that I’ve done everything I could to be prepared and to make sure that we dispense justice."

He also dismissed Trump's claims of bias, stating, "There's no agenda here. We want to follow the law. We want justice to be done. That's all we want."