1 month ago
25
Donald Trump
’s criminal trial in New York over alleged hush-money payments that was set to start in less than two weeks was postponed 30 days — a boost for the former president who has said every delay helps.
The decision Friday by state court Judge Juan Merchan comes a day after
Manhattan District Attorney
Alvin Bragg and Trump’s defense team agreed a postponement was warranted after federal prosecutors belatedly turned over evidence in an earlier hush-money case involving star witness
Michael Cohen
, Trump’s former lawyer.
While the two sides disagreed over who was to blame, Trump’s lawyers asked for a 90-day adjournment from the planned March 25 start date and argued the indictment should be dismissed. They also said they needed more time to review evidence they said could help clear the former president.
The new evidence relates to Trump’s former fixer Cohen, who helped arrange a hush money payment to a porn star before the 2016 election to conceal her claims of a sexual encounter with the billionaire a decade earlier. Cohen pleaded guilty to federal charges in 2018.
Merchan scheduled a March 25 hearing on Trump’s argument that the indictment should be dismissed because Bragg’s office was to blame for the evidence delay. Bragg claimed Trump’s team was responsible, saying his lawyers issued a subpoena too late.
The judge said he’d “set the new trial date, if necessary,” after ruling on Trump’s motion to dismiss the case.
The delay emerged after 31,000 pages from the parallel federal case against Cohen were turned over recently, prompting Bragg on Thursday to say a 30-day postponement was justified.
Pushing back the start date in New York is good news for Trump, who is campaigning for a return to the White House. The Republican frontrunner faced as many as four criminal trials before the November presidential election, but challenges by his defense lawyers in each of the cases threaten to delay the prosecutions until after the vote is tallied.
“President Trump and his counsel have been consistent and steadfast that this case has no basis in law or fact, and should be dismissed,” Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement. “We will continue to fight to end this hoax, and all of the other Crooked Joe Biden-directed Witch Hunts, once and for all.”
The former president has pleaded not guilty in all the cases and claims they’re part of a political “witch hunt” against him.
Falsifying Records Alleged
Trump was indicted in Manhattan last year for allegedly directing Cohen to pay porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 before the 2016 election to bury her claims of an extramarital affair with Trump a decade earlier. Trump is charged with falsifying business records to disguise the payment as legal fees for Cohen.
In a letter to the judge Thursday, Bragg said he wasn’t opposed to postponing the trial because of the document dump. The records are part of a federal probe of Cohen that later triggered the state’s case against Trump. Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to campaign finance violations tied to hush-money payments, as well as tax charges and making false statements on a bank loan.
Trump’s lawyers accused Bragg’s office of engaging in “widespread misconduct” and complained they have belatedly received more than 100,000 pages of evidence since March 4, including at least 31,000 pages on March 13. Prosecutors said more material was turned over Friday, according to the judge.
However, Bragg’s office blamed Trump’s lawyers, saying the defense didn’t raise concerns about the sufficiency of the evidence and waited until Jan. 18 to issue a subpoena for more materials.
“The timing of the USAO’s productions is a result solely of defendant’s delay despite the People’s diligence,” Bragg said in the filing.
Bragg also said the material turned over by federal prosecutors was “largely irrelevant to the subject matter” of the hush-money case.
English (US)