Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg speaks during a press conference in his office in New York City on February 22, 2024.
Brendan Mcdermid | Reuters
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg told a judge Thursday that he would not object to delaying the start of former President Donald Trump’s hush money trial for up to 30 days.
Bragg said the delay would give Trump’s lawyers time to review tens of thousands of documents turned over Wednesday by federal prosecutors related to their prosecution of Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen.
The prosecutor told Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan that his prosecution team was ready to begin Trump’s trial on March 25 as currently scheduled.
But Bragg wrote in a court filing, “We do not oppose an adjournment out of an abundance of caution and to ensure that the defendant has adequate time to review the new materials.”
Trump is accused of falsifying business records related to a hush money payment Cohen made to porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 presidential election to keep her quiet about an alleged sexual tryst with the then-presidential candidate.
Cohen, who is scheduled to testify in Trump’s trial, pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court in 2018 to federal campaign finance violations related to hush-money payments to Daniels and another woman who said she had an affair with Trump.
Bragg said in his filing that the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan turned over 31,000 pages of files related to Cohen’s criminal case to his office and Trump’s lawyers on Wednesday.
Another submission of documents from the federal prosecutor’s office is due next week, Bragg said.
The prosecutor said that the late arrival of these materials was “solely due to the defendant’s delay despite the People’s diligence.”
Trump’s lawyers dispute that characterization.
Last week, defense attorneys Susan Necheles and Todd Blanche asked Merchan to either dismiss the charges against Bragg entirely or delay the trial for 90 days while barring Cohen and Daniels from testifying.
Trump’s lawyers argued that Merchan should do this because federal prosecutors had turned over an incomplete 73,000-page tranche of Cohen-related records to them in early March.
State prosecutors “should have obtained and produced these materials long ago, and instead they chose to unsuccessfully attempt to impede our access to them,” Trump’s lawyers wrote.
The prosecutor, for his part, says in his new filing that he asked federal prosecutors last year for the full grand jury file related to Cohen’s conviction. Those materials were sent to Trump last June, prosecutors said.
Until last week, Trump “did not express any concerns” about whether those efforts were enough, Bragg said.
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement that Bragg agreed to a delay “after admitting serious violations of the investigation.”
“President Trump and his lawyers have consistently and steadfastly demonstrated that this case has no legal or factual merit and should be dismissed,” Cheung said.
Trump has pleaded not guilty in the case. This is one of four prosecutions he faces as he simultaneously prepares to face President Joe Biden in November’s presidential election.
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2024-03-14 21:25:51
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