The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, which is prosecuting former President Trump’s hush money case, said in a court filing Thursday that the planned start of criminal proceedings was thwarted by a trove of new documents. took the view that further trial delays were not justified.
Trump’s lawyers had asked for at least 90 days to review more than 100,000 pages of records unexpectedly turned over by federal prosecutors last week. Judge Juan Machan, who is overseeing the case, ultimately delayed the start of Trump’s hush money trial after Bragg’s office agreed to a 30-day delay out of “an abundance of caution.” It was postponed for a month.
This was announced by the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (Democratic). With a new court filing On Thursday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced that the records obtained included “only limited material related to the subject matter of this case and not previously disclosed to defendants.” Prosecutors have argued that the 30-hour delay is “more than reasonable time” to review the documents.
“The overwhelming majority of the productions are completely unimportant, duplicating or substantially duplicating previously disclosed material, or evidence relating to Michael Cohen’s unrelated federal convictions that the defendants had been on notice of for months.” ”, the memorandum states.
Prosecutors estimated that fewer than 270 documents related to the federal criminal case against Trump’s former fixer, Michael Cohen, had previously been withheld. They argue that there is no need for further delays beyond what has already been ordered because of the “limited amount of new information.”
Prosecutors also pushed back on Trump’s legal argument that the district attorney failed in his disclosure obligations. They argue that there can be no discovery violation because the documents from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York are not part of prosecutors’ “disclosure obligations.”
In a memorandum, prosecutors called the Trump campaign’s claims “wild and false.”
Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records related to reimbursing Cohen for hush money he paid to adult film actress Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election. He pleaded not guilty.
His trial was scheduled to begin Monday but has been postponed until at least mid-April. A public hearing will instead be held on Monday to discuss the schedule and a new trove of documents.
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