DELAY FOR DON’S HUSH-MONEY TRIAL
Manhattan judge pushes back March 25 opening
Donald Trump’s trial related to a hush money payoff to porn star Stormy Daniels was pushed back on Friday by the presiding judge who said “significant questions of fact” must be resolved before the former president’s historic Manhattan case moves forward.
“As evidenced by [Trump’s] most recent letter filed this afternoon, there are significant questions of fact which this court must resolve before it may rule on” his efforts to get the case tossed, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan wrote, adjourning the trial by about three weeks.
The judge told the parties to come to court on March 25, when the trial was slated to begin, to address a dispute related to old records tied to Michael Cohen’s case. The trial’s anticipated star witness was convicted in 2018 when federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York first investigated the notorious hush money scheme.
The old filings related to Trump’s former fixer turned nemesis have altered the timeline for what’s set to be his first criminal case of four to make it to trial.
Trump’s defense team subpoenaed the records in January and have claimed what they’ve received so far contains evidence impeaching Cohen and should buy them a three-month delay.
In March 8 filings made public Thursday, Trump’s lawyers said prosecutors should have obtained the records last year when they requested evidence from the feds while preparing their case. They accused them of instead cherry-picking favorable material and declining to procure anything that could be helpful to the defense. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office is expected to respond to the prosecutorial misconduct allegations in court filings on Monday.
Bragg’s office, which consented to a 30-day delay of the trial Thursday, says the 104,000 documents produced so far are largely irrelevant, which is why they were never requested. Prosecutors said they requested relevant material last year, some of which they said the feds “declined to provide.” Still, they noted that Trump didn’t take issue with what they did get until the eve of trial, jibing with the former president’s dogged attempts to delay his many cases.
In a letter to the court Friday, Trump lawyer Todd Blanche — who has also asked Judge Merchan to dismiss the Trump case altogether — asked the jurist to hold a hearing to determine whether prosecutors should face sanctions or the case should be tossed before setting a trial date.
“[There] are disputed issues of fact regarding the [DA’s] obligation to obtain and produce these materials much earlier,” Blanche wrote. “[Federal prosecutors] should be