Judge delays Trump’s N.Y. trial

NEW YORK — Donald Trump’s New York hush-money criminal trial was delayed Friday until at least mid-april as the judge seeks answers about a last-minute evidence dump that the former president’s lawyers said has hampered their ability to prepare their defense.

Manhattan Judge Juan Manuel Merchan agreed to a 30day delay starting Friday and scheduled a hearing for March 25 after Trump’s lawyers complained that they only recently started receiving more than 100,000 pages of documents from a previous federal investigation into the matter.

Merchan said he is holding the hearing to determine if prosecutors should face sanctions or if the case should be dismissed, as Trump’s lawyers have requested.

The trial had been scheduled to start on March 25. The delay means the trial would start no earlier than April 15. Prosecutors had said they wouldn’t object to a short delay.

In a letter Friday, Merchan told Manhattan prosecutors and Trump’s defense team that he wanted to assess “who, if anyone, is at fault for the late production of the documents,” whether it hurt either side and whether any sanctions are warranted.

The judge demanded a timeline of events detailing when the documents were requested and when they were turned over. He also wants all correspondence between the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which is prosecuting Trump, and the U.S. attorney’s office, which previously investigated the matter in 2018.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office declined comment. Trump lawyer Todd Blanche also declined comment.