The Manhattan district attorney’s office, which is handling the hush money case involving former President Trump, said in a court filing on Thursday that no more postponements were necessary for the trial after a large amount of new documents caused a delay in the start of the criminal proceeding.
Trump’s legal team requested a 90-day delay to examine over 100,000 pages of records unexpectedly handed over by federal prosecutors last week. Judge Juan Merchan, overseeing the case, ultimately postponed the beginning of Trump’s hush money trial by one month after Bragg’s office agreed to a 30-day delay out of caution. by one month after Bragg’s office consented to a 30-day delay out of an “abundance of caution.”
The office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) said in a new court filing Thursday that the records obtained by the U.S. attorney’s office contain “only limited materials relevant to the subject matter of this case and that have not previously been disclosed to defendant.” The prosecutors argue that the 30-delay is “a more than reasonable amount of time” to review the documents. in a new court filing Thursday that the records obtained by the U.S. attorney’s office contain “only limited materials relevant to the subject matter of this case and that have not previously been disclosed to defendant.” The prosecutors argue that the 30-delay is “a more than reasonable amount of time” to review the documents.
“The majority of the production is entirely immaterial, duplicative, or substantially duplicative of previously disclosed materials, or cumulative of evidence concerning Michael Cohen’s unrelated federal convictions that defendant has been on notice about for months,” the memorandum states.
Prosecutors estimated that fewer than 270 documents, which are related to Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen’s federal criminal case, are relevant and were not previously disclosed. They argue that no further adjournment is needed other than what was already ordered due to the “limited amount of new information.”
The prosecutors also challenged Trump’s legal argument that the district attorney failed to fulfill their discovery 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 were not part of the prosecutor’s “disclosure obligations.”
The prosecutors dismissed Trump’s team's allegations as “wild and untrue” in their memorandum.
Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records connected to reimbursements he made to Cohen for a hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election. He has pleaded not guilty.
His trial was scheduled to start Monday, but it has been pushed back to at least mid-April. There will instead be a hearing on Monday to discuss the schedule and the new trove of documents.
