US

Prosecutors willing to delay Donald Trump’s hush-money trial to review new records

In separate case, Trump loses his bid to have charges that he mishandled classified documents dropped

Donald Trump's lawyers have asked to either delay for 90 days or for the charges to be dropped against him. Photograph: Mike Stewart/AP

Thu Mar 14 2024 - 21:42

Manhattan prosecutors on Thursday said they are willing to delay Donald Trump’s trial on charges related to making hush money payments for up to 30 days so they can review records newly obtained from federal authorities.

The request has the potential to delay the proceedings, which were to begin with jury selection on March 25th in New York and would be the first of the four criminal indictments against the former US president to go to trial.

District attorney Alvin Bragg’s office told the court that they were open to the delay because they had received from federal prosecutors about 31,000 pages of records, and expected more next week.

“Based on our initial review of yesterday’s production, those records appear to contain materials related to the subject matter of this case, including materials that the people requested from the [US attorney’s office (USAO)] more than a year ago and that the USAO previously declined to provide,” prosecutors wrote.

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Mr Trump’s lawyers have asked to either delay for 90 days or for the charges to be dropped against him, alleging violations of the discovery process, in which the defence and prosecution shares evidence with each other. Prosecutors have said a delay of that length is not necessary.

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The New York case centres on allegations Mr Trump directed his former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, to pay adult film star Stormy Daniels $130,000 (€120,000) to keep quiet before the 2016 election about a sexual encounter she says they had a decade earlier, and then falsely recorded his reimbursement to Mr Cohen as legal expenses.

Mr Trump, who recently clinched enough delegates to win the Republican presidential nomination and is expected to face off against Joe Biden in November, denies the encounter with Ms Daniels and has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsification of business records.

Last month, prosecutors said they planned to introduce evidence of a “pressure campaign” by Mr Trump in 2018 to ensure Mr Cohen did not co-operate with a federal investigation into the payment to Ms Daniels. Mr Cohen pleaded guilty that year to violating campaign finance law.

In their motion, Mr Bragg’s office noted “that the timing of the current production of additional materials from the USAO is a function of defendant’s own delay”.

“[D]efendant waited until January 18th, 2024, to subpoena additional materials from the USAO and then consented to repeated extensions of the deadline for the USAO’s determination,” the office wrote.

Mr Trump, alongside 18 co-defendants, is also facing charges in Georgia for allegedly meddling in the state’s 2020 election results in order to block Mr Biden from winning its electoral votes.

At the federal level, justice department special counsel Jack Smith has indicted him on charges that he plotted to keep Mr Biden from entering the White House. He has separately accused Mr Trump of taking classified government documents with him after his presidency, and conspiring them to keep them out of the hands of authorities sent to retrieve them.

Mr Trump is the first former president to face criminal charges, and a conviction could upend what is expected to be a hard-fought rematch against Mr Biden, who has struggled with poor approval ratings for most of his presidency. However, his three criminal cases outside New York are facing delays as judges weigh pre-trial motions and appeals, and it’s unclear if any will be resolved before the November 5th election.

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Meanwhile, Mr Trump lost his bid to have charges that he mishandled classified documents dropped on grounds that they are too vague.

US district judge Aileen Cannon issued the ruling on Thursday after holding a hearing that Mr Trump attended in person to consider motions by the former president to dismiss all charges against him.

Judge Cannon only ruled on one of Mr Trump’s motions while multiple others are still pending. Still, the ruling is one of the first substantive actions that the judge has taken with regard to any of the pre-trial motions and represents a victory for Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is prosecuting the case.

Mr Trump’s team had sought to have 32 charges thrown out related to his mishandling of documents with classification markings found at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida after he left the White House. His legal team argued the charges including phrases such as “unauthorized possession,” “relative to the national defense” and “entitled to receive” are constitutionally vague.

Judge Cannon denied the motion without prejudice, meaning the issue could still be raised again at a later time.

The case brought by Mr Smith accuses Mr Trump of willfully retaining national defence documents, concealing records and obstructing justice by evading government efforts to retrieve the records.

The judge has yet to schedule a new trial date for the case. She originally set the trial for May 20th but indicated during a hearing earlier this month that a new date will be established.

Thursday’s hearing focused on two of Trump’s pre-trial motions to have the case thrown out. In the second one, Mr Trump argued that the Presidential Records Act gave him the power to deem any documents he wanted as personal property and take them after he left the White House. The judge has not issued a ruling on that motion yet. – Guardian/Bloomberg

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