Prosecutors willing to delay Trump’s hush-money trial to review new records
Manhattan prosecutors say they are willing to delay Donald Trump’s hush-money trial up to 30 days to review new records in a case that had been set to start in New York later this month.
In a motion to the court requesting the delay, the district attorney’s office said: “Specifically, yesterday the USAO [US Attorneys’ Offices] produced approximately 31,000 pages of additional records and represented that there will be another production of documents by 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 USAO more than a year ago and that the USAO previously declined to provide.”
The trial is currently slated to start on 25 March, kicking off with jury selection.
The ex-president has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsification of business records.
Prosecutors say he directed his former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, to pay adult film star Stormy Daniels $130,000 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 Cohen as legal expenses.
Trump denies the encounter with Daniels.
Last month, prosecutors said they planned to introduce evidence of a “pressure campaign” by Trump in 2018 to ensure Cohen did not cooperate with a federal investigation into the payment to Daniels. Cohen pleaded guilty that year to violating campaign finance law.
Trump’s attorneys were seeking a postponement of up to 90 days; prosecutors have said that wasn’t necessary.
The district attorney’s office noted in their motion “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 18, 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.