MANHATTAN (CN) — Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg on Thursday floated delaying Donald Trump’s upcoming criminal trial by as much as 30 days, citing newly disclosed evidence from the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s Office.
“Specifically, yesterday the USAO produced approximately 31,000 pages of additional records and represented that there will be another production of documents by next week,” Bragg said in a motion to the court filed Thursday.
“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 new dump of documents includes materials related to the federal investigation against Michael Cohen, Trump’s ex-lawyer who pleaded guilty in 2018 to financial charges committed during his work with the former president.
Now a staunch critic of Trump’s, Cohen is expected to be a star witness for prosecutors in the upcoming criminal trial.
Bragg accuses Trump of falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels, who was reportedly in an extramarital relationship with Trump. Prosecutors claim Trump directed Cohen to make those payments during his campaign for the presidency in 2016.
Earlier this week Trump himself pushed to delay the criminal trial; he asked the court on Monday to wait until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on his presidential immunity arguments in another case before moving forward with the hush money charges.
He tried his hand at another delay last week, too, asking the court to push the trial back by at least 90 days — or to dismiss the indictment altogether — after the U.S. Attorney’s Office started dumping the previously sealed materials earlier this month.
In Thursday’s motion, Bragg discouraged the lengthier delay proposed by Trump’s camp. He clarified that his office is ready to go ahead with trial on March 25, as scheduled, but would also accept a “brief adjournment not to exceed 30 days” because of the new documents.
“We do not oppose an adjournment in an abundance of caution and to ensure that defendant has sufficient time to review the new materials,” Bragg said.
Still, Bragg made it clear that Trump’s team was to blame for the last-minute release of the court records. “We note that the timing of the current production of additional materials from the USAO is a function of defendant's own delay,” he said.
Bragg said his office “diligently” sought the records it needed from the attorney’s office last year.
“Despite having access to those materials since June, defendant raised no concerns to the people about the sufficiency of our efforts to obtain materials from the USAO before last week,” he continued. “Instead, defendant 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 timing of the USAO's productions is a result solely of defendant's delay despite the people's diligence.”
New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, the judge overseeing the criminal trial, has yet to issue a ruling on the dueling delay requests.
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