A week after agreeing to a brief delay, Manhattan's district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, said his office's criminal prosecution of Donald J. Trump should begin April 15 as scheduled.
By Jesse McKinley and Kate Christobek
Mar 21, 2024
The Manhattan district attorney's office said in court papers Thursday that a large cache of newly disclosed documents contained little that might influence or delay the criminal trial of Donald J. Trump, which is scheduled to begin in mid-April.
In a surprising move, the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, agreed last week to allow a short delay in the trial to give Mr. Trump's lawyers time to review the records. The documents had been turned over by federal prosecutors who had previously investigated Michael Cohen, the former president's longtime fixer who is expected to be a key witness in Mr. Bragg's prosecution.
Mr. Trump's lawyers had cast the documents as a potential game-changing development in the intensely litigated case, which had been set to go to trial on Monday. But in Thursday's filing, Mr. Bragg's office played down the documents' import, though it said its review was continuing.
"The people now have good reason to believe that this production contains only limited materials relevant to the subject matter of this case and that have not previously been disclosed to defendant," the office said in the filing, adding: "The overwhelming majority of the production is entirely immaterial, duplicative or substantially duplicative of previously disclosed materials."
It said that the trial's currently scheduled start date -- now set for April 15 -- provides "a more than reasonable amount of time for defendant to review the information provided."
Mr. Trump's lawyers have asked the judge in the case, Juan M. Merchan, to dismiss the charges entirely or delay the trial until the summer and penalize the district attorney. A hearing before Justice Merchan is scheduled for Monday.
That same day, Mr. Trump faces a deadline to post a half-billion dollar bond in his civil fraud case in New York, which was brought by the state's attorney general and led to a judge's finding that the former president is liable for inflating his net worth. If he fails to secure the bond -- and his lawyers have said it would be a "practical impossibility" -- the attorney general can move to collect a $454 million judgment from Mr. Trump.
It could be quite painful for the former president. The attorney general, Letitia James, could freeze some of his bank accounts and potentially seek to seize some of his New York properties. Although it could be difficult to seize his assets, public records show that Ms. James has formally posted the civil judgment against Mr. Trump in Westchester County, a preliminary step needed to stake a claim to his private estate and golf club there.
The deadline in the civil case and the hearing in the criminal one come as Mr. Trump contends with a dizzying array of legal entanglements. He faces four criminal indictments, including charges for his role in trying to subvert democracy after the 2020 election.
In the Manhattan case, the lawyers have blamed Mr. Bragg's prosecutors for the belated disclosure. The documents in question came from the office of the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, which obtained a guilty plea from Mr. Cohen in 2018.
Mr. Bragg's office has denied responsibility for the delay, noting that it was Mr. Trump's lawyers who waited until early this year to subpoena the documents from the Southern District.
Some of the recently disclosed records relate to Mr. Cohen's phones. Mr. Bragg's prosecutors argued that they had originally asked for the data, but federal prosecutors denied the request as "unduly burdensome." When Mr. Trump requested the records this year, federal prosecutors obliged, authorizing disclosure "under the extraordinary circumstances of this case."
Mr. Bragg's prosecutors argued that much of the other information produced by the federal government was irrelevant to the district attorney's case and instead related to other investigations into Mr. Cohen.
Mr. Trump is on the precipice of becoming the first former American president to be tried criminally, the result of an indictment by a Manhattan grand jury almost exactly a year ago .
The case centers on a hush-money payment Mr. Cohen made in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election to a porn star, Stormy Daniels, who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump. The district attorney has argued that the cover-up cheated voters of the chance to fully assess Mr. Trump's candidacy.
Mr. Trump, who is again the presumptive Republican nominee for president, has denied the charges, casting the case as a politically motivated hit job by Mr. Bragg, a Democrat. He has also denied an affair with Ms. Daniels, who has said that she and the former president slept together once in 2006 . She later tried to sell her story, leading to the payment from Mr. Cohen in exchange for her silence.
The Trump campaign's communications director, Steven Cheung, blasted Mr. Bragg's filing, saying he and his office "are still trying to explain away why they obfuscated and lied about these incredibly late disclosures."
"No amount of dishonesty from their team can overshadow truth and transparency," Mr. Cheung said.
Ben Protess contributed reporting.
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