A New York prosecutor wants to delay Donald Trump’s trial by 30 days. Why? So Trump can go through new evidence in the case. The trial was supposed to start on March 25, but Trump’s lawyers asked for more time. They received a whopping 73,000 pages of new evidence on March 4, plus another 31,000 pages just recently. And guess what? There’s even more coming next week!
New York prosecutor agrees to delay Donald Trump hush money trial 30 days https://t.co/rJdQVTnTA5
— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) March 15, 2024
The Manhattan District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, said he was ready to start on time but is okay with delaying it for 30 days. This way, Trump can really dig into the new stuff.
https://youtu.be/O2iYqryi8Ew?si=fiKiKWuspHeRO-gC
The judge, Juan Merchan, hasn’t made a decision about the delay yet. Bragg kinda pointed the finger at Trump, saying the delay is partly because of the expected witness Michael Cohen, and he thinks Trump is to blame for the timing.
Bragg explained that he asked for all the records related to Cohen’s 2018 conviction back in June, and he got what he needed. But Trump didn’t ask for these records until January 18, and he only started talking about concerns with the Cohen evidence last week.
Bragg basically said, “Look, the reason we’re getting all this stuff now is because Trump waited so long, even though we were on it.” Cohen, by the way, got convicted for campaign finance violations tied to those hush money payments, along with some other things.
Trump says he didn’t do anything wrong and pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of messing with business records in New York. Bragg’s argument is that Trump messed with these records to hide payments he made to Cohen for hush-money to Stormy Daniels, the porn star, and Karen McDougal, the Playboy model. He wanted to keep them quiet about their alleged affairs with him before the 2016 election.
Cohen is a big deal in this case because he was the one who handled these payments. But here’s the twist: Cohen got convicted and spent time in jail for the same payments and for lying to Congress. Trump’s team is saying Cohen’s not trustworthy.