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The first criminal trial against a former US president is likely to be postponed by up to a month, after Manhattan prosecutors agreed to allow Donald Trump more time to review newly obtained documents pertinent to his “hush money” case in New York.
If Judge Juan Merchan, who is overseeing the case, agrees, the six-week trial that was scheduled to begin on March 25 could now commence towards the end of April.
The concession by the office of Manhattan’s district attorney Alvin Bragg is the latest vindication for the tactics deployed by Trump’s legal team, who have sought to delay or divert the cases against the former president by tying them up in procedural issues.
Even if it is postponed by a month, Bragg’s hush money case could be the only one of the four criminal indictments against Trump to proceed to trial before November’s presidential election, as the other cases face potentially lengthy delays.
It will also push a potential trial deeper into the general election campaign. Trump is the presumptive Republican party nominee to face President Joe Biden. As a criminal defendant, he will have to be present in court every day, forcing him off the presidential campaign trail for most of the week.
Bragg first charged Trump last April over alleged payments made to buy the silence of porn star Stormy Daniels — who claimed she had an affair with the real estate tycoon — in the run-up to the 2016 election.
The district attorney’s office alleged that reimbursements for the payments, originally made by former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, were then illegally disguised in business records. Cohen, who previously pleaded guilty to various crimes including lying to Congress, is expected to be the main witnesses for the prosecution.
In preparation for a trial, Trump’s legal team have sought documents from federal prosecutors who had previously charged Cohen with campaign finance violations. They had argued that the district attorney’s case should be delayed while they reviewed tens of thousands of pages of evidence.
On Thursday, Bragg’s office wrote to the judge that “31,000 pages of additional records” had been provided to the Trump team this week by federal prosecutors in New York, and that it expected “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 [federal prosecutors] previously declined to provide,” they added.
As a result, Bragg’s team, which has previously blocked any delay of the trial, said “in an abundance of caution” it would not oppose a postponement of up to 30 days.
Lawyers for Trump declined to comment. Previous attempts by Trump’s team to postpone the trial — which his lawyers have claimed is a form of “election interference” — have been rejected by the judge.
The office of the US attorney for the Southern District of New York declined to comment.
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