The trial in New York on the money case against the former president has been hushed up Donald Trump It was postponed until mid-April, Judge Juan Merchan ruled Friday.
Merchan said the trial, originally scheduled to begin on March 25, will be pushed back 30 days from Friday.
He also set a hearing on the trial’s original start date to discuss a motion filed by Trump’s attorneys to produce documents in the case.
Merchan said he would set a new trial date “if necessary” when he rules on that motion, meaning the trial could be delayed beyond the middle of next month.
Brag’s office and Trump’s lawyers declined to comment.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said earlier that he would at least support a postponement of the trial 30 days, until the end of April. Trump’s legal team asked for a 90-day delay.
Bragg said Thursday that Trump’s request to delay the trial was the result of the U.S. attorney’s filing of more than 100,000 pages of discovery in Manhattan, which Bragg said was “largely unrelated to the subject matter of this case.” The U.S. Attorney’s Office on Friday submitted an additional 15,000 pages of discovery, which Bragg’s office said was “not relevant to the subject matter of this case.”
The documents refer to the documents of Michael Cohen admitting guilt Multiple criminal charges in 2018, including making secret payments to women who claimed to have ties to Trump, lying to Congress about Trump’s business ties to Russia, and failing to report millions of dollars in income.
On Friday, Merchan directed Trump’s lawyers and Bragg’s office to provide him with a “detailed timeline of events surrounding the requests for final production of documents,” which served as the “basis” of Bragg’s Thursday letter, in which he said his office did not object. 30 day trial delay.
The judge said Thursday’s schedule should include subpoenas, e-mails, memos and messages so that “this Court can properly assess who is to blame for delaying the filings and what, if any, prejudice they have caused.” suffered by either party and what sanctions (sapiya) are appropriate, if any.”
Bragg’s office filed a lawsuit against Trump, accusing its former president of falsifying business records related to Cohen’s $130,000 payment to adult film star Stormi Daniels toward the end of the 2016 presidential campaign.
Merchan in mid-February The trial was scheduled for March 25. He said he expected it to last about six weeks. He made it clear that he was not interested in delaying the trial, as requested by Trump’s lawyers.
Trump faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to hush money payments to Daniels. He pleaded not guilty.
Trump and his legal team have asked that the four criminal cases he faces be dismissed and delayed. The strategy has proven successful on some fronts. The federal election interference case has been stayed indefinitely pending a Supreme Court decision, and some charges in the Georgia case have been dropped.
Currently, the hush money business is most likely to be prosecuted first and before the election.
“We will continue to fight to end this fraud and all other crooked Joe Biden-led Witch Hunts once and for all,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement after Mercha’s order on Friday.
Megan Lebowitz contributed.