Liam Conner
Manhattan prosecutors will not be penalized for the last-minute document dump that caused the death of former President Donald Trump. silence criminal trial money start later than expected, a judge ruled Thursday.
Judge Juan Merchan rejected the defense’s request that prosecutors be sanctioned for a deluge of nearly 200,000 pages of evidence a few weeks before the scheduled start of the test. The documents were from a previous federal investigation into the matter.
Merchan agreed to delay the start of the trial from March 25 to April 15 to allow the former president’s lawyers to review the material. But at a hearing in March, he rejected the claim that the case had been tainted by prosecutorial misconduct, and denied his attempt to delay the case longer, dismiss it entirely or bar key witnesses from the prosecution. michael cohen It is Stormy Daniels to testify.
On a written decision issued ThursdayMerchan reiterated that Trump suffered no harm from the document dump because he and his lawyers were given “a reasonable amount of time to prepare and respond to the material.”
Merchan said he reached the conclusion after reviewing written submissions from both sides, including the timelines they provided him chronicling the release of evidence, as well as the arguments and clarifications that were made at the March 25 hearing on the matter.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office declined to comment on the ruling. A message seeking comment was left with Trump’s lawyers.
Following testimony from 22 witnesses last month, including Cohen and Daniels, the first criminal trial of a former president is scheduled to move into closing arguments next Tuesday, with jury deliberations scheduled for Wednesday.
Trump’s lawyers accused Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office of intentionally failing to pursue evidence from the 2018 federal investigation, who sent Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen to prison.
They argued that prosecutors who worked under Bragg, a Democrat, did so to gain an unfair advantage in the case and harm Trump’s electoral chances. Cohen, now an outspoken critic of Trump, was a key witness in the prosecution of his former boss.
At the March 25 hearing, Merchan said the prosecutor’s office was not required to collect evidence from the federal investigation, nor was the U.S. attorney’s office required to voluntarily provide the documents. What happened was “a far cry” from Manhattan prosecutors “injecting themselves into the process and trying to vehemently and aggressively obstruct their ability to obtain documentation,” the judge said.
“That’s just not what happened,” Merchan said.
The prosecutor’s office denied any wrongdoing and blamed Trump’s lawyers for waiting until Jan. 18 to subpoena records from the U.S. attorney’s office — just nine weeks before the trial began. Merchan told defense attorneys they should have acted sooner if they believed they did not have all the records they wanted.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to charges that he falsified business records by falsely recording payments to Cohen, then his personal attorney, as legal fees on his company’s books when they were reimbursements for an alleged secret $130,000 payment he made to Daniels . Manhattan prosecutors say Trump did it as part of an effort to protect his 2016 campaign by burying what he says were false stories of extramarital sex.
Trump’s lawyers say the payments to Cohen were legitimate legal expenses, not cover-up checks. Trump denies having sex with Daniels.
Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to federal campaign finance violations related to Daniels’ payment. He said Trump instructed him to arrange it, and federal prosecutors indicated they believed him, but Trump was never charged.
