Donald Trump's Hush Money Trial May See a 30-Day Delay
On Thursday, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said that his office was willing to delay proceedings by a month so newly disclosed evidence can be reviewed. Trump's team had requested a three-month delay
Andrew Kelly-Pool/Getty
Donald Trump at his April 2023 arraignment on 34 felony counts stemming from alleged hush money paymentsDonald Trump's hush money trial may be delayed by one month, after the Manhattan District Attorney's Office agreed on Thursday that more time would help both parties review newly disclosed evidence.
The trial was scheduled to begin on Monday, March 25, but Trump, 77, requested a 90-day delay so that his legal team could review some 73,000 new pages of discovery provided by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan in recent days.
On Thursday, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in a court filing he was willing to delay the proceedings by 30 days, “to ensure that defendant has sufficient time to review the new materials."
Bragg's office added that the delay would allow his own office to review "31,000 pages of additional records" handed over by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan on Wednesday, saying that more documents are expected to be produced 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 the People requested from the USAO more than a year ago and that the USAO previously declined to provide," the motion filed by Bragg's office reads, per ABC News.
ABC News reports that the newly produced documents relate to Trump's former attorney Michael Cohen, who pleaded guilty and served time for crimes related to the hush money payment, as well as tax evasion and lying to Congress about Trump’s prior business dealings with Russia.
The trial comes on the heels of an investigation into an alleged hush money payment made to adult film star Stormy Daniels while Trump was a presidential candidate in 2016.
Trump appeared in a Manhattan courtroom last April to plead not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first degree following the investigation, becoming the first former president in U.S. history to answer to criminal charges in doing so.
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According to prosecutors, Trump orchestrated a hush money scheme that lasted from August 2015 — just two months after he formally announced his first run for the presidency — to December 2017, after he took office.
Investigators allege that Trump asked his then-attorney to pay off women who were trying to sell stories about affairs with him to the press and, in doing so, "violated election laws" and falsified business records.
As the indictment describes, Trump requested that an attorney widely assumed to be his former attorney Michael Cohen covertly pay "$130,000 to an adult film actress shortly before the election to prevent her from publicizing a sexual encounter" with Trump. The adult film star in question, while not named in the indictment, is widely assumed to be Daniels.
The indictment details another arrangement in which Trump allegedly worked with higher-ups at the National Enquirer to silence another woman, who is rumored to be former Playmate Karen McDougal.
Trump, who is running for president in 2024 and is the presumptive GOP nominee, currently faces 91 criminal counts stemming from four separate investigations, including the hush money case, which is set to be the first to go to trial.
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