US Prosecutors Willing to Delay Trump’s Hush-Money Trial to Review New Records

The request has the potential to delay the proceedings, which were to begin with jury selection on March 25 in New York and would be the first of the four criminal indictments against the former US president to go to trial, The Guardian reported.

The office of the district attorney, Alvin Bragg, told the court that they were open to the delay because they had received from federal prosecutors about 31,000 page of records, and expected more 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 (US attorney’s office) more than a year ago and that the USAO previously declined to provide,” prosecutors wrote.

Trump’s lawyers have asked to either delay for 90 days or for the charges to be dropped against him, alleging violations of the discovery process, in which the defense and prosecution shares evidence with each other. Prosecutors have said a delay of that length is not necessary.

The New York case centers on allegations Trump directed his former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, to pay adult film star Stormy Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet before the 2016 election about a sexual encounter she says they had a decade earlier, and then falsely recorded his reimbursement to Cohen as legal expenses.

Trump, who recently clinched enough delegates to win the Republican presidential nomination and is expected to face off against Joe Biden in November, denies the encounter with Daniels and has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsification of business records.

Last month, prosecutors said they planned to introduce evidence of a “pressure campaign” by Trump in 2018 to ensure Cohen did not cooperate with a federal investigation into the payment to Daniels. Cohen pleaded guilty that year to violating campaign finance law.