Manhattan prosecutors won’t be punished for last-minute document dump that caused former President Donald Trump’s document dump hush money criminal trial start later than planned, a judge ruled on Thursday.
Judge Juan Merchan rejected the defense’s request to sanction prosecutors for a deluge of nearly 200,000 pages of evidence just weeks before the scheduled start of the trial. The documents came from an earlier federal investigation into the case.
Merchan agreed to delay the start of the trial from March 25 to April 15 so the former president’s lawyers could review the materials. But at a hearing in March, he rejected their claim that the case was tainted by prosecutorial misconduct and denied their attempt to delay the case longer, throw it out entirely or exclude key prosecution witnesses. Michael Cohen And Stormy Daniels of witnesses.
In a written ruling Thursday, Merchan reiterated that Trump did not suffer any prejudice 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 came to this conclusion after reviewing written submissions from both sides, including the timelines they provided him documenting the disclosure of evidence, as well as the arguments and clarifications made during the March 25 hearing on the matter were made.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office declined to comment on the ruling. A message seeking comment was left with Trump’s lawyers.
After testimony from 22 witnesses over the past month, including Cohen and Daniels, the first criminal trial against a former president will take place next Tuesday. Jury deliberations are expected to follow as early as Wednesday.
Trump’s lawyers had accused Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office of deliberately not pursuing evidence from the 2018 federal investigation. which sent Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen has been sent to prison.
They alleged that prosecutors working under Bragg, a Democrat, did so to gain an unfair advantage in the case and harm Trump’s election chances. Cohen, now an outspoken Trump critic, was a key prosecution witness against his ex-boss.
During the March 25 hearing, Merchan said the district attorney’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 “far from” Manhattan prosecutors “injecting themselves into the process and vehemently and aggressively trying to hinder your ability to obtain documentation,” the judge said.
“It’s just not what happened,” Merchan said.
The district attorney’s office denied wrongdoing and blamed Trump’s lawyers for waiting until Jan. 18 to subpoena the U.S. attorney’s office documents — just nine weeks before the trial was originally scheduled to begin. Merchan told the lawyers that they should have acted sooner if they believed they did not have all the documents they wanted.
Trump has denied charges that he falsified company records by falsely recording payments to Cohen, then his personal attorney, as legal fees on his company’s books, while they were reimbursements for an alleged $130,000 hush-money payment that he had done to Daniels. Prosecutors in Manhattan say Trump did this as part of an effort to protect his 2016 campaign by burying what he said were false stories about extramarital sex.
Trump’s lawyers say the payments to Cohen were legitimate legal fees and not cover-up checks. Trump denies having sex with Daniels.
Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to federal campaign finance violations related to Daniels’ payout. He said Trump told him to take care of it, and federal prosecutors indicated they believed him, but Trump was never charged.
