NEW YORK (AP) – The first of Donald Trump's four criminal trials will begin April 15, a Manhattan judge ruled Monday, dissecting the former president's lawyers over baseless claims. did. What is a hush money case? It was tainted by prosecutorial misconduct.
Judge Juan M. Marchan scoffed at the defense's requests to further delay the case or throw it out entirely on the following grounds: Last minute document dump This caused the first-ever trial of a former president to be postponed from its scheduled start on Monday. Trump has vowed to appeal the ruling.
Barring further delays, the presumptive Republican nominee will go on trial as a criminal defendant in just three weeks. It's an inauspicious homecoming to his hometown, where he builds a real estate empire and gains wealth and fame that propel him to the White House.
The case involves charges related to hush money payments made during President Trump's 2016 campaign. concealing allegations of marital infidelity; He was stalled after his lawyers complained about the recent dumping of nearly 200,000 pages of evidence from a previous federal investigation into the matter.
Trump's lawyers have accused Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office of intentionally failing to pursue evidence in the 2018 federal investigation that sent Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen to prison. They argued that prosecutors working for Mr. Bragg, a Democrat, did so to gain an unfair advantage in the case and hurt Mr. Trump's electoral chances. Mr. Cohen is now a vocal critic of Mr. Trump and is poised to be a key prosecution witness against his former boss.
Marchan strongly pushed back against the defense's arguments during Monday's hearing, saying the prosecutor's office is not obligated to collect evidence from a federal investigation and the U.S. Attorney's Office is not obligated to voluntarily turn over documents. What happened was very different from what Manhattan prosecutors had done, the judge said, “inserting themselves into the process and violently attempting to interfere with their ability to obtain evidence.”
AP correspondent Julie Walker reports that a judge has set an April 15 trial date in Donald Trump's New York hush money case.
Impatiently, Mr. Marchand pressed Mr. Trump's lawyer, Todd Blanche, to cite at least one case law to support his argument. When the lawyer couldn't do that, the judge confronted him and said, “You are accusing the Manhattan District Attorney's Office and those involved in this case of prosecutorial misconduct and trying to make me complicit in it. And not a single citation supports that position.”
Assistant District Attorney Matthew Colangelo said the number of relevant and usable new documents contained in the recently submitted evidence is “pretty small,” about 300 or fewer. Trump's lawyers argue that thousands of pages are potentially sensitive and require closer scrutiny. They argued that the late disclosure warranted dismissing the case or at least delaying the case for three months.
“If we don't independently review the material, we're not doing our job,” Blanche told the judge. “Every document is important.”
Prosecutors have denied wrongdoing and accused Trump's lawyers of self-inflicting a time lag by waiting until January 18 to subpoena records from the U.S. attorney's office. This was just nine weeks before the trial was originally scheduled to begin.Marchan earlier this month The trial was postponed until at least mid-April to address evidentiary issues.told the defense that he should have acted sooner if he believed he did not have all the necessary records.
President Trump complained about the ruling outside the courtroom and reiterated that the incident amounted to “election interference.”
“This is a lawsuit that could have been filed three and a half years ago. And now they're fighting it for days because they want to do it during an election. This is election interference. That's it. Election. It's an intervention and it's shameful,” the former president said.
The hearing took place on the same day that the New York Court of Appeals gave President Trump good news, agreeing to withhold collection of deposits. $454 million civil fraud judgment — if he raises $175 million within 10 days.
The dueling developments underscored that New York is the epicenter of President Trump's legal crisis. However, the hush money case is considered less serious than the other charges against him. Conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and illegally retaining confidential documents — This case takes on added significance given that it is the only case that appears likely to go to trial in the coming months.
The trial will begin with jury selection, a task that could be difficult given the publicity surrounding the case and President Trump's unpopularity in heavily Democratic Manhattan.
Trump claims innocence He is suspected of falsifying business records., is a felony punishable by up to four years in prison, although there is no guarantee that a conviction will result in a prison sentence. Manhattan prosecutors allege Trump did so as part of an effort to protect his 2016 campaign by burying false stories about extramarital sex. President Trump reiterated his own claims to reporters on Monday that the incident was a “witch hunt” and a “hoax.”
Prosecutors have argued that Mr. Trump falsely listed payments to Mr. Cohen, then his personal lawyer, as legal fees on the company's books for his work covering up articles that could embarrass Mr. Trump. ing. That includes $130,000 paid to porn actor Stormy Daniels on Trump's behalf, so she could claim that she had a sexual relationship with him years earlier. did not make the allegations public.
Mr. Trump's lawyers have argued that the payments to Mr. Cohen were legitimate legal fees and not hidden checks.
Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 Federal campaign finance violations related to Daniels' compensation. He said Trump directed the arrangement and federal prosecutors indicated they believed him, but Trump was not indicted.
Mr. Trump's lawyers said Mr. Bragg's office had turned over only a small portion of the material from the investigation conducted last June. The materials have not been made public. But Trump's lawyers said in a court filing that some of the charges were “exculpatory and favorable to the defense.” Sharing evidence, called discovery, is routine in criminal cases and is intended to ensure a fair trial.
Bragg's attorneys said they made “good faith and diligent efforts to obtain relevant information” from the federal investigation. They argued in court filings that Trump's lawyers should have spoken out sooner if they believed those efforts were lacking.
In any case, prosecutors argue that much of what was ultimately obtained was unrelated, redundant, or corroborated existing evidence regarding Cohen's well-known federal convictions. ing.
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Tucker reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Jennifer Peltz, Philip Marcello and Jill Colvin contributed to this report.