New York Judge Juan Merchan approved a request to delay former President Donald Trump’s hush money trial by 30 days on Friday, meaning the trial is now expected to begin in the middle of April.
Trump’s lawyers initially requested a 90-day delay after they were given thousands of pages of new documents from federal prosecutors, but Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said he and his team of prosecutors were OK with a 30-day delay instead.
The new documents are related to Michael Cohen’s guilty plea to multiple criminal charges in 2018, including charges that he paid hush money to multiple women who claim they have had an affair with Trump.
Bragg claimed on Thursday that the new documents are “largely irrelevant to the subject matter of this case” and that another 15,000 pages turned over by the U.S. Attorney’s Office on Friday are also not expected to be relevant to the case. He previously requested some of the material last year but was denied. Trump’s attorneys later subpoenaed the documents.
The former president has pleaded “not guilty” to all 34 felony counts related to the alleged hush money payments, including allegations that he falsified business records to hide the alleged payments and affair with Stormy Daniels.
The trial was initially scheduled to start with jury selection on March 25, but a new date will be set during a hearing still scheduled for March 25.
The hearing is to discuss a dispute over new evidence, rule on a motion from Trump’s lawyers seeking to throw out the case, and a request to bar testimony from key witnesses, including Cohen, if Merchan does not throw the case out.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“There are significant questions of fact which this Court must resolve before it may rule on Defendant’s motion,” Merchan wrote Friday. He announced the 30-day adjournment in the same statement and went on to say, “The court will set the new trial date, if necessary, when it rules on Defendant’s motion following the hearing.”
The delay is a small victory for Trump, the Republican presidential nominee. Trump is also attempting to delay his other criminal trials, but the hush money trial is expected to be the first criminal trial of a former president in history.
