Prosecutors propose delaying Trump hush-money trial set to start later in March

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office on Thursday told a judge it would be willing to delay Donald Trump’s upcoming criminal trial in New York in order to allow the former president’s attorneys time to review recently obtained records.

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Jury selection in the case, which is focused on hush-money payments made before the 2016 election, is set to begin March 25.

In a notice filed Thursday in court, District Attorney Alvin Bragg said the U.S. Attorney’s Office (USAO) turned over about 31,000 pages of new records on Wednesday and shared plans to share more documents by 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 USAO more than a year ago and that the USAO previously declined to provide,” Bragg wrote.

He added that prosecutors were prepared to go to trial on March 25, but said that they would be willing to delay jury selection for up to 30 days “to permit sufficient time for (the) defendant to review the USAO productions.”

Years earlier, federal prosecutors investigated the same hush-money payments central to the case in New York, according to The New York Times.

Bragg’s notice was filed in court days after Trump’s attorneys asked that the trial be delayed until after the Supreme Court issues a ruling on whether he is protected from prosecution by presidential immunity. The nation’s highest court agreed to hear the case last month, with arguments scheduled for April 25.

A ruling in that case is not expected until late June, CNN reported.

A grand jury in New York indicted Trump last year on 34 counts of first-degree falsifying business records. The charges were related to hush money payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels, former Playboy model Karen McDougal and a Trump Tower doorman as part of a scheme aimed at getting him into the White House, authorities said.

Trump has pleaded not guilty and denied any wrongdoing, framing the investigation as politically motivated as he runs in the 2024 presidential election.

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