Bragg agrees to delay Trump hush-money trial for 30 days

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Donald Trump, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg

Donald Trump (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell), Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)

As a plethora of indictments and appeals surround former President Donald Trump in multiple venues, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg on Thursday said in a notice to a court in New York that he is prepared to temporarily delay Trump’s impending hush-money and election interference trial that is currently scheduled for March 25.

In the 3-page notice, Bragg swiped at Trump for being responsible for delays that preempted the former president’s motion to adjourn. Nonetheless, Bragg said that while prosecutors are prepared to move ahead in a little over a week with the first criminal prosecution of a former president, they are unopposed to Trump’s motion to halt proceedings — though not for the 90 days as he requested.

Instead, Bragg said his office was willing to delay the start of the trial for 30 days so Trump could review a mass of evidence and pertinent records in discovery, including those documents Bragg says he has had to review since June 2023.

The district attorney’s office provided 31,000 records to Trump just a day ago, according to the motion, but “those records appear to contain materials related to the subject matter of this case, including materials that the People [of New York] requested from the U.S. Attorney’s Office more than a year ago and that the U.S. Attorney’s Office previously declined to provide.”

That being said, Bragg, noted another production will be coming next week.

Some 73,000 pages of records produced by the U.S. Attorney’s Office since Trump filed his motion to adjourn were largely “irrelevant,” Bragg wrote.

Except for 172 pages of witness statements, which Trump would have had plenty of time to review before trial.

“We note that the timing of the current production of additional materials from the USAO is a function of defendant’s own delay.” Bragg wrote.

The district attorney explained as well that when prosecutors sought out full grand jury records tied to Trump fixer Michael Cohen’s campaign finance convictions from the U.S. Attorney’s Office last year, which included exculpatory material pertaining to Trump’s fixer in the hush-money scandal, they produced tapes, witness lists, an array of other records and grand jury subpoenas and their returns, other exhibits presented to the grand jury and more.

“In response, the USAO produced a subset of the materials we requested, which we timely and fully disclosed to defendant on June 8, 2023, more than nine months ago,” Bragg wrote.

He emphasized:

Despite having access to those materials since June, defendant raised no concerns to the People about the sufficiency of our efforts to obtain materials from the USAO before last week; instead, defendant waited until January 18, 2024 to subpoena additional materials from the USAO and then consented to repeated extensions of the deadline for the USAO’s determination.

The timing of the USAO’s productions is a result solely of defendant’s delay despite the People’s diligence.

Nevertheless, Bragg said a brief adjournment of 30 days would suffice.