Trump hush-money case delay may impact Mar-a-Lago trial date

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FILE - An aerial view of former President Donald Trump

An aerial view of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate is seen Aug. 10, 2022, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Steve Helber, File), Trump (inset: File Photo by: zz/Dennis Van Tine/STAR MAX/IPx 2015 11/3/15)

In the latest of example of Donald Trump’s attorneys successfully using delays they played a role in creating to seek delay in a separate criminal case, the former president’s defense on Wednesday notified the judge in the Mar-a-Lago matter that proposed trial dates in the next few months “are no longer workable” given the recent adjournment in his New York hush-money prosecution.

Defense lawyers Todd Blanche and Christopher Kise in a two-page filing informed U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon that they’re going to be busy the next two months, making a Mar-a-Lago trial date in late May or early June a complete impossibility.

Noting that the judge in the New York case set jury selection for April 15 and that “religious observances” will factor into the length of that trial, the lawyers predicted that Trump’s falsification of business records prosecution will drag out “through the end of May 2024.”

As a result, they said, a Mar-a-Lago trial date should remain up in the air for the foreseeable future, pushing the Espionage Act case ever closer to the 2024 election — and perhaps beyond. The judge has already indicated a July trial date would also be “unrealistic.”

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“Our initial proposed schedule anticipated a March 25 trial date in People v. Trump, and therefore the dates that we proposed to the Court [for the Mar-a-Lago trial], particularly in late May and early June 2024, are no longer workable for President Trump in light of the adjourned trial date,” the lawyers concluded.

In the New York case, the defense recently criticized Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg (D) “significant and ongoing discovery violations” following the the “untimely production” of Michael Cohen-related documents obtained from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (USAO).

When Bragg responded by blaming the defense, calling the timing of the USAO’s document productions “a result solely of defendant’s delay despite the People’s diligence,” the Trump team responded that it was “wrong, but not surprising” that the state would blame the defense for prosecution’s shortcomings.

The DA said it was telling that the defense “waited until January 18, 2024 to subpoena additional materials” from the USAO when it has had a “subset” of documents since June 2023 but “raised no concerns to the People about the sufficiency of our efforts to obtain materials from the USAO before last week.” The defense even “consented to repeated extensions of the deadline for the USAO’s determination,” revealing the purpose of the belated subpoena, Bragg further suggested.

Thereafter, Bragg urged Acting New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan not to permit any trial delay further than mid-April.

“The overwhelming majority of the production is entirely immaterial, duplicative or substantially duplicative of previously disclosed materials, or cumulative of evidence concerning Michael Cohen’s unrelated federal convictions that defendant has been on notice about for months,” the DA’s office said of the discovery at issue. “Given the limited amount of new information in the recent productions and the USAO’s completion of its productions, no relief beyond the adjournment already ordered by the Court is warranted.”

Merchan agreed. He pressed Blanche to cite a “single case” in support of the defense position that the DA’s office ignored its obligations to get the documents from the USAO.

“That you don’t have a case right now is really disconcerting because the allegation that the defense makes in all of your papers is incredibly serious. Unbelievably serious,” Merchan said, according to The Associated Press. “You’re accusing the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and the people involved in this case of prosecutorial misconduct and of trying to make me complicit in it. And you don’t have a single cite to support that position.”

The judge then asked the defense why they waited until January to subpoena the documents.

Colin Kalmbacher contributed to this report.