New York prosecutors on Thursday urged a judge to start Donald Trump's hush money criminal trial on April 15, saying the defense's calls for further delays or dismissal of the former president's case because of a last-minute evidence dump were a"red herring."
Trump pleaded not guilty last year to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in what prosecutors said was an effort to hide arrangements to bury damaging stories during his 2016 presidential campaign Judge Juan M. Merchan last week postponed the trial until at least mid-April after Trump's lawyers complained that their preparations were being hampered by the late arrival of evidence from the 2018 federal investigation that sent his former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen to prison.Cohen, now an outspoken critic of Trump, is poised to testify against him as a star prosecution witness in the hush money case. The D.A.
The hush money case centers on allegations that Trump aimed to hide the true nature of payments to Cohen, who paid porn actor Stormy Daniels $130,000 to suppress her claims of an extramarital sexual encounter with Trump years earlier. Trump has denied her claims. His lawyers argue the payments to Cohen were legitimate legal expenses and not part of any cover-up.
They said there was no discovery violation because evidence-sharing rules apply only to material in their possession — not evidence kept by outside parties. They've also blamed Trump's lawyers for bringing the time crunch upon themselves by waiting until Jan. 18 to subpoena the records from the U.S. attorney's office — a mere nine weeks before jury selection was supposed to start.
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