Former US President Donald Trump will face trial in the alleged “hush money” case on April 15, refusing his plea to push the trial deep into the campaign for the coming 2024 Presidential Elections in the country. Following a last-minute delay, New York Judge Judge Juan Merchan Monday scheduled Trump’s first criminal trial to begin this spring, The Hill reported.
Trump requested Judge Merchan to toss his case over new documents recently turned over, or at least sanction Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) and postpone the trial. However, Judge Merchan rejected the former president’s requests and ruled in favour of Bragg and the set the jury selection for April 15, thus refusing to push the trial deeper into the campaign season.
“The court finds that the people have complied and continue to comply with their discovery obligations,” Merchan said.
Tumult over new documents
Donald Trump has looked to postpone trial in all four of his criminal cases beyond the election. His trial had long been scheduled to begin on Monday, but at the last minute, Bragg’s office agreed to a multi-week delay, The Hill reported.
In recent weeks, the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York turned over more than 100,000 pages of records, following which both parties traded blame for why the documents did not come to light earlier.
Rather than begin the trial on Monday, the parties instead convened to sort out the document kerfuffle.
Trump attended the hearing alongside a roughly half-dozen of his lawyers, who were occasionally whispering to them but otherwise sitting stone-faced, the report said, adding that the Republican nominee sat back in his chair for most of the hearing, looking ahead towards the judge.
‘Election interference’
After the hearing, Trump repeated familiar claims that Bragg’s case was brought to keep him from campaigning for the presidential elections, scheduled for November.
“This is a case that could have been brought three and a half years ago and now they’re fighting over days because they want to try to do it during the election. This is election interference. That’s all that is. Election interference,” he said.
Trump is charged in the case with 34 counts of of falsifying business records over reimbursements to his then-fixer, Michael Cohen, who paid adult film star Stormy Daniels $130,000 just before the 2016 election to stay quiet about an alleged affair with the former President.
Trump, who has acknowledged the reimbursements but denied the affair, has pleaded not guilty.
However, Trump’s team and prosecutors, inside the courtroom, disagreed about how many new and relevant documents there were, with Trump attorney Todd Blanche claiming there were “thousands and thousands” without providing a specific number.
Blanche also went further, asserting that Bragg’s office was obligated to have the new documents months ago so Trump could adequately prepare his defence.
Judge chides Trump lawyer
Merchan condemned the notion and raised his voice at one point as he pressed Blanche to cite a singular past case supporting his position.
“If you don’t have a case right now, it is really disconcerting because the allegations the defence makes in all of your papers, about the people’s misconduct, is incredibly serious, unbelievably serious,” Merchan said.
“You’re literally accusing the Manhattan DA’s office and the people assigned to this case of prosecutorial misconduct and trying to make me complicit in it. And you don’t have a single cite to support that position?” he added.
(With ANI inputs)
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