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State prosecutors in New York said Thursday that fewer than 300 of the over 170,000 documents recently turned over to lawyers for former President Donald Trump are potentially relevant to his criminal defense and that their case alleging falsified business records should proceed to trial on April 15.
In a court filing, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office said the vast majority of the mountains of evidence turned over by federal prosecutors originated from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, and has no bearing on the allegations against Trump.
“Enough is enough. These tactics by defendant and defense counsel should be stopped,” the DA’s filing said, referring to Trump’s attempts to further delay or derail the trial.
Cohen is expected to be a key witness in the trial, which was delayed until at least mid-April following the eleventh-hour disclosures by the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan. Trump’s lawyers have accused the DA’s office of failing to do its due diligence by getting the records earlier, and have asked Judge Juan Merchan to dismiss the charges as a punishment.
In its filing Thursday, the DA’s office called their arguments “a red herring.”
“Defendant has reacted to the USAO’s disclosures by demanding that this Court dismiss the charges, preclude witnesses, or adjourn the trial for at least ninety days; and by leveling wild and untrue allegations of misconduct and malfeasance,” the filing said. “Defendant’s accusations are wholly unfounded, and the circumstances here do not come close to warranting the extreme sanctions he has sought.”
Bragg’s office said while it’s still reviewing the materials, it now has “good reason to believe that this production contains only limited materials relevant to the subject matter of this case and that have not previously been disclosed to defendant: fewer than an estimated 270 documents.” It says most of the 270 documents are “corroborative of existing evidence.”
The “major relevant items are witness statements not previously in any party’s possession, consisting of about 172 pages of notes recording Cohen’s meetings with the Special Counsel investigating Russian interference,” the filing said.
The evidence is related to Cohen’s 2018 guilty plea to a number of criminal charges, including making secret payments to women who claimed they had affairs with Trump and lying to Congress about his boss’ business dealings with Russia.
The hush money payments are at the heart of the DA’s case, which alleges Trump falsified business records related to Cohen’s $130,000 payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels in the closing days of the 2016 presidential campaign. Federal prosecutors alleged Cohen paid the women off “in coordination with and at the direction of” Trump, who was not charged in the federal case. The former president has pleaded not guilty in the DA’s case.
As it has done previously, the DA’s office also blamed Trump for the late disclosures, saying his lawyers didn’t raise any concerns that items were missing when it turned over the information it had obtained from the U.S. attorney’s office in June of last year. Trump’s team didn’t seek additional documents from federal prosecutors until this past January, which eventually led to the additional documents being turned over, the filing noted.
The DA’s office noted it had agreed to a delay of the trial, which had been scheduled to begin on March 25, to allow Trump’s team time to review the evidence. Merchan stayed the case until April 15, which the DA argued is when the proceedings should move forward.
Trump’s lawyers have asked for a 90-day delay.
A hearing on the matter is scheduled for Monday, when the judge could set a new trial date.
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