Hush Money Case: Judge reprimands Donald Trump’s lawyers, next hearing will be on April 15 – Dainik Savera Times

New York: A New York judge has scheduled former US President Donald Trump’s hush money trial to begin on April 15, a Manhattan judge ruled Monday, rebuking the former president’s lawyers. Donald Trump, who has considered postponing all four of his criminal cases beyond the election, urged the judge to postpone his case over new documents Trump recently handed over, or at least to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) be cleared and the trial be postponed.

However, during a hearing on Monday, Judge Juan Merchan rejected all of those requests and ruled in Bragg’s favor by refusing to proceed with the trial in campaign session, setting jury selection for April 15.
“The court finds that the People have complied with their investigative obligations and continue to comply with them,” Marchan said.

According to reports, Trump’s trial was scheduled to begin on Monday, but at the last minute, Bragg’s office agreed to a delay of several weeks. It comes after the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York turned over more than 100,000 pages of records in recent weeks. The parties then shifted blame as to why the documents were not revealed earlier. Instead of starting the hearing on Monday, the parties called for a meeting to resolve the document dispute. Trump attended the hearing with about a half-dozen of his lawyers, occasionally whispering to him but otherwise sitting quietly.

Additionally, he sat back in his chair and looked at the judge for most of the hearing, according to the report. After the hearing, Trump repeated familiar claims that Bragg’s case was brought to prevent him from campaigning for the November presidential elections. “This is a case which could have been brought three and a half years ago and now they have been fighting for many days because they want to try to do it during the elections. This is interference in the elections. That’s all. There is election interference.”

The case charges Trump with 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection with reimbursements to his then-fixer Michael Cohen, who married adult film star Stormi just before the 2016 election in order to keep quiet about an alleged affair with Trump. Daniels was paid US$130,000. Trump, who has admitted reimbursement but denied the affair, has pleaded not guilty, according to the report.

However, Trump’s team and prosecutors, inside the courtroom, disagreed on how many new and relevant documents there were, with Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanch claiming there were “thousands and thousands” without providing a specific number.
Meanwhile, Assistant District Attorney Matthew Colangelo estimated that there were only about 300 new, relevant records. Blanch also said that Bragg’s office was obliged to have new documents months in advance so that Trump could adequately prepare his defense.

Marchan condemned this notion and at one point raised his voice as he pressured Blanche to cite a singular previous case supporting his position. “If you don’t have a case right now, it’s really disappointing because the allegations that the defense has made in all of your papers about people’s misconduct are incredibly serious,” Marchen said. “You are literally accusing the Manhattan DA’s office and those assigned to this case of prosecutorial misconduct and trying to implicate me in this,” he said. And you don’t have a single citation to support that position?”