The judge in Donald Trump’s first scheduled criminal trial has ordered that the start date for the proceedings be delayed.
On Friday, Judge Juan Marchan ordered that the start of the hush money payments trial be delayed at least 30 days starting from his decision to allow both sides to go over newly obtained records, likely pushing the matter into mid-April. Jury selection was originally scheduled to begin March 25. Instead, Marchan has set a hearing for that day to consider next steps and a possible new trial start date, if required.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office suggested Thursday that it was open to a 30-day delay to give Trump’s attorneys time to review tens of thousands of pages of additional evidence. In a new filing, Alvin Bragg said that federal prosecutors recently turned over “approximately 31,000 pages” of records in connection to their own prior investigation into the payments with more to follow next week. This tranche of documents includes material that Bragg’s office had requested over a year ago.
The former president’s lawyers have sought a 90-day delay in the trial. Trump previously pleaded not guilty to multiple felony counts for allegedly falsifying business records to secretly pay hush money to Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election to buy her silence about their alleged affair.
Trump’s looming court schedule has faced its fair share of delays. The federal government’s case against Trump for his role in attempting to overturn the 2020 election was initially scheduled to begin March 4. But Judge Tanya Chutkun postponed the trial as the Supreme Court is set to hear Trump’s appeal that he is immune from prosecution owing to his former role as president. The federal classified-documents trial, which was slated to begin in May, is also likely to be delayed, though its new date is still up in the air as Trump’s lawyers pursue an outright dismissal. As for Georgia’s election-interference case, proceedings have come to a halt as a Fulton County judge is expected to rule on whether district attorney Fani Willis should be removed from prosecuting the matter.
