Trump's Trials - Manhattan DA says Trump hush money trial can start in April

Episode Date: March 21, 2024

For this episode of Trump's Trials, NPR's Ari Shapiro speaks with NPR's Andrea Bernstein. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg says there's no reason former president Donald Trump's hush money criminal trial can't start next month. Last week Bragg agreed to delay the trial - originally scheduled to begin on March 25th - for 30 days due to an influx of documents from the U.S. Attorney's office. Trump's attorneys have been arguing for an even longer delay of 90 days.Topics include:- Reason for delay in documents being delivered - Trump's response- Next stepsFollow the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify for new episodes each Saturday.Sign up for sponsor-free episodes and support NPR's political journalism at plus.npr.org/trumpstrials.Email the show at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

It's Trump's Trials from NPR. I'm Scott Detro. This is a persecution. He actually just stormed out of the courtroom. Innocent to proven guilty in a court of law. Our regular episodes come out every Saturday, but there's some news in one of former President Trump's cases today. So we're going to share a story that just aired on NPR, and then we'll be back with more in our usual episode on Saturday.

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them, beyond the obvious takes. Listen now to the It's Been, but with the NPR app, news, culture, and podcasts are ready when you want them in your pocket. Download the NPR app today. You're listening to Trump's Trials. I'm Scott Detro. And now, here's Ari Shapiro. In court filings made public today, the Manhattan district attorney said there is no reason

Donald Trump's criminal trial can't start next month. The former president is accused of 34 felonies in connection with covering up an alleged affair in the waiting days of the 2016 campaign. DA Alvin Bragg had asked for a short delay last week after federal prosecutors turned over hundreds of thousands of pages of documents to his office. But now Bragg says there wasn't much new in the documents and the trial should go forward. NPR's Andrea Bernstein has been combing through those filings. Hi Andrea. Hey Ari. So this trial was supposed to start on Monday, March 25th. Then Bragg asked for that delay. Remind us exactly which one of the many cases against Trump we are talking about here.

So this investigation came from another case. It began almost six years ago during Trump's presidency. Shortly after former Trump attorney Michael Cohen pleaded guilty in federal court to lying to banks and to campaign finance violations that he said he'd undertaken quote, at the direction of a candidate for federal office. That was when the local DA began a parallel investigation of Donald Trump. After a lot of successful legal maneuvers to delay the DA's investigation, Trump was indicted in April of last year for falsifying business records.

See if it's been a year since the indictment, why are we just learning of these documents from federal prosecutors now? So it wasn't until January of this year that Trump's attorneys subpoenaed the federal prosecutors who had secured Cohen's guilty plea. They wanted bank records, phone records, even interviews with Cohen about Russian interference in the 2016 election. So it took a couple of months to resolve all that, which brings us to last week. Because these documents were turned over so close to the trial date, Trump's lawyers cried foul, accusing the DA of deliberately holding back

documents and called for the case to be dismissed or for the trial to be delayed 90 days. How does the DA Bragg respond to those charges that his office withheld documents? Yes, so Bragg says he and his staff have bent over backwards to turn over all relevant materials to the defense and that the delay in this case came because Trump's lawyers didn't subpoena federal prosecutors

until so late in the game. And the key thing that Bragg says is that in all of these records from federal prosecutors, only a fraction of them are relevant. For example, only 270 pages of Michael Cohen's phone records were new, and of those, most of them were inculpatory, Bragg says. That is helpful to his case. Bragg also said more broadly, Trump's motions are, quote, a transparent attempt

to shift the focus away from his own criminal conduct by pursuing remedies to which he is not entitled. Bragg calls them Trump's motion for dismissal part of a pattern of trying to evade liability by among other things, promising death and destruction, if indicted. Well, if that's what Bragg says, how is Trump responding? Trump has pleaded not guilty. His campaign spokesman told reporters today, Manhattan prosecutors, quote, are still trying to explain away why they obfuscated and lied about these incredibly late disclosures. What you can see emerging in these papers is a record of Trump's lawyers trying to gather everything, everything

that might in any way besmirch the DA or its witnesses. Because Trump himself isn't paying his lawyers, his campaign donors are, he has plenty of money to pursue this kind of strategy. So I assume the trial is not going to start on Monday. Any sense of when it will? No, we'll get a clearer picture. There's going to be a hearing on Monday. And Judge Juan Marchand will likely set a firm trial date, which is now very tentatively set for April 15th. NPR's Andrea Bernstein thanks.

Thank you. Thanks for listening to Trump's Trials from NPR. Keep an eye out for more episodes like this whenever big news happens and we'll be back later this week with our regular show on Saturday. I'm Scott Detro. That's it for now. These days, it can feel like the news is fighting for your attention wherever you turn, but staying informed shouldn't be a battle. Everything you need to navigate the stories that matter to you is at your fingertips. The NPR app cuts through the noise, bringing you local, national, and global coverage. No paywalls, no profits, no nonsense.

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