Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg asked a trial court in New York to postpone the criminal trial of former President Donald Trump by 30 days. Trump faces prosecution for allegedly falsifying business records.
Trump’s attorneys had sought a 90-day postponement to consider new documents that had only been handed over recently by federal prosecutors. Bragg offered a 30-day postponement instead.
The New York Times reported:
The Manhattan district attorney’s office, which accused Mr. Trump of covering up a sex scandal during and after the 2016 presidential campaign, said the delay would give Mr. Trump’s lawyers time to review a new batch of records. The office sought the records more than a year ago, but only recently received them from federal prosecutors, who years ago investigated the hush-money payments at the center of the case.
In response to the new records — tens of thousands of pages of them — Mr. Trump’s lawyers requested that the trial be delayed 90 days. Although the former president frequently requests such delays, prosecutors consenting to any postponement makes one far more likely.
Trump is not accused of “covering up a sex scandal,” but rather of falsifying business records of payments made to Stormy Daniels (née Stephanie Crawford) as part of a non-disclusure agreement prior to the 2016 presidential election.
Bragg’s case, which involves a misdemeanor, could not be brought under the statute of limitations. However, he has sought to bring the charges as a felony, thereby evading the statute of limitations, by invoking federal campaign finance violations that were never charged by the Federal Election Commission (FEC). Bragg’s offer to postpone the trial could reflect the weakness of the case, just days after a judge in Georgia threw out some of the charges there against Trump.
However, the postponement could also hurt Trump, moving the trial date closer to the presidential election and shortening the window for appeal.
Bragg’s case is widely considered the weakest among all the cases against Trump.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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