By Michael R. Sisak | Associated Press
NEW YORK — New York prosecutors on Thursday urged a judge to start Donald Trump’s hush money criminal trial on April 15, saying the defense’s calls for further delays or dismissal of the case because of a last-minute evidence dump were a “red herring.”
The vast majority of evidence that the Republican former president’s lawyers received in recent weeks — more than 100,000 pages from a previous federal investigation into the matter — was “entirely immaterial, duplicative or substantially duplicative” of evidence they’d already been given, prosecutors said.
In one batch of 31,000 documents turned over to Trump’s lawyers last week, fewer than 270 were relevant to Trump’s case and had not previously been disclosed to his lawyers, prosecutors said. Federal prosecutors finished giving evidence to Trump’s lawyers last week.
Judge Juan M. Merchan last week postponed the trial’s start until mid-April after Trump’s lawyers complained that the late arrival of evidence from the federal investigation was hindering their preparations.
Trump’s criminal trial, the first of a former U.S. president, had been scheduled to begin on Monday. The hush money case is among four criminal indictments against Trump, the Republican Party’s presumptive 2024 presidential nominee.
Instead, on Monday, Merchan will hold a hearing to assess “who, if anyone, is at fault” for the late evidence, whether it hurt either side and whether any sanctions are warranted. Trump, who has pleaded not guilty in the case, is expected to attend the hearing.
The evidence includes records about Trump’s former lawyer-turned-key prosecution witness Michael Cohen, who went to prison as a result of the federal probe.
Trump’s lawyers have said some of that evidence appears to be “exculpatory and favorable to the defense.” Prosecutors argue it mostly pertains to Cohen’s unrelated federal convictions, though that material…
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