Trump Faces Legal Showdown, Battle to Delay or Dismiss Criminal Trial

Donald Trump entered the New York Courtroom
Donald Trump entered the New York Courtroom. Credit | AP Photo

United States – Donald Trump entered the New York Courtroom on Monday, where the judge will hear the arguments from his lawyers to delay the process or to drop the criminal trial he is facing, which stems from the payments to an adult actress, as reported by Reuters.

Their attorneys assert that a case introduction would be unfair without enough time to review some 10,000 pages of documentation from the witness, Michael Cohen, who was passed to them only recently.

Controversy Surrounds Payments

One of Trump’s former lawyers, Cohen, made a USD 130,000 settlement to stop former actress Stormy Daniels from coming out before the 2016 national campaign and revealing an encounter they had a decade earlier. Trump denies it.

The lawyer for Trump, the former U.S. president, alleges that District Attorney Alvin Bragg from Manhattan’s office, who brought criminal charges against Trump, is trying to suppress the files that could benefit him and his lawyers in challenging the credibility of Cohen (Trump’s former lawyer).

The records come from the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan, where investigations on the payment were conducted, but it turned out that Trump was not charged. Cohen stated that President Trump instructed him to make the payment and serve time in prison after he admitted to breaching the law in connection with the campaign.

Moreover, the trial was initially planned for Monday, but prosecutors allowed Trump to review the relevant new documents for 30 days. While Trump’s defense requests a second extension from Judge Juan Merchan or ejection of the charges because of the after-discovery, the prosecution calls for a narrow trail.

Merchan’s choice will lead to the initiation of a trial previously never directly seen against a former president. In a recent November 5 election, presuming to face off against President Joe Biden, who is a democratic candidate, and a person that has pleaded not guilty and called the case a politically motivated “witch hunt.”

On Monday, Trump stated that the case should not have been taken any further.

“No crime,” he went on Truth Social.

It is one of the few cases among many lawsuits Trump has encountered through his high-spirited campaigning for 2024. He has to resolve the case by Monday, as he owes the New York state USD 454 million in a civil fraud allegations lawsuit for misleading the lenders about the value of their real estate holdings. Otherwise, the New York real estate state will seize his properties.

Trump’s Legal Battles Mount

Visual Representation. Credit | Getty images

He confronts three other related cases, traced back to his bid to reverse President Biden’s 2020 victory and his rigorous approach to handling security documents as a former president in 2021. All charges brought against him have been denied.

Trump delayed the majority of his cases and, of course, managed to postpone the March start of the federal trial on the 20th of the month in Washington DC, from where he tried to bring out a presidential immunity. The Upper House of the U.S. Supreme Court has scheduled a hearing for arguments on April 25.

He has also used his criminal cases to raise funds from his followers since his money-raising abilities look far behind that of the Biden campaign.

The aid to Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, is said to be a piece of a bigger “catch-and-kill” plan that Cohen and Trump organized for the outsourcing of people with scandalous materials that could damage Trump’s reputation.

Trump’s defense counsel repeatedly mentioned that the money was requested to protect himself and his family from public humiliation instead of benefitting his campaign.

The very next month, January, defense attorneys subpoenaed federal prosecutors for Cohen’s bank records, phone, and email accounts following the judge’s rejection of the request to get some of those materials from Cohen himself.

“They sought to obstruct our efforts to collect evidence we are entitled to review and use in connection with our trial defense,” Trump’s lawyers wrote in a February 15 court filing, referring to the state prosecutors.

Complex Legal Dynamics

Prosecutors claim that consideration of further delay is unnecessary as a major part of the new documents is either irrelevant to the case or is a mere duplicate of the documents provided to Trump beforehand.

But Bragg’s office noted that they asked federal prosecutors from the Cohen case to provide the information and shared the records with the lawyers last June, as reported by Reuters.

“Defendant has taken every possible step to evade accountability in this case,” prosecutors with Bragg’s office wrote in a March 21 court filing. “Enough is enough. These tactics by defendant and defense counsel should be stopped.”