Alvin Bragg hits back at Trump's demand to dismiss hush money trial
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg hit back Thursday at attempts by Donald Trump to dismiss his trial in the hush money case.
Trump had won a delay after the Southern District of New York unexpectedly released a massive dump of documents related to the case, pushing the start back from March 25 to April 15.
But Trump thinks there should be more than a delay, and that the whole case should be dismissed because documents were withheld from discovery.
In a Thursday filing, D.A. Alvin Bragg explained that the DA's office didn't hide anything, it was the federal Southern District of New York which is not involved in bringing the case.
In fact, Bragg blames Trump's team for delaying the case so much.
The belated production of documents by SDNY "is entirely the result of defendant's own inexplicable and strategic delay," he wrote.
"Contrary to defendant's arguments, the USAO's responses to his subpoena do not support any claim of a discovery violation by the People or prosecutorial misconduct that would warrant more drastic relief," the filing stated.
"As a threshold matter, there cannot be a discovery violation here because the USAO's materials are not part of the People's disclosure obligations: CPL 245.20 requires the People to disclose only items or information in their actual or constructive possession, and documents held by the U.S.A.O. are not in the People's possession at all."
Lawfare's Anna Bower noted that Bragg also submitted exhibits and an affidavit from prosecutor Chris Conroy giving the full timeline of the Manhattan DA's efforts to get the discovery material from the southern district.
Self-described "government lawyer" Tom Morris noticed that Trump's team, "Seems to have difficulty distinguishing between the Manhattan DA office that is prosecuting him and the SDNY, a separate entity that isn't an agent for the former."
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Former federal prosecutor Carol Lam told MSNBC that Michael Cohen, Trump's former lawyer, will be a key witness in the case and he was prosecuted by the Southern District of New York.
The southern district's paperwork involves Cohen, who was involved in hush money payments made to adult movie actress Stormy Daniels, allegedly on behalf of Donald Trump.
"What the district attorney does in this pleading is he sets forth all the efforts, all the meetings that the DA had with the federal prosecutors to gather this evidence and what he says is, hey, at the end of the day, there are only 270 documents out of the 30,000-some documents that they've just gotten that they hadn't already gotten or are actually relevant," said Lam.
See Lam's explainer in the video below or at the link here.
Alvin Bragg claps back at Trump youtu.be