Judge postpones Trump’s trial in Manhattan until at least mid-April

A New York judge Friday has postponed Donald J. Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan until at least mid-April, delaying the only one of Trump’s four criminal trials that was about to begin.

The delay – which will last 30 days from the judge’s ruling on Friday – stems from the recent disclosure of more than 100,000 pages of documents potentially affecting the case. Citing the documents, Mr. Trump’s lawyers demanded a 90-day delay in the trial, while the Manhattan prosecutors who brought the case proposed a delay of up to 30 days.

Manhattan prosecutors, who accused the former president of covering up a sex scandal during and after his 2016 campaign, had said the additional time would allow Trump’s lawyers to review documents recently emerged.

Mr. Trump, who recently won the Republican presidential nomination for the third time, was initially scheduled to stand trial on March 25. Now the judge in the case, Juan M. Merchan, will hold a hearing that day to determine whether the trial should be further postponed – and if so, for how long.

“There are important questions of fact that this court must resolve,” the judge wrote, indicating he wanted to clarify why it took so long for the documents to emerge. Judge Merchan said that after that hearing he would “set the new trial date if necessary.”

In a three-page letter, he instructed both sides to prepare a “detailed timeline of events” leading to the recent disclosure of the documents. He also requested their correspondence with federal prosecutors who recently turned over the documents, including letters, subpoenas, emails, notes and messages.

Over the past two weeks, Mr. Trump’s lawyers and the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, have received the tens of thousands of pages of documents from federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, who were investigating a 2018 hush-money payment . central to the case against Mr Trump. It is unclear whether the documents contain new evidence or other information relevant to the case.

This is just the latest delay in the former president’s many legal entanglements. Mr. Trump, who faces four criminal trials and several civil lawsuits, has managed to delay many of the cases.

A criminal case against Mr. Trump in Washington, where he is accused of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election results, was initially scheduled to go to trial this month, but that has been postponed while Mr. Trump appeals to the Supreme Court.

The federal case in Florida accusing Mr. Trump of mishandling classified documents was originally scheduled for May but now has no trial date.

And a judge in Atlanta this week threw out six of the charges against Mr. Trump in his Georgia election interference case, which also has no trial date.

So far, the Manhattan case was the only one of the four criminal cases that did not result in delays as Judge Merchan pushed the case forward every step of the way.

Trump’s lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday. A spokeswoman for Mr. Bragg declined to comment.

The last-minute arrival of the documents appeared to cause some tension between Mr. Bragg and his federal colleagues.

Mr. Bragg’s prosecutors requested records from federal prosecutors in the Southern District last year, and they received some but not all of what they requested.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers then subpoenaed the Southern District in January, which ultimately handed over more than 73,000 pages of documents to both the defense and prosecution earlier this month. “The vast majority” of those documents are not relevant to the case, Mr. Bragg’s prosecutors said in a filing Friday.

But this week, they said, the Southern District dropped another 31,000 documents in response to Trump’s subpoena, and a “subset” of those documents are relevant. Mr. Bragg’s prosecutors added that they had previously requested some — they did not say how many — of those same documents from the Southern District last year.

It is unclear why the Southern District did not provide that material sooner to Mr. Bragg, a close law enforcement partner. A spokesman for the Southern District, which was expected to hand over a final batch of 15,000 plates on Friday, declined to comment.

In a court filing on Thursday, Mr. Bragg said his prosecutors were prepared to begin the trial on March 25 as scheduled but were not opposing a 30-day delay “out of an abundance of caution and to ensure that the suspect has sufficient time to assess the new materials.

Mr. Bragg also disputed Mr. Trump’s recent attempt to have the case dismissed. Mr. Trump’s lawyers asked Judge Merchan to dismiss the case and punish the prosecutors because, they alleged, the prosecutors had failed to turn over relevant documents.

But Mr. Bragg argued that Mr. Trump had only himself to blame, noting that he had only requested the Southern District data in January.