Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against former US President Donald Trump is to commence on April 15, 2023, as determined by New York Judge Juan Manuel Merchan. The judgments were initially scheduled to start on March 25, 2023, but this was postponed in response to a last-minute dump of almost 100,000 discovery documents by the prosecution, resulting in a petition for more time from Trump’s legal counsel.
To address the discovery disclosure issues, a special hearing was held in a Manhattan courtroom where several “significant questions of fact” were resolved. Following a string of filings from both Trump and Bragg, Merchan came to his decision.
The Trump legal team filed a request on March 8, 2023, for dismissal of the case and prosecution discovery sanctions, claiming Criminal Procedure Law Article 245 violations, which govern discovery procedures in New York criminal cases. Amid the proceedings on March 14 was an unexpected notice from the prosecution about an additional 31,000 pages of discovery materials from the US Attorney’s Office, following the near 73,000 documents earlier disclosed.
While the focus of Monday’s hearing was limited to the alleged discovery violations surrounding the newly surfaced documents, Trump’s legal counsel argued that the case should be dismissed, as Bragg’s team’s delay in disclosure would prejudice Trump’s defense. Merchan, however, disagreed.
Merchan ruled that Bragg’s team went above their required discovery obligations, in providing Trump the additional 104,000 pages from the US Attorney’s Office. Finding no fault with Bragg’s team’s delayed document production, Merchan found that the proceeding was not negatively influenced by it.
Concluding the hearing, Merchan confirmed that Trump’s criminal trial will kick off with jury selection on April 15, 2023. Trump is slated to face one of his four pending criminal trials, where he will answer to 34 counts of “falsifying business records in the first degree.” The charges stem from payments made by Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, allegedly to keep damaging information from the public during the 2016 presidential election.