Charles, this was a delay that Yasmin just mentioned that
the DA agreed to. He said a 30 day delay.
The Trump team wanted a 90 day delay.
It was supposed to start last.
I'm sorry, supposed to start to start today,
I should say. So this hearing Donald Trump's going to
be arguing for it to get thrown out.
What do you expect Judge Marshawn to do?
I don't expect that Judge Marshawn is going to throw
it out,
although I do understand Donald Trump's attorney's frustration.
This is a fair request in terms of the delay
itself.
Now to get it dismissed,
I don't think is going to happen.
I think that Alvin Bragg and his office understands that
the SD and Y,
the Department of Justice put his office in a very
difficult position by giving this document dump as late in
the prosecution as they did.
So they kind of tied the hands of the prosecutors
in this case as well as the judge in terms
of granting the delay this far.
But I don't expect the dismissal.
Can you explain the SD and Y aspect of this
because I am so confused by it.
I I'm hearing differing accounts.
I don't understand what the documents were.
I don't understand why SD and Y wouldn't hand them
over.
How does Trump's team play into it?
Can you lay it out in plain language?
Sure. In New York State,
we have what's called open file discovery,
which means that if you are a defense attorney,
you are entitled to pretty much any and every document
for the most part that relates or pertains to the
case or an investigation connected to the case.
It also requires that prosecutors offices endeavor to make efforts
to get whatever documents they can from other offices that
are within proximity that would allow them to get relevant
information. So even if Alvin Bragg,
for example, didn't have the documents,
but he knows that the SD and Y,
the Southern District of New York and the Department of
Justice actually did conduct an investigation and may have paperwork
that's relevant and connected to this case,
he has to make his best efforts to get those
documents and turn them over.
We don't know when Alvin Bragg made the request,
but we can assume that it was much earlier than
those documents were delivered.
And basically the Department of Justice in a case like
this,
they operate on their own accord.
They do what they want,
but they don't have to coordinate with local prosecutors to
get them information.
And it could be very frustrating as Alan Bragg's office
is likely frustrated now.
So SD and Y turns the documents over at a
very late point.
These are a voluminous amount of documents we're talking about.
Literally 10s of thousands of documents have been turned over
from the SD and YS investigation into this very same
thing.
Things involving Michael Cohen, things involving other witnesses,
all of the above. And then although the parties have
to sip through it,
which is why we've gotten the delay to get too
much in the weeds here,
DA has said that there's only about 300 documents that
are relevant.
If you're arguing on Trump's side in front of Judge
Merchon,
Merchon today, what are you saying?
Well, I mean as as a defense attorney,
I sort of gravitate towards those arguments.
And I'm saying, well, I don't have to take the
governments word for it.
You know, it's it's I have each document myself,
of course going to take time of course.
And and you know, in the discovery process,
there often are massive amounts of duplicative information.
However, you know this defense team is going to one
across their teams and dot their eyes the key statutory
language that Charles is referring to under the New York
discovery laws within your possession,
custody or control. And Trump's team is making this this
argument a step farther.
They're they're actually saying, well you know potentially SDN Y
and the DA's office are in cahoots,
which is actually laughable if you know anything about sort
of the history of the relationship between the Southern District
of New York and the DA's office.
I mean they are because they're bad blood.
Exactly there. There's bad blood.
You know, they are known as the sovereign district of
New York for a reason.
They don't play well in the sandbox.
Alvin Bragg's memo which was submitted which was heavily redacted
did go into sort of the diligence with which he
pursued this information.
This is the SDN wise issue.
It seemed like they had a change of heart on
their requirements under these the TUI regulations,
meaning how they are going to respond to a third
party subpoena.
They it seems like they messed up.
They're giving, you know, more information sort of on the
second round when Trump's team asked for it as opposed
to the first go around.
Alvin Bragg is kind of in the same position as
Trump,
which I think is why he,
you know, consented to the 30 day
adjournment. I think ultimately this is going to end up
being a blip on the radar screen.
I don't think we're gonna get the trial date pushed
out much past April 15th,
maybe towards the end of April because you know,
there are a lot of documents to go over.
So it's an issue. But it's not like he wants
to thrown out or 90 days.
It's not. It's DA said 30 days.
Maybe it'll be 60 or 45.
All right, so the the hearing has begun.
Judge Marshawn is there, Everybody is seated.
He says it's a good idea for us to get
started by going over the events that bring us here
today and why we're here today.
So they're going over the documents.
They're going over procedurally what's happened and basically why these
documents got turned over as late as they did.
For all intents and purposes,
even though it's not Alvin Bragg's fault,
Alvin Bragg is the one who's going to have to
eat that.
In terms of eating the time.
And what I mean what I mean with eating the
time is that there's a statutory limitation that requires that
cases move forward as quickly as they can because each
of us has a constitutional right and a due process
right to speedy trial.
Unfortunately, Alvin Bragg cannot push the gas as much as
he would like here as prosecutor as you want to
do because it's basically the
prosecution's fault. It's the people's fault that these documents weren't
turned over to the defense even though Alvin Bragg wasn't
in direct possession.
So they're arguing a discovery violation.
They're trying to get both
Cohen's testimony, Michael Cohen's testimony and Stormy Daniels testimony precluded
from this trial. That would be major.
I mean that would basically sink everything.
If they were able to do that they would but
they
the judge has already ruled on this enrolled in terms
of
the motions eliminate. So there have been motions that
the prosecution and the defense have submitted about who can
testify as to what during the trial and the judge
has already ruled on this.
So I don't see them going back for any new
reason.
As to changing let us set up what we're actually
talking about the heart of this case this is a
hush money payment that was made to Stormy Daniels in
the lead up to the 2016 election.
You guys remember you were watching there was an Access
Hollywood tape that came out in the lead up to
the election where Donald Trump talked about grabbing women by
their private parts. It was a storm.
Not to to do a pun here,
but a storm around the campaign.
And there were a lot of Republicans who were backing
away quite forcefully from Donald Trump.
You had Mike Lee from Utah crying in a selfie
video
that he posted saying he could never support somebody like
this.
It looked like the campaign was over
and in in and around this time there was the
Stormy Daniels stuff and and her talking potentially about an
affair that she had with Donald Trump.
And so Michael Cohen paid her money.
Michael Cohen then later said after you know,
events, events unfolded as they did
that Donald Trump told him to make that payment and
that Donald Trump would pay him back.
There was a payment made back to Michael Cohen after
Donald Trump took office.
The interesting thing I find about this upcoming trial whenever
it does get set is that the Access Hollywood tape
is not going to be admitted into evidence.
Why is that so interesting Judge Marshawn is take playing
it right down the middle here.
I think that was a wise choice on his part.
He he has ruled that it can't come in audio
or visually.
However they can elicit that testimony on they can talk
about it on the stand.
It would be you know in trials like this the
the ultimate question is probative versus prejudicial.
He ruled that that type of
language was more prejudicial than probative.
Put that language
meaning that it's it's overly inflammatory and that you can
elicit sort of the bare facts of it without
actually playing the tape for the jurors,
which could you know poison their minds against the defendant
unreasonably and and not just taking it at the at
the sort of face value.
So I think you know what's interesting here is that
you laid the facts out so beautifully there that tape
is goes to the question of you know motivation motivation.
But you know hush money in and of itself is
not illegal.
Catch and kill is not illegal.
The, the DA's theory of this case here is,
you know, misidentification of funds on business records for the
purpose of violating an,
you know, federal election law or New York State election
law in the in the
sort of disguise of hiding this money to Stormy Daniels
because the access how it's election interference,
right. And I think that that's a really important point
because I don't necessarily know that Donald Trump is as
afraid of fighting this case as he is,
Fulton County in Georgia, for example,
which is another election interference case,
or as he is fighting Jack Smith in DC And
the reason why is that this is a legal theory
that requires some hurdles to get through.
If you recall, Alvin Bragg had looked at this investigation
once before and decided that he did not want to
pursue it.
What changed in the interim period,
we do not know. But it is important to acknowledge
that even as Alvin Bragg is moving forward and doing
his job as a prosecutor,
this is a relatively complicated legal theory.
And the longer and the more difficult and more complicated
theories are to explain to juries,
the more likely it is that you can end up
within a How did he get to a felony
because of the election interference?
That's literally how he got to the felony.
Is there some murkiness there?
Is this something that they could potentially appeal on?
Absolutely. Well, not an appeal necessarily.
But again, it's a question of if you're thinking strategically
as a prosecutor,
have you overcharged in a way that is going to
come back to bite you?
Yeah. That theory you're trying to get to the to
the purposes of the election interference.
That's where I think there's some vulnerability for Alvin Bragg.
And it couldn't mean trouble.