Earlier this month, President Trump’s attorneys were given 104,000 pages of discovery less than three weeks before trial in a case alleging he falsified business records, prompting allegations of prosecutorial misconduct.
The judge has called for a hearing on this instead of a trial on March 25 and has required both parties to submit a timeline and correspondence surrounding this unusual discovery production.
The district attorney argued that the latest defense filings are an “attempt to shift the focus away from his own criminal conduct” by pushing for “remedies to which he is not entitled, including dismissal.”
Details of the public versions of the court filings have been redacted, as has been the norm in this case.
Coordination With Federal Prosecutors?
Prosecutors argued that the defense is “spinning a false narrative” that they are coordinating with federal attorneys to obstruct their access to evidence.
The Manhattan case indicted President Trump on 34 counts of falsifying business records, and the investigation began in August 2018 based on statements made by Michael Cohen, formerly President Trump’s personal attorney.
Mr. Cohen made public statements that led the prosecutors to charge that state laws were violated, and after a year’s pause so prosecutors wouldn’t interfere with a federal investigation, the case picked back up in July 2019 after Mr. Cohen took a guilty plea in federal court.
Mr. Conroy noted that the two offices met in December 2022 to discuss the state investigation and requests for evidence, which they obtained beginning in late January 2023.
The defense noted that it had tried to get this information through Mr. Cohen and his publishers and the federal attorneys directly and that the prosecutors tried to obstruct this.
The prosecutors argued it wasn’t obstruction, focusing on the defense’s repeated attempts to push back on charges instead.
The district attorneys did note, however, that federal attorneys shared the defense’s January 2024 subpoena with the prosecutors and that the prosecutors explained where they thought the requests in the defendant’s subpoena fell short.
‘Absolutely No Prejudice’
The prosecutors also argued that the defense suffered no harm from the late discovery of production because it contained “no new information,” and therefore, dismissal was not warranted.“The defense is not entitled to any remedy under CPL § 245.80 because defendant suffers absolutely no prejudice from this disclosure,” the prosecutors argued. The material instead includes “information already conveyed many times over in the People’s exhaustive prior discovery productions,” including duplicates of materials shared as early as May 2023, they argued.
Details of the evidence were redacted, but prosecutors said that everything requested was already disclosed “either verbatim or in substance.”
They claimed the defense was attacking the integrity of the prosecution team, saying “the precise opposite” was true because prosecutors had by then already “shared a font of information,” detailing instances where prosecutors responded within the hour, and on weekends, to inquiries by the defense.
The prosecutors urged the court not to adjourn the trial or delay by 90 days.
