Former President Donald Trump‘s hush money trial, otherwise known as the Stormy Daniels trial, might be delayed beyond its scheduled date.
The trial is currently scheduled to begin on March 25 with jury selection. However, the prosecution has filed a motion for delay for up to 30 days to allow them to review newly obtained records.
It comes after they asked for a gag order to be imposed on Trump to prevent him from making inflammatory remarks about the case.
Prosecutors Say New Record Contains Materials Related To The Case
According to The Guardian, prosecutors are open to delaying the upcoming Stormy Daniels trial to review newly obtained records.
Trump is being accused of directing his former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, to pay porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 in hush money not to reveal his affair with her ahead of the 2016 election.
He was also accused of covering up his tracks by refunding the money to Cohen as part of his legal expenses, which allegedly violates electoral laws.
As part of the prosecutors’ motion to request the delay, they informed the court that they had recently received “approximately 31,000 pages of additional records” from the US Attorneys’ Offices and expect “another production of documents by next week.”
They also claimed that upon an “initial review” of the batch they received, it contained “materials related to the subject matter of this case, including materials that the People requested from the USAO more than a year ago and that the USAO previously declined to provide.”
If the motion is denied, the trial will proceed as scheduled on March 25, 2024. However, if the motion is granted, the trial would be pushed forward by up to 30 days, as requested by the prosecutors.
Donald Trump Previously Asked The Court To Delay The Trial
Prior to the motion filed by the prosecutors, Trump had also requested a delay for a different reason.
According to court records, the billionaire mogul’s lawyers asked that the trial be postponed until the US Supreme Court finishes reviewing his claim of presidential immunity in a different matter related to the Stormy Daniels trial.
Prosecutors filed last month that they planned to introduce evidence that Trump pressured Cohen to not cooperate with the federal prosecutors who carried out an investigation into the hush money payment.
Trump’s lawyers moved to stop the motion, arguing that the prosecutors’ claim that Trump pressured Cohen was “fictitious.”
They also said that any statements Trump made at the time to Cohen shouldn’t be used as evidence, as the billionaire mogul was covered by presidential immunity.
“Without immunity from criminal prosecution based on official acts, the President’s political opponents will seek to influence and control his or her decisions via de facto extortion,” Trump’s lawyers said in their countermotion, per The Guardian.
Prosecutors Also Requested For A Gag Order Against Donald Trump
Still, in February, prosecutors asked the court to grant them a gag order that would prevent Trump from making inflammatory remarks about the case.
The filing read, “[The] defendant has a long history of making public and inflammatory remarks.” “Those remarks, as well as the inevitable reactions they incite from the defendant’s followers and allies, pose a significant threat to the orderly administration of this criminal proceeding.”
To drive home their point, the prosecutors added lines from Trump’s posts on his Truth Social platform, where he could be seen ranting about his court cases using acerbic remarks.
A decision on the gag order has yet to be reached. However, a ruling in favor of the prosecution won’t be surprising as Trump was also placed under a gag order for his federal criminal trial in Washington.
Donald Trump Pleaded Not Guilty To The Charges
Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records and has also denied having an affair with Daniels.
However, this has not stopped speculation from swirling about Trump’s possible defense approach in court.
Experts have claimed that Trump won’t deny that he concealed payments. Rather, he would argue that the reason was to hide the affairs from his wife, Melania Trump, and not as a preventive move to avoid knowledge of the affairs being used by his then-opponents to malign him.
“I see the defense as being more about: ‘I wanted to keep this away from my wife. It had nothing to do with the election; it had to do with my wife,’” said Andrew Weissmann, an expert attorney and professor, per NewsWeek.
Stormy Daniels Recently Shared Her ‘Awful’ Experience With Ex-President
Daniels is set to share more about her time with the Republican presidential candidate. The adult film star revealed in an upcoming documentary titled “Stormy” that her encounter with Trump was an “awful” experience but one she “didn’t say no” to.
In a 2018 interview on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” She gave her side of the alleged sexual encounter with the 77-year-old. Daniels said at the time that it was consensual, but in the new documentary, she gave a slightly different story.
According to the LA Times, Daniels claimed that after their first meeting in his hotel room, she briefly used the bathroom, and on getting out, Trump cornered her and began “humping away.”
“I don’t remember how I got on the bed, and then the next thing I know, he was humping away and telling me how great I was. It was awful. But I didn’t say no,” Daniels said.
Despite this alleged incident, she still noted that Trump didn’t rape her because she never said no or turned him down.
“But I didn’t say no because I was 9 years old again,” the 44-year-old media personality shared. She used this to recount the sexual abuse she experienced by a neighbor as a child, which she’d previously revealed in her “Full Disclosure” memoir.
