Manhattan DA’s office won’t be punished for document dump that delayed start of Trump criminal trial

By MICHAEL R. SISAK
Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Manhattan prosecutors won’t be penalized for a last-minute document dump that caused former President Donald Trump’s hush money criminal trial to start later than scheduled. Judge Juan M. Merchan on Thursday rejected the defense’s request that prosecutors be sanctioned for a deluge of nearly 200,000 pages of evidence just weeks before the trial‘s scheduled start. The documents were from a previous federal investigation into the matter. Merchan had agreed to delay the start of the trial from March 25 to April 15 to allow Trump’s lawyers to review the material. In a written ruling Thursday, Merchan reiterated that Trump and his lawyers were “given a reasonable amount of time to prepare and respond to the material.”