Vulnerability of Trump's hush money case could mean 'trouble' for Manhattan DA

Charles this was a delay that Yasmin just mentioned that um 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 to start today I should say um so this hearing Donald Trump's going to be arguing for it to get thrown out what do you expect judge Moran to do I don't expect that judge Maran 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 it

self now to get it dismissed I don't think is going to happen I think that Alvin Bragg and his office understands that the sdny 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 a dismiss can you explain the sdny aspect of this because I am so confused by it I I'm hear

ing differing accounts I don't understand what the documents were I don't understand why stny 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 Prosecutor's offices End

eavor 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 brag for example didn't have the documents but he knows that the sdny 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 brag 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 they don't have to coordinate with local prosecutors to get them information and it can be very frustrating as Allan Bragg's office is likely frustrated now so sdny turns the documents over at a very late Point these are a voluminous amount of documents we're talking about lit

erally tens of thousands of documents have been turned over from the SD's investigation into this very same thing things involving Michael Cohen things involving other Witnesses all of the above and then all of the parties have to sip through it which is why we've gotten the delay not to get too much in the weeds here but the 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 meron meron 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 government's word for it you know it's it's um I have to go through each document myself 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 want across their and Dot their eyes the key statutory language um that Charles is referring to under the New York Discove

ry law is within your um possession custody or control and Trump's team is making this this argument a step further they're they're actually saying well um you know potentially sdny 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're bad blood exactly there is 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 um 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 sny's issue it seemed like they had a change of heart on their requirements under these the twoe regulations meaning how they are going to respond to a third party subpoena they it seems like they messed up there giving you know more information sort of on the second round when Trump's team asked for it as o

pposed to the first go Alvin Bragg is kind of in the same position as Trump which I think is why he um you know consented to the 30-day uh adjournment I think ultimately this is going to end up being a blip on the radar screen I don't think we're going to 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 um so it's an issue but it's not like team wants to thrown out or 90 days the da said 30 days maybe it'll

be 60 or 45 um all right so the the hearing has begun judge m is there everybody is seated um 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 t

erms of eating the time and what 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 brag cannot push the gas as much as he would like here as a 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 brag wasn't in direct possession of so they're arguing a discovery violation they're trying to get um both Cohen's testimony Michael Cohen's testimony and stormmy daniels's testimony precluded uh from this trial that would be major I mean that would basically sync everything if they were able to do that they would but they the judg has already ruled on this in Ro in terms of uh the motions and lemonade so they have been motions that uh the prosecution and the defense have submitted about w

ho 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 Chang 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 leadup to the 2016 election you guys remember you were watching there was an Access Hollywood tape that came out in the leadup 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 um and in in and around this time there was the stormy Daniel stuff and and her talking potentially about an affair that she had with Donald Trump and so Michael Cohen paid her money Mic

hael Cohen then later said after you know events events unfolded as they did uh 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 marshan is take playing it right down the middle here I think th

at was a wise choice on his part he he has ruled that it can come in audio or visually however they can elicit that testimony 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 inflammatory language was more prejudicial than probative put that in language okay uh meaning that it's it's overly inflammatory and that you can elicit sort of the bare facts of it without um actually playing t

he tape for the jurors which could uh you know poison their minds against the defendant uh unreasonably 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 uh goes to the question of you know motivation motivation but you know hush in and of itself is not illegal catch and kill is not illegal the the DA's theory of this case here is um you know Miss identification of funds on business

records for the purpose of uh violating you know federal election law or New York state election law in the in the uh sort of Disguise of uh hiding this money to stormy D because the access Hol interfering 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 Fon County in Georgia for example which is another election interference case or as he is fighting Jack Smith and 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 interal period we do not know but it is important to acknowledge that even as Alvin brag 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 i

t 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 can potentially appeal 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 that theory of trying to get to the to the purposes of the election interference that's wh

ere I think there's some vulnerability for Alvin brag and it couldn't mean trouble