US prosecutors willing to delay Trump hush money criminal trial

Manhattan prosecutors say they will not oppose delay of up to 30 days in trial set to start March 25.

Prosecutors in the United States have said they are willing to delay Donald Trump’s criminal trial on charges related to making hush money payments for up to 30 days so the former president’s lawyers can review newly obtained evidence.

The first-ever criminal trial of a former US president was set to begin on March 25.

On Thursday, New York prosecutors said they were open to delaying the start of the trial “in an abundance of caution” to give Trump’s lawyers time to review records from a previous federal investigation into the matter.

Trump – the presumptive Republican presidential nominee and likely opponent of President Joe Biden in the November election – has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records to hide his former lawyer Michael Cohen’s $130,000 payment to adult performer Stormy Daniels for her silence before the 2016 election about a sexual encounter she says they had a decade earlier.

In a heavily redacted filing dated March 8 and made public on Thursday, Trump’s lawyers said they needed more time to review thousands of pages of documents they recently received from the US Attorney’s office in Manhattan, which had previously investigated Cohen’s payment to Daniels.