According to reports, a paralegal from the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg testified on Friday that three pages of phone records between Stormy Daniels’s attorney, Keith Davidson, and convicted liar Michael Cohen were removed from their evidence without notifying the former president’s legal team. CNN reports that Trump’s lawyer Emil Bove questioned paralegal Jaden Jarmel-Schneider on Friday regarding Bragg’s office’s removal of three pages of Davidson and Cohen’s 2018 phone records. The Epoch Times further revealed that other phone conversations between Daniels’ manager, Gina Rodriguez, and then-editor Dylan Howard of the National Enquirer concerning Daniels’ purported affair were also erased.
The altered call records were submitted as evidence, the reports said, but Bragg’s office failed to inform Trump’s defense team that three pages were missing.
In April 2023, Bragg—who ran on a platform of taking legal action against Trump—indicted the outgoing president on 34 felonies related to falsifying corporate documents. According to Bragg, Stormy Daniels received cash from Michael Cohen, Trump’s then-attorney, prior to the 2016 election in order to keep her quiet about an alleged affair that Trump disputes. Bragg contends that this contribution ought to have been documented as a campaign expense rather than a legal fee because it was intended to sway the outcome of the election.
Years ago, the Federal Election Commission and federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, among other legal bodies, looked into the claims and found them to be without substance. Bragg seemed to perform legal acrobatics to accuse the previous president after first declining to do so when he took office. Judge Juan Merchan rejected a plea for a mistrial that Trump’s defence team had made. The Federalist revealed last week that Merchan further limited the defense’s ability to make its case by limiting former Federal Election Commission Chairman Bradley Smith’s evidence over matters pertaining to campaign finance.
However, Merchan determined that Smith’s testimony is now limited to the “general background regarding the Federal [Election] Commission, background regarding the individuals that comprise the FEC, the purpose of the FEC, the laws that the FEC is in charge of enforcing, and general definitions and terms that directly relate to his case, like ‘campaign contribution.'” Jonathan Turley, a Fox News contributor and law professor at Georgetown University, suggested earlier this month that Merchan might have made a mistake in permitting Bragg’s team of prosecutors—led by Michael Colangelo, a former acting associate attorney general for the Biden Justice Department—to claim that Trump was complicit in violating federal election laws. Turley stated that the way those payments have been made described to the jury thus far is simply false.