Fani Willis’ Georgia election case will proceed, and other things to know about Trump’s trials

William Brangham:

Yes, this one really was a bit of a surprise.

Just to recap, this is the case that was brought by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, alleging that Stormy Daniels, who is this former adult actress, was — she was going to bring a story to light back in 2016 during the campaign. Trump’s fixer Michael Cohen paid her $130,000 to stay quiet about that.

That trial and that they — the allegation that they fudged their financial records to hide that payment, that was supposed to start a week from Monday, but now this 30-day delay. Why was that delay? It’s suddenly because they are now receiving hundreds of thousands of pages of evidence from federal prosecutors in New York.

This was part of their 2018 case against Michael Cohen for financial crimes. So the main question here is, why is it that it took federal prosecutors all this time to give up this evidence to the Manhattan DA and to Donald Trump? Because they asked — they were asked for this evidence, I believe it was almost a year ago.

So, many former prosecutors are wondering what the hiccup was here. I talked to one very senior former Department of Justice official from New York. He was quite lacerating in his criticism, calling this an inexcusable lapse.

Now, with this delay, that trial probably won’t start until the middle of April.