'Just put the damn terrorist on trial': Social media enraged after Bragg delays Trump trial
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has asked for a 30-day delay in former President Donald Trump's hush money trial that was due to begin in less than two weeks. This means it will be well into April when Trump faces his first criminal trial proceeding.
Legal reporter Adam Klasfeld reported that Bragg's request came after the US Attorney's Office (USAO) for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) released roughly 73,000 pages of documents related to the case, then dropped another trove of more than 31,000 pages of documents with another massive dump of documents pending next week. Trump's legal team requested a 90-day postponement to review the documents, but Bragg countered with a 30-day delay as a compromise offer.
In his filing published Thursday, Bragg wryly noted that the release of documents was a byproduct of Trump dragging his feet until January to file its motion to SDNY to release the documents. Bragg wrote that "the USAO produced a subset of the materials we requested, which we timely and fully disclosed to defendant on June 8, 2023, more than nine months ago."
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"Despite having access to those materials since June, defendant raised no concerns to the People about the sufficiency of our efforts to obtain materials from the USAO before last week; instead, defendant waited until January 18, 2024 to subpoena additional materials and then consented to repeated extensions of the deadline for the USAO's determination," the filing read. "The timing of the USAO's production is a result solely of defendant's delay despite the People's diligence."
Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor for the Northern District of Illinois, sympathized with Bragg, writing that "it’s apparent that the Manhattan DA is frustrated that federal prosecutors dumped tens of thousands of pages of additional records on them mere weeks before Trump’s criminal trial."
"They had little choice but to agree to a short delay to give both sides a chance to review them," he argued.
However, numerous legal experts and commentators on X/Twitter didn't mince words about the SDNY and the DOJ. Former SDNY federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann asked "what in God's green earth were the Southern District federal prosecutors thinking in turning this over so late?"
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"If I'm the Manhattan DA, himself a former Southern District prosecutor, I'm LIVID," Weissmann tweeted.
Former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann disagreed with the delay, tweeting that it was "Trump's doing," and that Bragg should still "start on time."
"F--- him," Olbermann tweeted. "Enough f---ing around with Baby Hitler."
Journalist Dash Dobrofsky tweeted a similar viewpoint, writing "[Prosecutors] don't need anymore evidence" and to "just put the damn terrorist on trial and CONVICT him already."
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Conspiracy theorist researcher Mike Rothschild referenced a popular 2016 tweet about the former president in which Twitter user Jesse Farrar posted "I'd like to see ol' Donny Trump wriggle his way out of THIS jam! *Trump wriggles his way out of the jam easily* Ah! Well, nevertheless."
"Ah! Well, nevertheless," Rothschild quote-tweeted in response to news of the delay.
