Trump attorney asked about roughly three pages worth of records that the attorney claimed Mr. Bragg’s office had deleted.
A paralegal from Manhattan Attorney General Alvin Bragg’s office testified on Friday during former President Donald Trump’s “hush money” trial that some phone call records between Michael Cohen and Stephanie Clifford’s (a.k.a. Stormy Daniels) lawyer were deleted, raising questions about evidentiary integrity.
In a bid to challenge some of the evidence being put forward in President Trump’s business records falsification trial in Manhattan, Trump attorney Emil Bove asked paralegal Jaden Jarmel-Schneider in court on May 10 about roughly three pages worth of records that the attorney claimed Mr. Bragg’s office had deleted.
Mr. Jarmel-Schneider confirmed some deletions. He acknowledged that some phone call records from 2018 between Mr. Cohen and Keith Davidson (Ms. Clifford’s lawyer) had been deleted, along with some records of conversations between Ms. Clifford’s manager Gina Rodriguez and then-National Enquirer editor Dylan Howard about Ms. Clifford’s claim that she had an affair with President Trump.
The Trump attorney alleged that the deletions were “significant,” prompting Mr. Jarmel-Schneider to dispute that characterization, though he acknowledged that some of the records had indeed been deleted.
Prosecutors have submitted the call records into evidence in a bid to bolster their case that the alleged affair—which President Trump has denied—took place and that the former president falsified business records to conceal payments allegedly made to Ms. Clifford to stay silent.
President Trump has denied any wrongdoing and maintains the case is a politically motivated bid to undermine his 2024 presidential campaign.
The fact that prosecutors submitted the call records into evidence but didn’t tell the Trump defense team that some of them had been deleted raises questions about the integrity of the proceedings, according to Trump attorneys, and others.
“Insanity! How on earth is this not a felony committed by Bragg and his minions? It sure would be if team Trump did it,” the former president’s eldest son, Don Trump Jr., said in a post on X.
Mr. Trump Jr. was presumably referring to the fact that evidence tampering is a class E felony in the state of New York.
By Tom Ozimek
