NEW YORK — Donald Trump’s lawyers were blocked Friday from forcing NBC to provide them with materials related to the TV network’s recent documentary about porn actor Stormy Daniels, a key prosecution witness at the former president’s upcoming hush-money criminal trial in New York.
Manhattan Judge Juan M. Merchan said the defense’s subpoena for NBC Universal was “the very definition of a fishing expedition” and did not meet a heavy legal burden for requiring a news organization to provide unfettered access to its privileged notes and documents.
It’s the latest defeat for Trump’s legal team ahead of the April 15 trial, the first of Trump’s four criminal cases scheduled to go to trial and the first-ever for a former president.
On Wednesday, Merchan rejected the presumptive Republican nominee’s request to delay the trial until the Supreme Court rules on presidential immunity claims he raised in another of his criminal cases. The judge declared that request untimely and chided Trump’s lawyers for waiting until weeks before the trial to raise the immunity issue. Several other bids to delay are pending.
Trump lawyer Todd Blanche and the Manhattan district attorney’s office declined to comment. NBC Universal also declined to comment.
The hush money case centers on allegations that Trump falsified his company’s internal records to hide the true nature of payments to his former lawyer Michael Cohen, who helped Trump bury negative stories during the 2016 presidential campaign. Among other things, Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 to suppress her claims of an extramarital sexual encounter with Trump years earlier.
Trump pleaded not guilty last year to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. He has denied having a sexual encounter with Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, and his lawyers argue the payments to Cohen were legitimate legal expenses and not part of any cover-up.
Cohen turned against Trump during a 2018 federal investigation into the hush-money…
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