A paralegal admitted Friday that the prosecution deleted three pages of call records entered in as evidence in former President Donald Trump's hush money trial, CNN reported. This admission undermines the integrity of all evidence coming from Manhattan Attorney General Alvin Bragg’s office.
Trump attorney Emil Bove had called paralegal Jaden Jarmel-Schneider to the witness stand over the prosecution's evidence. It was then he admitted that some 2018 calls between Daniels' lawyer, Keith Davidson, and Trump's former attorney, Michael Cohen, were nixed.
Moreover, records that confirmed discussions between Gina Rodriguez, Daniels' manager, and Dylan Howard, National Enquirer editor Dylan Howard, were also deleted. This should call into question the trustworthiness of the entire case, but Jarmel-Schneider seemed flippant about it.
"At this trial, you’re sort of the guardian of the toll records?" Bove asked the paralegal. He replied, "I don’t know if I'd say that, but if you say so."
This kind of finagling from the prosecution would never be tolerated by the defense, and yet not much was said about it outside of CNN's running updates of the trial. Much like other aspects of this trial, it proves there is a clear double standard.
Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr., called out "Bragg and his minions" in a post to X, formerly Twitter. "Insanity! How on earth is this not a felony committed by Bragg and his minions?" the younger Trump wrote Friday.
"It sure would be if team Trump did it. I’d love if we had actual journalists that would report on this ongoing travesty," he added. "Sadly, proper journalism is dead. They’re just scribes for the regime," Donald Trump Jr. said.
Insanity! How on earth is this not a felony committed by Bragg and his minions? It sure would be if team Trump did it.
I’d love if we had actual journalists that would report on this ongoing travesty.
Sadly, proper journalism is dead. They’re just scribes for the regime. https://t.co/vQkLDk3t1T
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) May 10, 2024
Meanwhile, as the prosecution shreds evidence and smears his name in court, Donald Trump has been ordered to keep silent with a gag order. The judge has claimed the former president violated the order 10 times to the tune of $10,000 in fines, Fox News reported.
Aside from the antics of the judge and prosecution, this entire trial was built on shaky ground from day one. The premise is that Donald Trump paid Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet about an alleged tryst through his then-attorney, Michael Cohen.
Trump categorized it as a legal expense and reimbursed Cohen through the Trump Organization. Because of this, prosecutors allege that what would be a misdemeanor rises to a felony of falsifying business records with the intent of concealing a second crime.
Essentially, this is much ado about an accounting dispute, but Bragg has turned it into a trail that is sidelining the GOP's 2024 presumptive presidential candidate. "This is a Frankenstein case," legal analyst Jonathan Turley pointed out.
"They took a dead misdemeanor, they attached it to a dead, alleged federal felony and zapped it back into life. So many of us are just amazed to watch this actually walk into court because it's not a recognizable crime that any of us have seen," Turley added.
Now, Bragg's office is deleting records while Trump is forced to silently take it all in. This case should never have come to trial in the first place, but certainly should not continue if Bragg's office is allegedly tampering with evidence.
