Less than two weeks before Donald J. Trump is set to go on trial on criminal charges in Manhattan, the prosecutors who brought the case proposed a delay of up to 30 days, a startling development in the first prosecution of a former American president.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office, which accused Mr. Trump of covering up a sex scandal during and after the 2016 presidential campaign, said the delay would give Mr. Trump’s lawyers time to review a new batch of records. The office sought the records more than a year ago, but only recently received them from federal prosecutors, who years ago investigated the hush-money payments at the center of the case.
In response to the new records — tens of thousands of pages of them — Mr. Trump’s lawyers requested that the trial be delayed 90 days. Although the former president frequently requests such delays, prosecutors consenting to any postponement makes one far more likely.
Mr. Trump, who clinched the Republican presidential nomination for the third time this week, faces four criminal trials and several civil lawsuits. The Manhattan case had been the only one of the four criminal cases not mired in delays.
Now it too appears likely to be postponed, though it remains on track to reach trial before Election Day.
In a court filing, the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, said his prosecutors were prepared to begin the trial on March 25 as planned, but that they did not oppose a 30-day delay “out of an abundance of caution and to ensure that defendant has sufficient time to review the new materials.”
The judge overseeing the Manhattan case, Juan M. Merchan, would have to approve any delay, and it remains unclear how and when he will rule. Justice Merchan has made a point of pushing the case forward at every turn.
Any delay in the Manhattan case would most likely delight the former president, whose central strategy for fighting his legal entanglements is to stall.
If he were elected to a second term in November, the criminal cases against him would grind to a halt until he was out of office. It is Justice Department policy that a sitting president cannot face trial on criminal charges, and the district attorney’s office is expected to adhere to that.
A lawyer for Mr. Trump declined to comment on the potential delay of the Manhattan case. In a statement, Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump’s campaign, said, “President Trump and his counsel have been consistent and steadfast that this case has no basis in law or fact, and should be dismissed.”
A separate criminal case against Mr. Trump in Washington, where he is accused of plotting to overturn the 2020 election results, was initially supposed to go to trial this month, but that is delayed while Mr. Trump appeals to the Supreme Court.
The Manhattan case stems from a hush-money payment to a porn star, Stormy Daniels, made during the 2016 campaign. Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former fixer, paid Ms. Daniels $130,000 to silence her story of a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump.
When Mr. Trump reimbursed Mr. Cohen, prosecutors say, his family business falsely described the repayments in internal records as “legal expenses,” continuing a cover-up that withheld potentially damaging information from voters just before they went to the polls.
In 2018, federal prosecutors in Manhattan learned of the deal and threatened to indict Mr. Cohen, who ultimately pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations.
Mr. Bragg’s office had sought thousands of records from the Manhattan prosecutors last year, but they had declined to turn them over until recently. Mr. Bragg’s office said it expected to receive additional materials next week.
For Mr. Bragg, the case is a career-making moment, and the request for a delay reflects his typically cautious approach. If his prosecutors had failed to turn over certain records to Mr. Trump’s lawyers, the judge could have thrown out the case altogether.
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