OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
A paralegal from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office testified on Friday that three pages of phone records between Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels’s lawyer, Keith Davidson, were deleted from their evidence. Former President Donald Trump’s legal team was not notified about the removal, according to reports.
According to CNN, Trump attorney Emil Bove questioned paralegal Jaden Jarmel-Schneider last week before the defense rested about the deletion of three pages of 2018 phone records between Davidson and Cohen by Bragg’s office. The Epoch Times also reported that additional phone records involving conversations between Daniels’ manager, Gina Rodriguez, and then-National Enquirer editor Dylan Howard, regarding Daniels’ claims about her alleged affair were also deleted.
The altered call records were submitted as evidence. However, Bragg’s office failed to inform Trump’s defense team that three pages were missing.
Tampering with evidence is a class E felony in the Empire State under New York Consolidation Laws, Penal Law § 215.40, which states in part:
A person is guilty of tampering with physical evidence when: Believing that certain physical evidence is about to be produced or used in an official proceeding or a prospective official proceeding, and intending to prevent such production or use, he suppresses it by any act of concealment, alteration or destruction, or by employing force, intimidation or deception against any person.
In a post to the X platform on Friday, Donald Trump Jr. described the development as “insanity.” He wrote: “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,” he added.
Bragg, who ran for office with a platform that included pursuing legal action against Trump, indicted the former president in April 2023 on 34 felony charges of falsifying business records. Bragg claims that Trump’s lawyer at the time, Michael Cohen, made a payment to Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election to silence her regarding an alleged affair that Trump denies. According to Bragg, this payment was aimed at influencing the election outcome and should have been recorded as a campaign expense, not a legal expense.
Multiple legal entities, including the Federal Election Commission and the federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, examined the allegations years ago and determined that there was no merit to them. Bragg initially refused to charge Trump when he took office but appeared to engage in legal gymnastics to charge the former president later.
Top-rated conservative radio talker and Fox News host Mark Levin, who is also an attorney and expert on the law, opined last week that Bragg should be disbarred over the way he and his office handled former Trump lawyer-fixer Michael Cohen’s testimony.
Levin argued on Fox News colleague Sean Hannity’s show that the Democratic prosecutor might be found guilty of violating the federal Brady rule, which mandates the government to disclose all exculpatory evidence relevant to the proceedings. In the case of Cohen, Levin asserts that Bragg did not provide Trump’s attorneys with substantial evidence highlighting the unreliability of their witness based on his past statements.
“Sean, it’s my opening argument on why Alvin Bragg should be disbarred, why he should be facing a — charges for suborning perjury, which I’ve talked about on my radio show for the last three days, and also why he’s in violation of the Brady [Rule],” he said.
“You have collateral evidence, which is unconstitutional; you have somebody being charged, and he’s not sure what he’s charged with, which is unconstitutional. You have all kinds of allegations being made which are absolutely outrageous, not relevant. You have a dead state statute that remains dead today that’s being used. You have a federal campaign law and nobody knows exactly what part of the federal campaign law we’re talking about,” he added.
