Topline
A New York state judge has shut down an attempt by Donald Trump to prove NBC purposefully released its Stormy Daniels documentary near the date of the president’s April 15 hush money trial in an effort to damage him in court, blocking a subpoena for network documents the judge called a “fishing expedition.”
Key Facts
Manhattan-based Judge Juan Merchan on Friday said Trump’s legal team could not subpoena documents related to the documentary’s premiere date or any payments Daniels (whose real name is Stephanie Clifford) received for participating in the project, which is an almost two-hour film called “Stormy” that chronicles the adult film star’s legal battle with the ex-president.
Trump will go to trial later this month on dozens of counts of falsifying business records to allegedly cover up a hush-money payment his former lawyer Michael Cohen made to Daniels in 2016 in exchange for her silence about a sexual relationship she says he had with Trump.
The trial was initially scheduled for March 25, seven days after NBC’s Peacock streaming service released the “Stormy” film, and Trump has claimed the release date was chosen to paint him in a negative light before the trial began.
NBC asked the judge to block the subpoena and said Daniels had nothing to do with the documentary’s release timing and did not have approval of its content.
Merchan said the subpoena was “the very definition of a fishing expedition” also said it would be a violation of civil rights law for Trump’s attorneys to gain “unfettered access” to the internal documents of a media organization.
Key Background
Trump has been charged in Manhattan with 34 counts of falsifying business records after he allegedly misidentified a series of payments to Cohen as payments for legal services, when he was actually repaying Cohen for hush money he gave to Daniels before the 2016 election. Daniels has said she had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006, a year after he married his wife Melania. The money was reportedly paid to her to keep silent about their affair. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all counts. On Wednesday, Merchan also denied a motion by the former president to delay the trial until the Supreme Court rules on the issue of presidential immunity, which Trump argues applies to some degree in all of his criminal trials. He claimed his presidential immunity would prevent some evidence from being presented in the Daniels trial, and has generally argued his actions while in office are protected from prosecution even though he is no longer president. The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments later this month.
Tangent
April 15 will be a busy day for Trump. In addition to the start of jury selection for the Daniels trial, he is also scheduled to be deposed by lawyers of two co-founders of the Trump Media & Technology Group in a trial that claims Trump tried to dilute their shares in the company—which made the Truth Social app—before it went public last month. The Trump Media & Technology Group has filed a countersuit. The company became publicly traded on March 26 as $DJT with an initial valuation of $8 billion, after merging with a publicly traded shell company, but Trump Media’s share price has fallen significantly since then. Shares of the company were down 9% on Friday, and its market cap sat at around $5.6 billion.
Forbes Valuation
Trump was worth an estimated $5 billion on Friday and ranked as the 625th richest person in the world. His net worth climbed by an estimated $4 billion when Trump Media started trading. He was worth an estimated $2.3 billion before the company went public, and his net worth was down an estimated $476 million when the stock dropped Friday.