During Donald J. Trump’s New York trial, Jaden Jarmel-Schneider, a paralegal at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, admitted that certain phone call records linked to the prosecution had been deleted from the case files.
This admission holds significant importance as it raises concerns about the defense potentially lacking access to all necessary evidence.
Jarmel-Schneider’s testimony revolved around a crucial recording that the prosecution had presented earlier in the trial. The recording was played by the prosecutors to purportedly demonstrate conversations between Trump and Michael Cohen regarding “catch and kill” or hush money payments.
Trump’s legal team alleges that Cohen tampered with the recording, pointing to its abrupt ending. According to the Associated Press, Jarmel-Schneider’s testimony revealed that records indicate Cohen received a phone call approximately 22 seconds after the recording ended. Prosecutors are using this testimony to support their claim that the recording was not edited but rather ended abruptly due to an incoming call to Cohen.
During Friday’s proceedings, Trump’s defense attorney Emil Bove challenged the evidence presented by the prosecutors. He specifically questioned Jarmel-Schneider about the deletion of toll records between Keith Davidson and Michael Cohen after the defense submitted recordings between the two from 2018, as reported by CNN.
The paralegal admitted that some call records had indeed been deleted from the Trump case files by Manhattan DA Bragg’s office. Jarmel-Schneider confirmed that some of these records pertained to a three-page exhibit of calls between Gina Rodriguez and Dylan Howard.
When Bove asked Jarmel-Schneider if he was essentially the custodian of the call records during the trial, Jarmel-Schneider responded cautiously, indicating uncertainty about that characterization.
Bove furthermore presented Jarmel-Schneider with a text message regarding Hope Hicks’ call to David Pecker, the former CEO of American Media. Bove pressed Jarmel-Schneider to confirm the absence of records for this call, to which Jarmel-Schneider could not recall off the top of his head.