- Trump's Manhattan 'hush-money' grand jury will not consider the case this week.
- The grand jury has not heard evidence in the case since Monday, when a surprise witness testified.
There will be no grand jury testimony, deliberations, or vote in the Trump "hush money" case in Manhattan for the remainder of this week, a source told Insider.
Grand jurors will return to court Thursday, according to the law enforcement source. But the panel will meet in connection with a different case — not the Trump hush-money matter, the source said early Thursday.
The panel has been meeting Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays and has been hearing evidence since mid-January concerning former President Donald Trump and his alleged involvement in a 2016 pre-election payment to adult actress Stormy Daniels.
The grand jurors are not expected to take up the hush-money case again until Monday at the earliest, according to the source, who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to discuss high-level planning for the panel, which meets in secret.
At the request of Trump's defense team, grand jurors heard testimony on Monday from Robert Costello, a former legal advisor to prosecution witness Michael Cohen. Costello said he hoped his testimony would challenge Cohen's credibility. The grand jury has not met to consider the hush-money matter since then.
It is not unusual for state grand juries to hear evidence in multiple cases at the same time. It is not clear if the case on hand for the Trump panel on Thursday has any relation to Trump or to anyone in his sphere, or if it is entirely unrelated.
Trump has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and has called the investigation a politically-biased "witch hunt."
"Isn't it terrible that D.A. Bragg refuses to do the right thing and 'call it a day?'" Trump posted to Truth Social on Thursday afternoon. "He would rather indict an innocent man and create years of hatred, chaos, and turmoil, than give him his well deserved 'freedom.'"
Earlier on Thursday, he "truthed," without evidence, that there is "Total disarray in the Manhattan D.A.'s Office. Tremendous dissension and chaos because they have NO CASE, and many of the honest people in the Office know it, and want to do the right thing."
His 2024 presidential campaign raised $1.5 million in the three days following a Saturday Truth Social post in which he claimed without evidence that he would be arrested Tuesday.
Prosecutors are statutorily barred from discussing grand jury proceedings. A spokesperson for District Attorney Alvin Bragg declined to comment.
Special grand juries like the panel hearing the hush-money matter are sometimes assigned more than one unrelated case to hear evidence in, said former Manhattan prosecutor Jeremy Saland.
"It could very well be that they're hearing something about, say, a gambling ring — I'm making that up, here," said Saland, now in private practice. "Or some prolific drug ring, or an enterprise corruption case at the same time," he said.
"You're not hearing about it," he said of any hypothetical, unrelated case the "hush money" grand jury might also be hearing. "You wouldn't know about it.
"But a special grand jury can be impaneled to hear more than one case," he added. "So it should come as no surprise if they investigating some other matter, whether that's tangential or related to Donald Trump or completely separate from him."
Update: March 23, 2023 — This story has been updated to add context and reaction from Trump's Truth Social account.