After admitting they were caught off guard by a flip-flopping witness in state Rep. Dawnna Dukes’ corruption case, Travis County prosecutors are asking a judge to grant a trial delay so they can have more time to prove 13 felony charges.

The outcome of a hearing Tuesday afternoon will determine whether the district attorney’s office gets a chance to salvage its damaged case or is forced to walk into a courtroom next month without the support of a key witness who now says the Austin Democrat didn’t break the rules as she collected per diem payments from the state.

Dukes’ attorneys say they are ready for trial Oct. 16 and are requesting that state District Judge Brad Urrutia deny the continuance.

"The DA should have investigated the case before she indicted it," Dukes’ attorney, Shaun Clarke, told the American-Statesman on Monday. "If she isn’t ready, too bad. Our Constitution doesn’t allow a prosecutor simply to indict someone and say, well, we’ll have a trial later when I’m ready."

District attorney Margaret Moore declined to comment.

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According to court filings, Moore and her team were blindsided this month when she accompanied staff members to interview a House official, who they presumed would testify against Dukes. But that witness, Steven Adrian, executive director of the House Business Office, dropped a bombshell, saying he had notified Dukes’ attorneys in January that reimbursement travel vouchers she submitted before the 2015 legislative session complied with House rules. Adrian said Dukes did not have to work from the Capitol — only in Austin — to be eligible for $61.50 a day. Three additional members of Adrian’s staff signed declarations affirming his remarks, court documents reveal.

Per the House policy manual, members may be reimbursed for travel "to Austin to attend to legislative duties in their office." Lawyers for Dukes argue that the definition of office extends beyond Dukes’ working space at the Capitol.

Dukes’ attorneys said Moore’s office never contacted Adrian before a Sept. 6 meeting and had relied on a conversation Adrian had in 2016 with an investigator from the state auditor’s office in which Adrian supposedly said Dukes had to work from the Capitol to get reimbursed.

Notes from that conversation are contained on a single sticky note, according to a court filing.

In the motion for a continuance, Moore’s office asserted that Adrian’s most recent statement "necessitates further investigation" that cannot be completed in time for trial.

In response to that motion, Clarke said Moore’s delay request is unfair, in part because Moore rejected his request that she delay presenting charges to a grand jury in January so he could have more time to review the case. Clarke’s motion tells Moore to bring the charges to court or admit defeat and drop them.

Clarke, in a phone call Monday with the Statesman, accused Moore’s office of exercising "subterfuge" in an attempt to save face.

"They could take three decades, and they wouldn’t have a case," he said.

The DA’s office instead wants to take a misdemeanor charge to trial next month while the felonies sit on the back burner. Dukes is charged with two misdemeanors, including one that accuses her of giving a taxpayer-funded raise to a legislative aide to cover gas money for driving Dukes’ daughter to and from school.

Urrutia could rule on that request as early as Tuesday.

The misdemeanors each carry a maximum penalty of one year in jail.

Clarke filed a motion Monday calling the proposal a "bait and switch," which, if granted, would leave his team with inadequate time to prepare.