Thread: Donald Trump : Former POTUS

• Donald Trump says he would encourage Russia to attack Nato allies who pay too little

Seeking a second presidency as the Republicans’ presumptive 2024 White House nominee, Donald Trump has said he would “encourage” Russia to attack any of the US’s Nato allies whom he considers to have not met their financial obligations.

Trump made the remarks on Saturday during a campaign rally in Conway, South Carolina, ahead of the state’s Republican presidential preference primary on 24 February.

The former president has voiced misgivings about aid to Ukraine as it defends itself from the invasion launched by Russia in February 2022 – as well as to the existence of Nato, the 31-nation alliance which the US has committed to defending when necessary.

On Saturday, Trump claimed that during an unspecified Nato meeting he told a fellow head of state that the US under his leadership would not defend any countries who were “delinquent”.

“One of the presidents of a big country stood up and said, ‘Well, sir, if we don’t pay, and we’re attacked by Russia, will you protect us?’” Trump said, adding “I said, ‘You didn’t pay, you’re delinquent?’”

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• Trump, using false comparisons with Biden, demands dismissal of documents charges

Republican front-runner Donald Trump said the charges accusing him of mishandling classified documents should be dropped now that a special counsel investigation declined to charge President Biden, mischaracterizing the alleged conduct underlying both cases.

“If he’s not going to be charged, that’s up to them,” Trump said in a speech Friday to a National Rifle Association expo here. “But then I should not be charged.”

Trump’s remarks came a day after special counsel Robert K. Hur concluded that Biden carelessly kept classified documents and notebooks at his home but said the evidence wasn’t strong enough to charge the president with crimes. Hur’s report specified how Biden alerted authorities, voluntarily returned records and consented to searches, whereas special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment against Trump accused the former president of refusing to return records and enlisting others to destroy evidence.

“Several material distinctions between Mr. Trump’s case and Mr. Biden’s are clear,” Hur wrote in his report released Thursday. “Most notably, after being given multiple chances to return classified documents and avoid prosecution, Mr. Trump allegedly did the opposite.”

According to Smith’s indictment, Trump told his staff to move some boxes out of the storage area where they were kept, including the day before FBI agents came to retrieve them. The prosecutors also accused Trump of trying to cover his tracks by ordering aides to delete security footage. They also obtained a tape of Trump discussing material that he knew was secret.

Trump, however, argued that he was more cooperative than Biden. The former president claimed he served lunch to the FBI at his club, apparently referring to a June 2022 meeting at Mar-a-Lago between his lawyers and a senior Justice Department official and several FBI agents that preceded the court-authorized search in August 2022.

“I cooperated far more than Biden did,” he said. “Biden fought them all the way. I didn’t.” Elsewhere he added, “Trump was peanuts by comparison.”

Trump also argued that Biden’s conduct was worse as a former vice president because “he’s not under the Presidential Records Act,” even though the statute applies equally to presidents and vice presidents.

For his part, Biden also misrepresented some of the facts of the case while addressing Hur’s report in a Thursday news conference. He claimed “all” classified records at his home were in lockable filing cabinets, despite a photo showing an open box in the garage that contained a classified document. He also falsely said “none of it was high classified”; Hur said multiple documents were top-secret sensitive compartmented information.

As Trump closes in on the Republican presidential nomination with wins in the first three nominating contests and a commanding polling lead in South Carolina’s primary later this month, he has made the total 91 charges against him core to his campaign message. Trump portrays the four separate criminal cases as a politically motivated and centrally coordinated attack on his candidacy. Two of the cases were brought by Smith, acting independently of the White House according to Justice Department rules. The other two were brought by district attorneys, and there is no evidence of collaboration with Biden.

In repeating that accusation Friday, Trump said he doubted Biden was personally involved, turning it into an attack on Biden’s acuity.

“I don’t know that it’s Biden because I don’t think he knows he’s alive,” Trump said, repeating a phrase he has used to criticize Biden before.

Trump did not mention passages of Hur’s report that gave a devastating impression of Biden’s lucidity, describing the 81-year-old president has having “limited precision and recall,” and “struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries.”

Trump, 77, often viciously insults Biden’s intelligence and mocks his way of speaking and walking but strains to distinguish those attacks from being a function of age alone. He also showed sensitivity to questions about his own sharpness.

“If you say one word a little bit mispronunciation, you end up front page, ‘What’s wrong with him?’” Trump said Friday. “I have a guy I’m competing against who doesn’t — he hasn’t spoken in months, and when he does, it’s not pretty, is it?”

Trump did say Biden’s retention of some classified material occurred years ago, “when he was mentally a little better than he is right now.”

• Trump gets access to sealed documents on witness threats in Mar-a-Lago case

Special counsel prosecutors have produced to Donald Trump a sealed exhibit about threats to a potential trial witness after the federal judge overseeing his prosecution for retaining classified documents ordered the exhibit turned over despite the prosecutors’ objections, people familiar with the matter said.

The exhibit was a point of contention because it detailed a series of threats made against a witness who could testify against the former president at trial, and the matter is the subject of a criminal investigation by a US attorney’s office. Prosecutors had wanted to withhold it from Trump’s lawyers.

But the presiding US district judge Aileen Cannon ordered the exhibit that prosecutors in the office of special counsel, Jack Smith, had submitted “ex parte” – or without showing it to the defense – to be transmitted to Trump’s lawyers after reviewing its contents and deciding it did not warrant that protection.

The prosecutors complied with the order before a Saturday deadline without seeking a challenge – though the justice department would typically be loath to disclose details of an ongoing investigation, especially as it relates to the primary defendant in this case, legal experts said.

The justice department may have decided it was not appealing the order because the exhibit itself is part of a motion from prosecutors asking the judge to reconsider two earlier rulings that would have the effect of making public the identities of dozens of other witnesses who could testify against Trump.

At issue is a complicated legal battle that started in January when Trump filed a motion to compel discovery, a request asking the judge to force prosecutors to turn over reams of additional information they believe could help them fight the charges.

The motion to compel was partially redacted and submitted with 70 accompanying exhibits, many of which were sealed and redacted. But Trump’s lawyers asked that those sealed filings be made public because many of the names included in the exhibits were people already known to have worked on the documents investigation.

Prosecutors asked the judge to deny Trump’s request to unseal his exhibits, using broad arguments that they would reveal the identity of potential witnesses, two sub-compartments of what is described as “Signals” intelligence, and details about a separate probe run by the FBI.

The special counsel’s team also asked to submit their own set of sealed exhibits when they filed their formal response to Trump’s motion to compel. The government’s exhibits involved memos of interviews with witnesses and likely testimony from witnesses, according to the three-page filing.

Cannon in February issued two rulings: one on Trump’s request and one on prosecutors’ request.

With Trump, the judge found that personal identifying information of witnesses and the information about “Signals” intelligence should remain under seal, but everything else could be public. And with prosecutors, she granted their request to file their own exhibits under seal.

The twin rulings appear to have caught prosecutors by surprise. They have previously been successful in keeping materials that could reveal witness identities confidential, and they formally asked Cannon to reconsider those orders.

A motion for reconsideration is significant because if Cannon denies the challenge, it could pave the way for prosecutors to seek an injunctive appeal at the US court of appeals for the 11th circuit using a writ of mandamus – essentially, an order commanding Cannon to reverse her decision.

Cannon has previously drawn scrutiny from the 11th circuit. Before Trump was indicted, she upended the underlying criminal investigation by issuing a series of favorable rulings to Trump before the appeals court ruled she never had legitimate legal authority to intervene.

As part of prosecutors’ motion for reconsideration, they asked to submit alongside their court filings a third set of exhibits under seal and ex parte. Cannon agreed, pending her personal review of their contents. On Friday, she ruled they should not be ex parte – and should be turned over to Trump, as well.

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

He will be convicted well before the election.

• Trump asks Supreme Court to block ‘immunity’ ruling

Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court on Monday to block a lower court’s ruling that he is not immune from criminal charges stemming from his bid to subvert the 2020 election.

The 39-page motion puts the fate of his criminal case in Washington, D.C. squarely in the hands of the nine justices, three of whom he nominated.

In the filing, Trump’s lawyers say the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling last week that he is not entitled to immunity is “a stunning breach of precedent and historical norms.”

Trump wants the Supreme Court to issue a “stay” of the appeals court’s ruling — an action that would keep the proceedings in the trial court frozen. Those proceedings have been delayed for two months while Trump has litigated the immunity issue, and the originally scheduled trial date of March 4 has already been postponed.

If the justices quickly deny Trump’s stay request, the case would be sent back to the trial court, and the former president could stand trial on the election-focused federal charges as early as this spring.

If, on the other hand, the justices grant a stay, it would likely lead to months of delay for any trial in the case, almost guaranteeing a conflict with the Republican National Convention in July or the height of the presidential general election season in the late summer or fall.

It takes the support of five justices to grant a stay.

Special counsel Jack Smith has already pleaded with the Supreme Court to treat the case with urgency, asking the justices in December to take up the immunity question on an expedited basis even before the appeals court reviewed it. The justices denied him, at the time, without any public explanation or dissent.

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• Judge OKs hearing to examine relationship of DA Fani Willis, top prosecutor

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee on Monday cleared the way for an evidentiary hearing later in the week that will probe whether District Attorney Fani Willis improperly benefitted from her relationship with the top prosecutor in her election interference case.

McAfee turned back a request from the Fulton DA’s office to cancel the hearing and to kill subpoenas seeking testimony from Willis and eight others in her office, including special prosecutor Nathan Wade, her executive assistant and investigators involved in her security detail.

The extraordinary developments were sparked by a motion from defendant Mike Roman to disqualify Willis and her office from the case. One sign of how seriously the judge is taking the issue: he has set aside Thursday and Friday for testimony and arguments.

“Because I think it’s possible that the facts alleged by the defendant could result in disqualification, I think an evidentiary hearing must occur to establish the record on those core allegations,” McAfee said.

The judge said he would allow Roman’s attorney, Ashleigh Merchant, to question Terrence Bradley, Wade’s former law partner who had represented him in his divorce case. Merchant believes that Bradley can speak to when Willis and Wade’s relationship began.

In a recent court filing, Merchant raised questions about the accuracy of statements made by Wade in an affidavit, including that Wade did not begin his relationship with Willis until after he was contracted by the DA’s office in late 2021. (During Monday’s hearing, special prosecutor Anna Cross said the facts Wade swore to in his affidavit are “100 percent true.”)

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• Trump attends closed-door hearing in Florida classified docs case

Former President Donald Trump was in federal court Monday to meet face-to-face with U.S District Judge Aileen Cannon for the first time.

Trump arrived at the courthouse with his motorcade at about 9 a.m. and was in the building for just over five hours. He left as supporters blasted his campaign song “God Bless the USA” over loudspeakers.

Trump didn’t speak to the media or his supporters gathered at the courthouse.

Cannon held two separate closed-door court sessions Monday as part of the process involving classified evidence related to Trump’s federal classified documents case in Florida.

Authorities accuse the former president of retaining documents containing national security secrets at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida home, after he left office and obstructing the federal investigation into how those records wound up outside of the strict channels for handling such information.

As part of that process, Cannon scheduled a four-and-a-half hour hearing Monday with Trump’s legal team where they and lawyers for his two co-defendants were expected to present — outside the presence of prosecutors — the theories the defense may use at trial.

The defense lawyers were expected to explain to Cannon why they should be permitted to access various types of classified evidence that might support those defenses.

Trump was not required to attend the session Monday, but chose to do so anyway — continuing a recent trend on his part of showing up at court proceedings in an apparent effort to highlight his claims he is being persecuted. It’s also the first time he will ever be face to face with Cannon, his nominee to the bench who was confirmed days after the 2020 election. Until now, Trump has not appeared before either of the judges presiding over his federal criminal cases.

The meetings come amid increasingly pitched complaints by prosecutors about Cannon’s actions in the case. In filings, they warned the judge that she risked endangering trial witnesses if she didn’t rescind a recent ruling to unseal their identities. They also used a recent filing to dispel what they claimed was a distorted version of events in the case that they said risked taking root without pushback.

Cannon was also scheduled Monday to hold a two-hour session with prosecutors outside the presence of Trump’s legal team. That is likely to feature a discussion of the potential repercussions of giving Trump and his co-defendants the evidence they are seeking and whether so-called substitutions for certain evidence — like deleting the names of certain countries or the details of some sensitive intelligence sources — could be adequate to let the defendants make their points in court.

Cannon also told both sides to hold their calendars open for Tuesday in case she needs additional time to work through the classified evidence issues.

Because of the nature of the discussions, they have to take place in a space authorized for discussion of some of the most sensitive national security secrets controlled by the U.S. government. The requirement for a high-level sensitive compartmented information facility has complicated and delayed some earlier proceedings in the case.

It appears that the two-courtroom Fort Pierce federal courthouse has now been approved for such hearings, although it’s unclear whether the designation is a permanent one that will allow the judge to retain top-secret documents at the courthouse or if it’s just temporary for this week’s court sessions.

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

He will be convicted well before the election.

• Chief justice gives Jack Smith one week to respond to Trump’s bid to stave off trial

Chief Justice John Roberts is giving prosecutors a week to respond to former President Donald Trump’s request to keep his federal criminal election-subversion trial on hold while he tries to persuade the Supreme Court to scuttle it entirely on the grounds of presidential immunity.

A brief docket entry from the court Tuesday morning said special counsel Jack Smith has until next Tuesday at 4 p.m. to address the emergency application Trump’s lawyers filed at the high court Monday.

Last week, a three-judge panel of a federal appeals court in Washington unanimously rejected Trump’s sweeping immunity claim. However, the judges agreed not to return the case to a lower court for trial until the Supreme Court acts on Trump’s request for emergency relief.

Smith has already urged the courts to resolve the immunity dispute quickly so that Trump’s Washington, D.C. trial, originally set for March 4, can begin later this year.

In December, the special counsel asked the Supreme Court to take up the immunity issue even before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals reviewed it, in order to reach an expedited conclusion, but the justices denied the attempt.

“This Court’s immediate review of that question is the only way to achieve its timely and definitive resolution,” Smith wrote in the December filing. “The Nation has a compelling interest in a decision on [Trump’s] claim of immunity from these charges — and if they are to be tried, a resolution by conviction or acquittal, without undue delay.”

Smith is expected to oppose Trump’s request to keep the proceedings in the trial court on hold while Trump pursues further relief from both the Supreme Court and the full, 11-judge bench of the D.C. Circuit. He is hoping those courts rule that former presidents are immune from prosecution on conduct arguably related to the presidency unless they have been impeached and convicted by Congress.

Smith does not have to wait until next Tuesday to respond to Trump’s latest high court filing, which was widely anticipated and largely repeats arguments his attorneys have raised previously.

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• All 4 of Trump’s criminal cases reach inflection points this week

Donald Trump’s muddled calendar of criminal cases may get a lot clearer this week.

Each of Trump’s four criminal cases is set to reach a clarifying inflection point over the next few days as he barrels toward a rematch with President Joe Biden.

Here’s a look at each of the cases and what to expect this week:

Immunity bid lands at SCOTUS

Trump’s first order of business this week was to ask the nine justices of the Supreme Court to block a lower court’s ruling that he is not immune from the Washington, D.C., criminal charges brought by special counsel Jack Smith.

Trump’s formal request, which he filed Monday afternoon, requires at least five justices to agree to “stay” the earlier ruling in order for Trump to continue staving off his federal election-subversion trial. Though Smith is sure to resist a stay altogether, what’s more significant is what the court signals next — whether it will take up and resolve the immunity issue in an expedited way or allow it to linger on the court’s docket into the fall.

Trump’s face time with Judge Cannon

On Monday morning, the former president made an unexpected visit to the small Fort Pierce, Florida, courthouse where U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon is managing the other criminal case brought by Smith: one claiming that Trump concealed reams of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate and then resisted efforts by federal investigators to retrieve them.

Willis faces a reckoning

There’s still no trial date set for Trump in Fulton County, Georgia, where he’s been charged, alongside 18 co-defendants, with conspiring to corrupt the results of the 2020 election in the state. District Attorney Fani Willis has asked for an August start date, but she’s spent the past month fending off allegations of unethical conduct by Trump and several of his co-defendants.

The allegations center on a romantic relationship between Willis and a special prosecutor, Nathan Wade, whom Willis hired to help run the case on a contract basis. The defendants allege that Willis and Wade improperly benefited from the prosecution by using income Wade earned through his contract to take vacations together.

Judge Scott McAfee has set a Thursday hearing to review the allegations, and he suggested Monday that if the defendants can prove key aspects of their allegations, it could result in the prosecutors being thrown off the case.

Setting a date in New York

After months of relative silence, the first criminal case brought against Trump — on New York state law charges he falsified business records to cover up payments to women claiming he had extramarital affairs with them — is scheduled to be back in court Thursday.

• Jack Smith Asks Supreme Court to Move Quickly in Trump Immunity Case

After an appeals court rejected the former president’s claim that he may not be prosecuted, he asked the justices to pause that ruling while he pursues appeals.

Jack Smith, the special counsel prosecuting former President Donald J. Trump on charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election, urged the Supreme Court on Wednesday to reject a request from Mr. Trump to put the case on hold while he pursues appeals.

“Delay in the resolution of these charges threatens to frustrate the public interest in a speedy and fair verdict — a compelling interest in every criminal case and one that has unique national importance here, as it involves federal criminal charges against a former president for alleged criminal efforts to overturn the results of the presidential election, including through the use of official power,” Mr. Smith’s filing said.

The question before the justices is preliminary: Should they pause an appeals court’s ruling rejecting Mr. Trump’s claim that he is absolutely immune from prosecution for things he did while president? The answer to that will determine whether trial proceedings may resume as the Supreme Court considers whether to hear a promised petition seeking review of the ruling itself.

The trial had been scheduled to start on March 4 but was deferred while the lower courts sorted out whether Mr. Trump has immunity. When a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled against Mr. Trump this month, it gave him a brief window to seek a stay from the Supreme Court saying that proceedings at the trial court would not restart until the justices ruled on his application.

Mr. Trump’s stay application, filed Monday, asked the justices to put the case on hold long enough to allow him to ask the full D.C. Circuit to rehear the case and then to appeal to the Supreme Court should he lose. Such requests to slow proceedings have been a central feature of Mr. Trump’s litigation strategy in fighting criminal cases against him around the country.

Four charges for the former president. Former President Donald Trump was charged with four counts in connection with his widespread efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The indictment was filed by the special counsel Jack Smith in Federal District Court in Washington. Here are some key takeaways:

The indictment portrayed an attack on American democracy. Smith framed his case against Trump as one that cuts to a key function of democracy: the peaceful transfer of power. By underscoring this theme, Smith cast his effort as an effort not just to hold Trump accountable but also to defend the very core of democracy.

Trump was placed at the center of the conspiracy charges. Smith put Trump at the heart of three conspiracies that culminated on Jan. 6, 2021, in an attempt to obstruct Congress’s role in ratifying the Electoral College outcome. The special counsel argued that Trump knew that his claims about a stolen election were false, a point that, if proved, could be important to convincing a jury to convict him.

Trump didn’t do it alone. The indictment lists six co-conspirators without naming or indicting them. Based on the descriptions provided, they match the profiles of Trump lawyers and advisers who were willing to argue increasingly outlandish conspiracy and legal theories to keep him in power. It’s unclear whether these co-conspirators will be indicted.

Trump’s political power remains strong. Trump may be on trial in 2024 in three or four separate criminal cases, but so far the indictments appear not to have affected his standing with Republican voters. By a large margin, he remains his party’s front-runner in the presidential primaries.

Any significant delays in the federal election-interference case could plunge the trial into the heart of the 2024 campaign season or push it past the election. If Mr. Trump wins the presidency, he could order that the charges be dropped.

“The nation has a compelling interest in the prompt resolution of this case,” he wrote, adding that Mr. Trump’s “personal interest in postponing trial proceedings must be weighed against two powerful countervailing considerations: the government’s interest in fully presenting its case without undue delay and the public’s compelling interest in a prompt disposition of the case.”

The case on immunity is just one of three concerning Mr. Trump and the charges against him pending before the Supreme Court. The justices heard arguments last week over whether he is eligible to hold office at all, and it will hear arguments this spring over the scope of two of the charges against him in the federal election-interference case brought by Mr. Smith.

Lower courts have rejected Mr. Trump’s claim that he is completely immune from prosecution for acts he took as president.

The trial judge, Tanya S. Chutkan, ruled that Mr. Trump could be tried. “Whatever immunities a sitting president may enjoy,” she wrote, “the United States has only one chief executive at a time, and that position does not confer a lifelong ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ pass.”

The appeals court panel agreed. “For the purpose of this criminal case, former President Trump has become citizen Trump, with all of the defenses of any other criminal defendant,” the panel wrote in an unsigned decision. “But any executive immunity that may have protected him while he served as president no longer protects him against this prosecution.”

DocumentCloud

Applicant cannot show, as he must to merit a stay, a fair prospect of success in this Court.

Special counsel urges Supreme Court to end Trump’s delay of federal election trial

The bookies generally are never wrong.

Looks like Trump is favourite!

^ Are those the odds for facing prison time?

Originally Posted by Joe 90

Looks like Trump is favourite!

I would agree. Depressing choice. Dear voter, what would you prefer, ww3 or another civil war?

Originally Posted by Joe 90

The bookies generally are never wrong.

Looks like Trump is favourite!

Take the bet!

You might be eating beans for months as you had to do after the UK PM bet you made.

Originally Posted by S Landreth

the UK PM

Vishnu were here

Our freeloader of a PM wasn't even elected!

^ I think the people in Richmond might disagree with you. Of course he is an elected MP, you dolt.

Oh look!

There's been a thread for everything to do with Donald Trump...for ages!

Quick!

Someone tell david44.

• Judge Cannon—Yes, Judge Cannon!—Just Shot Down a Trump Delay Tactic

Judge Aileen Cannon isn’t buying Donald Trump’s newest delay tactic in the classified documents case.

On Thursday, Cannon, a Trump-appointed judge, shot down the GOP front-runner’s latest effort to postpone pretrial deadlines, instead opting to keep that date set on February 22.

But the ruling comes with an exception—noting that she’ll still consider measures filed at the eleventh hour if the legal teams can prove they’re necessary.

Although small, it’s another recent indication that Cannon—who has reportedly taken a leisurely approach to the case’s pre-trial proceedings—is looking to push forward.

Last week, Cannon pushed back against another Trump team request with a similar friendly addendum, refusing to delay the trial itself while writing in a nine-page order that they could revisit the schedule come March.

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

He will be convicted well before the election.

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• ‘I don’t have high hopes’

Trump attorney Alina Habba cast doubt on the outcome of the New York civil fraud trial against former President Trump, saying she thinks her client will be unhappy with the decision expected Friday.

“If I could file the appeal now, I would,” Habba said in a Newsmax interview Wednesday. “There’s no surprises coming here.”

“I’ll be loud and booming right after the decision,” she continued. “I don’t have high hopes.”

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• Fani Willis takes the stand as she fights to stay on Trump criminal case

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis took the stand on Thursday to defend herself against efforts to remove her from the prosecution of Donald Trump.

Willis repeatedly slammed defense attorneys for questioning her integrity and asking deeply personal questions about her relationship and sexual history, which she characterized as “lies.” The bid to remove her from the case over her relationship with Wade, whom she hired as an outside prosecutor to help run the probe, was “contrary to democracy,” she said.

It was an extraordinary sight: The top prosecutors of a historic case against a former president for efforts to subvert the 2020 presidential election were the ones being grilled on the stand about their private lives.

Willis’ decision to testify expands an explosive and high-stakes avenue of inquiry that could derail the case, because if Judge Scott McAfee deems Willis disqualified, her entire office will be removed from the case and new prosecutors will have to be appointed — a process that would likely cause months of delays and disruptions, at a minimum.

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• Top gun violence prevention group bashes Trump for ‘ignoring’ Chiefs’ Super Bowl parade shooting

“All of Kansas City is grieving after a joyous celebration of a Super Bowl victory was ruined by gun violence. Speaking hours after one person was killed, at least 21 were injured, and thousands traumatized, Donald Trump ignored the shooting and reiterated his allegiance to the gun lobby,” said Chris Harris, Giffords vice president for communications.

Trump held a rally in South Carolina on Wednesday, just 10 days out from the state’s GOP primary, where he told supporters he will “fully uphold our great Second Amendment” if he is elected to another term.

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• Manhattan judge upholds March 25 start date for Trump hush money case

A New York City judge on Thursday set a firm March 25 trial date for Donald Trump’s criminal hush money case to begin, marking the first criminal trial of this year for the former president and 2024 Republican frontrunner.

“We’re moving ahead to jury selection on March 25," Manhattan trial court Justice Juan Merchan said Thursday morning. He immediately issued a ruling denying Trump’s motions to throw out the case, and then affirmed the previously set trial date.

https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-co...4-decision.pdf

• Trump ordered to pay $364 million in New York civil fraud case

Trump hit with $364 million civil fraud judgment in New York over yearslong scheme to inflate his wealth

A New York judge ruled Friday against Donald Trump, imposing a $364 million penalty over what the judge ruled was a yearslong scheme to dupe banks and others with financial statements that inflated the former president’s wealth.

Judge Arthur Engoron issued his decision after a 2½-month trial that saw the Republican presidential front-runner bristling under oath that he was the victim of a rigged legal system.

The stiff penalty was a victory for New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, who sued Trump over what she said was not just harmless bragging but years of deceptive practices as he built the multinational collection of skyscrapers, golf courses and other properties that catapulted him to wealth, fame and the White House.

Trump’s lawyers had said even before the verdict that they would appeal.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE

more later

New York Attorney General Letitia James is seeking $370 million and a ban on Trump and other defendants from doing business in the state. A penalty like that could potentially wound the real estate empire that helped Trump craft his image as a savvy billionaire businessman and vaulted him to fame and the White House.

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The penalty caps a three-month trial in a lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Tish James. It comes just weeks after a federal jury in a separate case ordered Trump to pay $83.3 million in damages to the writer E. Jean Carroll over defamatory statements he made while president in response to her rape accusation.

And combined with the $5 million penalty Trump was ordered to pay to Carroll in a separate trial last year, it means the front-runner in the Republican presidential primary now owes $443.1 million in judgments. (Trump is appealing the earlier Carroll verdict, and he has vowed to appeal the verdicts in both the more recent Carroll trial and the civil fraud trial.)

That's gonna hurt.

He’s barred from running a company in New York for three years, but ReTrumplicans want him running the country for four years?!

Trump as usual claims this is a witch hunt and Republicans, as usual, will parrot him. Maybe a good political strategy but clearly a very bad legal strategy. Aside from deflation Trump's extremely huge ego, it will damage his raising campaign funds.

Fox "News" yesterday had several talking heads talking about how aghast they are at the amount. Not much coverage at all about Alexei Navalny's death which is pretty telling.

Originally Posted by thailazer

Fox "News" yesterday had several talking heads talking about how aghast they are at the amount. Not much coverage at all about Alexei Navalny's death which is pretty telling.

Telling but no surprise the pro Trump's mainstream media outlet would avoid mentioning Navalny's death or anything else critical of Putin or Russia.