"There were two witnesses. One is a woman who followed me for years," 'Old Donald' said, talking about Jessica Leeds, who told jurors at Carroll’s civil trial that Trump had groped her when they sat next to each other on a plane to New York City in the late 1970s.“There was no conversation. It was like out of the blue. It was like a tussle,” Leeds claimed at the time.
He rants, resurfaces sexual assault allegations for 49 unfocused minutes
He was upset about having to appear in court again on Friday for the Carroll case and also was agitated by the new legal maneuvering by special counsel Jack Smith last week in the election interference case and the classified documents case that he brought against him, an adviser said.
The federal judge presiding over "Old Donald's" criminal prosecution for interference in the 2020 election issued a series of deadlines on Thursday that will see prosecutors have the last word just days before the November election on whether the charges should be kept against the former president.“It strikes me that what you’re trying to do is affect the presentation of evidence in this case in a way so asIn a brief order, the US district judge Tanya Chutkan decided that prosecutors could file the first brief explaining how the charges against 'Old Donald' in a slimmed-down indictment complied with the US supreme court’s ruling granting former presidents broad immunity from prosecution.
'Old Donald' was found guilty on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to conceal payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. The ruling means the case will remain with state Judge Juan Merchan.
The Supreme Court ruled in July that former presidents are immune from criminal charges for the powers that only presidents have, such as pardons and vetoes. The high court also presumptively shielded − but without absolute immunity − from charges for official acts such as directing the Justice Department to investigate sham claims of voter fraud.
But no public evidence has emerged that Biden or Harris were personally involved in decisions about "Old Donald's" protection.The FBI has said that the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, appears to have acted alone and have found little evidence that ideology drove his actions. Yet 'Old Donald' and other Republicans have baselessly blamed the assassination attempt on Democratic rhetoric warning that 'Old Donald' would undermine democracy. 'Old Donald' echoed those claims in his interview with Dr. Phil.
An August 2 Washington Post article claimed that Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi withdrew $10 million from a Cairo bank account to fund Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.The money was allegedly withdrawn in giant duffel bags and given to an Egyptian spy agency to pass onto Trump's campaign after El-Sisi and Trump had a private meeting at the United Nations in September 2016.
The article states that, as president, Trump released $1 billion in military aid to El-Sisi's government.
He reported making $300,000 off his endorsement of the 'God Bless the USA' Bible,' which is essentially a reproduction of the King James Bible produced by singer Lee Greenwood that retails for $59.99 plus tax and shipping.
The disclosures note that the judgments, $83 million to Carroll and $355 million to New York, have been bonded, and their enforcement has been stayed pending appeals.
Donald Trump is sometimes euphemistically described as “transactional,” when in fact the correct word is “corrupt.” Nowhere is this truer than with his efforts to woo the plutocratic class with veiled threats and something akin to naked solicitations of bribes.n recent days, Trump has urged Big Oil executives to raise $1 billion for him while dangling specific deregulatory promises he’ll enact if reelected president. He reminded a roomful of top donors that it’s in their interests to cut him large checks because he will keep their taxes low.
In reality, statistics published by the United States Chamber of Commerce show that new business applications in New York rose by 8.1 percent between December 2023 compared to December 2022, which does not indicate that entrepreneurs are avoiding the state out of fear of going to jail for hush money-related business record falsifications.
If we put up with criminality, we have sold our Jewish birthright for a bowl of nationalist porridgeJewish supporters of Trump are a little different. Some are in the MAGA camp, but many more have a more transactional relationship with the former president. They hold their noses at the scandals, the dinners with neo-Nazis, and the antisemitic conspiracy theories, so long as Trump delivers for Israel. Or, more specifically, Israel’s interests as understood by the American and Israeli Right: unconditional military and financial aid, support for the settlement project and the vision of ‘Greater Israel,’ and, now, absolute deference to the Netanyahu government’s prosecution of the war in Gaza.
The records-falsification case isn’t as dramatic as the Jan. 6 riot. It’s not even like Trump’s famous boast that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and his backers wouldn’t mind.To the contrary, the damage from this case may be that by Trump standards what he was convicted of doing was not especially dramatic. The payoff from former Trump lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen to Stormy Daniels, who acted in pornographic movies — and the accounting legerdemain required to cover up the payment — was a window into what prosecutors described as a routine operating procedure in Trump’s retinue.
While it was once unthinkable that Americans would elect a felon as their leader, Mr. Trump's insurgent behavior delights his supporters as he bulldozes the country's norms. Now, the man who refused to accept his 2020 election loss is already seeking to delegitimize his conviction, attempting to assert the primacy of his raw political power over the nation's rule of law.A jury of 12 New Yorkers needed two days of deliberations to decide a case stemming from Mr. Trump's first White House run, when, prosecutors say, he perpetrated a fraud on the American people. The case - colored by tabloid intrigue, secret payoffs and an Oval Office pact that echoed the Watergate era - spotlighted months of scheming that begot a hush-money payment to a porn star and a plot to falsify documents to bury all trace of that deal.
Depending upon how pollsters ask the question, you can get upward of 3 in 10 Republicans to indicate that a conviction would give them pause.
'If 5 percent of the people think it's true, and maybe 10 percent,' Trump said in one clip from a rally that prosecutors later played for the jury, 'we don't win.' Blanche was also suggesting that Trump's own former White House assistant, Madeleine Westerhout, perjured herself in the trial when she testified about conversations at the Republican National Committee, where she then worked, about replacing Trump on the ticket.Yet his irony-challenged lawyer's closing argument portrayed prosecutors as the conspiracy mongers. 'In life, usually the simplest answer is the right one,' said Blanche, whose client has surely never uttered such words. 'There was no conspiracy,' Blanche told the jurors, again and again, and 'it doesn't matter if there was a conspiracy to try to win an election. Every campaign in this country is a conspiracy ... a group of people who are working together to help somebody win.' What is conspiracy but a synonym for teamwork?
But here in the reality-based community, a lie is a lie, as Blanche himself acknowledged. It was a lie to tell the jurors the “Access Hollywood” debacle was something that “happens all the time.” It was a lie to tell them there was “nothing unusual” about the Trump campaign’s conspiring with the National Enquirer publisher to buy the silence of Trump’s accusers, hide the origin of the funds and conceal the transactions from the Federal Election Commission.
Why tell such obvious lies?
That’s just how his client rolls. Period.
The campaign is seeking to push back against what advisers call "Trump amnesia," the idea that some voters give the former president more credit for the economy than is due, Axios' Hans Nichols reports.
It’s no secret that the oil and gas industry has bolstered Trump’s money-strapped campaign. The recent slate of donations to a fundraising vehicle called the Trump 47 Committee, has allowed the former president to accept large checks from individuals and prioritize the allotment of those funds. In this way, the Trump 47 Committee works like a one-stop shop for well-heeled supporters like Linda McMahon, formerly Trump’s Small Business Administration head and a vocal proponent and investor in the Keystone XL pipeline and promoter of offshore drilling, and Kelcy Warren, the billionaire CEO of the pipeline operator Energy Transfer Partners. Both maxed out the committee’s $814,600 allowed contribution.
It's, frankly, a canny move. Plenty has already been written about Big Oil effectively buying influence over policy. Just yesterday, Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who has received $750,000 from the fossil fuel industry since his election in 2010, pulled the Senate's Big Oil disinformation hearing off track by ranting about climate change alarmism.
It doesn't take much creativity to imagine what Trump might do for his friends if he retakes the highest office.
“There’s absolutely no doubt that he would deliver Big Oil’s wish list wrapped up in a bow,” Witt said.
Convicted felon Donald Trump might need to turn to some of his ex-allies in order to help him out with his newfound legal guilt'namely, 'Tiny D' Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.Trump's ability to vote for himself in November will depend on the details of his sentence, which is expected July 11. His vote is further complicated by his choice of permanent residence-Florida-which bars felons from participating in elections. And Florida's regulations on the issue are particularly restrictive: even if a person is convicted of a felony in another state, as long as the state recognizes the crime, they still won't be allowed to cast their ballots until they complete their sentence.
Trump has another option, though: DeSantis, whom Trump has also dubbed 'Meatball Ron' and 'Pudding Fingers,' could make a special exception for his former primary competitor.
Last spring, Mr. Trump vowed that if he was elected again, he would appoint a special counsel to “go after” Mr. Biden and his family. And as recently as two weeks ago, he posted a not-so-veiled threat on social media, saying that if the Supreme Court rejected his claims of presidential immunity, it would also “take away” Mr. Biden’s immunity.Mr. Trump also repeatedly encouraged inquiries into his political critics, including Mrs. Clinton, James B. Comey, whom he fired as the F.B.I. director, and John F. Kerry, the former senator and secretary of state under President Barack Obama. (None of them were prosecuted.) The criminal justice system, Mr. Dreeben said, already had “layered safeguards” in place to ensure against what he called “a runaway train” of rogue indictments.
What was far more worrying, Mr. Dreeben argued, was creating a form of immunity that could allow a president to commit crimes with impunity.
“The framers knew too well the dangers of a king who could do no wrong,” he said. “They therefore devised a system to check abuses of power, especially the use of official power for private gain.”
Read the Full Transcripts of Donald Trump’s Interviews With TIME
"It was your client who went down to that holding area and stood in front of the press and started to speak." Merchan told Trump attorney Todd Blanche. "He went to the press. He didn't need to go in that direction.""I agree with that," Blanche responded, drawing what The New York Times described as a "large laugh in the overflow room."
A deal to quash stories about sex scandals and boost Trump’s candidacy allegedly led to hush money crimesThat pact ultimately led Cohen to arrange a $130,000 payment to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels to keep her from going public about an alleged sexual encounter she had with Trump years earlier, the prosecutor said.
He has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records and also denies having an alleged sexual encounter with Ms Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.
'SleepyDon' trial presents US with unprecedented problems - China
English-language reporting focused on facts of the case. State news agency Xinhua's English-language edition highlighted that Donald Trump was the first former president to stand a criminal trial. It also quoted the accused as describing the trial as "political persecution" and saying the country was "failing". China Daily, the state-run English-language newspaper, focused on jury selection, during which more than 50 of the 96 first potential jurors were excused after saying that they could not be fair.
State-owned China News Service (CNS) talked about "unprecedented problems" facing the US judicial system if Mr Trump were to win in November but also be convicted.
'Mesmerised and alarmed' - Latin America Most of the reports made a point of publishing striking photos of a stern-looking Trump seated in what outlets highlighted was the "accused's bench" - this was likely to be viewed as righteous justice by many of his critics in Latin America.