Trump rails against fraud trial as it appears legal team did not submit request for jury – live

Congressman Jamaal Bowman attempted to distance himself from a memo released by his office that referred to some Republican extremists as Nazis.

In a memo obtained by Politico, Bowman’s office suggested several talking points his Democratic colleagues could use to defend him amid a GOP push to punish the New York congressman after he set off a House fire alarm during Saturday’s spending vote.

One suggested response from Bowman’s office to questions about the incident:

I believe Congressman Bowman when he says this was an accident. Republicans need to instead focus their energy on the Nazi members of their party before anything else.

Posting on X, formerly known as Twitter, Bowman condemned the use of the word “Nazi”, calling it “inappropriate”.

Donald Trump, speaking after leaving the courtroom during the first day of his fraud trial, accused New York attorney general Letitia James of being a “disgrace” who “should focus on all of the violent crime and murders going on” in the state rather than on him.

The former president insisted he has done “nothing wrong” and that the lawsuit was part of an effort to interfere with the 2024 election, NBC reported.

He also complained that his time spent at trial was keeping him off the campaign trail.

I’ve been sitting in a courthouse all day long instead of being in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina or a lot of other places I could be at. This is a horrible situation for our country.

New York City public hospitals will now offer abortion care via telehealth, placing them among the first public health systems in the US to do so.

The city’s mayor, Eric Adams, announced on Monday that abortion pill prescriptions would now be available by telephone or online, adding that such access can happen from “the comfort of your home”.

As a result of the move, New York City residents will now be able to connect with health practitioners for those prescriptions, building on previous legislations to protect abortions rights in New York.

“If you are clinically eligible, that provider will be able to prescribe abortion medication that would be delivered to your New York City address within days,” Adams said during Monday’s announcement.

“We will not stand idly by as these attacks continue and the far-rights seeks to strip our citizens of their basic rights,” Adams added, referring to abortion restrictions being legislated across the country.

Abortion rights organizations celebrated Monday’s announcement as an essential step to protect reproductive rights.

The first day of Donald Trump’s fraud trial has concluded, with proceedings expected to resume tomorrow morning.

Judge Arthur Engoron heard testimony from the first witness in the trial, Trump’s former longtime accountant Donald Bender.

A federal judge has scheduled the trial of US senator Bob Menendez and his wife on bribery and corruption charges to begin 6 May 2024.

The New Jersey Democratic senator has pleaded not guilty and resisted calls for his resignation after he was indicted on charges of taking bribes from three New Jersey businessmen.

Under the indictment unsealed last month, Menendez and his wife, Nadine Menendez, were accused of using his seat in the Senate, as chair of the foreign relations committee, to benefit the government of Egypt.

Prosecutors described how the large sums of cash were found at Menendez’s New Jersey home, as well as actual gold bars. A Mercedes-Benz car is also at issue. Three businessmen have also been charged.

Gavin Newsom, the California governor, has named Laphonza Butler, a Democratic strategist and former labor leader, to fill the Senate seat held by Dianne Feinstein, who died on Thursday.

The appointment fulfills Newsom’s pledge to appoint a Black woman to the Senate, while shirking calls to name Barbara Lee, a Black Bay Area congresswoman who is already running for the position in 2024.

Butler, 44, will be the only Black woman serving in the US senate, and the first openly LGBTQ+ person to represent California in the chamber. She currently leads Emily’s List, a national political organization dedicated to electing Democratic women who support reproductive rights. She has also served as a strategist and adviser to Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign and was a former labor leader of SEIU California, the state’s largest union, representing more than 700,000 workers.

Butler currently lives in Maryland, according to her Emily’s List biography, but she owns a house in California and will re-register to vote in the state before taking office, according to the Newsom administration. She could be sworn in as early as Tuesday evening when the Senate returns to session.

Democrats control the Senate 51-49, though Feinstein’s seat is vacant. The quick appointment by Newsom will give the Democratic caucus more wiggle room on close votes, including nominations that Republicans uniformly oppose.

At the opening of Donald Trump and his family’s civil fraud trial today, an attorney for New York state said the defendants gained more than $100m by inflating the value of their properties, Reuters reports.

The gains came through lower insurance premiums and better loan conditions, and in his opening statement, Kevin Wallace, an attorney for New York attorney general Letitia James, said the former president was “materially inaccurate” when he would describe his business to insurers and lenders.

“This isn’t business as usual, and this isn’t how sophisticated parties deal with each other,” Wallace said. “These are not victimless crimes.”

However, Trump’s attorney Christopher Kise denied any wrongdoing.

“It is one of the most highly successful brands in the world, and he has made a fortune literally being right about real estate investments,” Kise said in his opening statement. “There was no intent to defraud, there was no illegality, there was no default, there was no breach, there was no reliance from the banks, there were no unjust profits, and there were no victims.”

Kise also said that Trump’s valuations of his properties were understood to be estimates, and that just because people disagree with them does not mean they are fraudulent.

But as evidence for his case, Wallace played from a deposition with Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen, where he said he was told “to attain the number that Mr. Trump wanted.”

Note: We first reported the figure as $1bn, citing Reuters. We have since corrected the figure to $100m.

Axios reports that congressman Jamaal Bowman’s office is encouraging his fellow Democrats to step up and defend him after he pulled a fire alarm on Saturday:

Meanwhile, the Capitol police says they are investigating the incident, and released a statement recounting what happened. It reads, in part:

At approximately 12:05 p.m. on Saturday, September 30, a fire alarm sounded inside the Cannon Building. USCP officers evacuated people from the building, floor by floor, while DC Fire & EMS responded. The fire alarm only sounded in the Cannon Building, so that was the only building that was evacuated.

On security video, a man was seen trying to exit the door in the Cannon Building and then pulling the fire alarm that prompted the evacuation. USCP officers had previously placed signs with clear language that explained the door was secured and marked as an emergency exit only.

At approximately 1:30 p.m. the DC Fire Marshal determined there was not a fire and the building was safe.

The USCP will continue to keep the public updated on the status of the investigation.

Some House Republicans have already made up their mind, and will try to expel Bowman, Axios reports. However, expelling a House member requires the approval of two-thirds of the chamber, and has not been done since 2002:

As lawmakers scrambled over the weekend in their surprisingly successful effort to avert a government shutdown, the show was almost disrupted when Democratic congressman Jamaal Bowman pulled the fire alarm in a House office building. There have been some new developments in that episode, but before we get into it, here’s a recap of what happened, from the Guardian’s Maya Yang:

The New York Democratic congressman Jamaal Bowman denied that he pulled a fire alarm in a Capitol office building to delay a vote on the stopgap measure that ultimately stopped a government shutdown.

In a statement on Saturday evening, the New Yorker said he mistakenly thought the alarm, which prompted the Cannon House office building to be evacuated, would open a door.

“Today, as I was rushing to make a vote, I came to a door that is usually open for votes but today was not open. I am embarrassed to admit that I activated the fire alarm, mistakenly thinking it would open the door,” said Bowman.

“I regret this and sincerely apologize for any confusion this caused.”

He dismissed accusations from Republicans that he pulled the alarm in an attempt to delay the vote.

“I want to be very clear, this was not me, in any way, trying to delay any vote. It was the exact opposite – I was trying to urgently get a vote, which I ultimately did and joined my colleagues in a bipartisan effort to keep our government open,” he said.

An update on Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial, which has resumed in New York City.

As the Messenger reports, the first witness to take the stand in the damages phase of the trial is Trump’s former accountant:

Trump and his three children were named by their attorneys as witnesses, but that does not necessarily mean they will speak to the court.

Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial isn’t the only court news happening today. As the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington reports, the supreme court is starting a new term today, giving its conservative majority another opportunity to hand down decisions that could have major impacts on American life:

The US supreme court will gather on Monday at the start of a new judicial term that has the potential to catastrophically disrupt the functioning of government, expand the assault on reproductive rights and unleash yet more gun violence on an already reeling America.

When the nine justices convene on Monday morning it will mark the start of the third full term in which the 6-3 rightwing supermajority created by Donald Trump is in command. Explosive rulings delivered over the past two terms have demonstrated the conservatives’ newfound muscle, stripping millions of Americans of fundamental rights from abortion to affirmative action.

Three significant cases before the court this term cut to the core of the functioning of the US government itself. According to the co-hosts of the Strict Scrutiny podcast, at stake is no less than “the future of government as we know it”.

On Tuesday the court will hear oral arguments in a case that poses the greatest threat to consumer protections for decades. Stephen Vladeck, an authority on constitutional law at the University of Texas law school, said that although CFPB v CFSA is technical in its framing, it has the potential to “bring down much of the American financial system”.

Donald Trump, speaking in front of cameras during the break, said he attended the civil fraud trial against him so he could “watch this witch-hunt myself”.

He slammed the “disgraceful trial” put forward by the “corrupt” New York attorney general, Letitia James, accusing her of wasting time when there are “murderers and killers that are all over New York killing people”. He added:

We’re going to be here for months with a judge that already made up his mind. It’s ridiculous. He’s a Democrat judge a and operative and it’s ridiculous.

“Other than that, things went very well,” Trump added.

The former president also attacked Manhattan supreme court judge Arthur Engoron, who he said should be disbarred for “interfering with an election”.

The White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, was asked about Matt Gaetz’s comments on the House floor accusing Speaker Kevin McCarthy of making a secret side deal on Ukraine aid with Joe Biden.

Speaking to reporters, she replied:

What we know is that there is bipartisan support for this deal. Speaker McCarthy was on the air multiple times yesterday saying that he wants to continue support for Ukraine, to get the weapons that they need. So we are going to hold him to that.

As we reported earlier, Donald Trump’s civil fraud case is being tried without a jury reportedly because the former president’s attorneys seemingly did not pay too close of attention to their paperwork.

“Nobody asked for” a jury trial, Judge Arthur Engoron noted during Monday’s trial. According to the Messenger:

Earlier this year, New York Attorney Letitia James filed a form with a checkmark next to the field: “Trial without a jury.”

Trump’s legal team didn’t file a corresponding form, and the former president may have regretted his lawyer’s inaction ever since.

In brief remarks as he arrived at the courthouse, Donald Trump claimed his financial statements were “phenomenal”, even though a judge last week determined he and his family had committed fraud over the course of a decade.

Here’s a clip:

The damages phase of Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial opened in New York City, which the former president attended in person. Though he blasted the case as politically motivated and insisted that his financial statements were “phenomenal”, despite already being found liable for fraud, he and his children are facing severe financial consequences, and could lose control of properties such as Trump Tower. Meanwhile, in Washington DC, Republican insurgent leader Matt Gaetz held off on formally attempting to remove Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House. Gaetz demanded answers from his fellow Republican, accusing him of cutting a side deal with Joe Biden. We’ll see if he gets them.

Here’s what else has happened today so far:

• Gaetz said he delayed formally introducing his motion to vacate because not enough lawmakers were in town yet.

• Trump’s legal team did not ask for a jury to determine damages in the ex-president’s civil fraud trial, meaning the decision will be left to judge Arthur Engoron.

• New York attorney general Letitia James said “no one is above the law” just before Trump’s fraud trial was about to get under way.