Retired federal judge Barbara Jones, who has been monitoring the finances of Donald Trump’s business empire, the Trump Organization, for over a year, has been confirmed to stay in that role for three more years, a judge decided today.
Judge Arthur Engoron, in New York, who presided in Trump’s civil fraud trial in recent months, made the announcement on Thursday. The former US president has so far been unable to raise a massive bond of $454m to cover the fine imposed by Engoron for the fraudulent conduct, ABC news reported.
As part of his judgment, he also announced that a monitor would oversee the Trump Organization and Jones will now have the power to crawl all over the family business empire’s books and also suggest changes to how it operates.
Engoron issued his financial punishment to Trump and co-defendants, including his two adult sons, Don Jr and Eric, last month. The New York attorney general, Letitia James, sued Trump for inflating the value of his assets on government financial statements.
Congress appears on course to avert a partial government shutdown that would have begun over the weekend, after Republican and Democratic leaders agreed to a compromise funding the departments where spending has not yet been authorized. Both parties touted wins in the deal, with Republicans pointing to its cuts to Unrwa, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, and the White House cheering its funding for the homeland security department, while warning more was needed. But as with all things in Congress, nothing is sure until it passes, and the House and Senate have until Friday if they want to prevent several federal departments from closing.
Here’s what else happened today:
Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg said no further delays in Donald Trump’s hush-money trial were necessary. We’ll see if a judge agrees.
Barbara Jones, a retired federal judge, had her term monitoring Trump’s finances extended for another three years.
The Republican Study Committee released its conservative budget proposal, which is meant to signal GOP priorities. Joe Biden seized on it to argue Republicans want to cut social security and ban abortion nationwide.
Top House Republicans called on Hamas to release hostages taken on 7 October, and Qatar and Egypt to pressure the group.
Are you better off now than you were four years ago? Trump asked. The Biden campaign answered.
An air force intelligence analyst is alleged to have shared classified information with supporters of a group that predicts a second civil war in the United States, the Washington Post reports, citing a newly unsealed FBI affidavit.
The incident is similar to that of Jack Teixeira, a Massachusetts air national guard member who has pleaded guilty to charges related to sharing troves of classified information with gamers on the platform Discord. In the newly revealed case, air force intelligence analyst Jason Gray used Discord to share a smaller amount of classified material, and is currently jailed after being found with child pornography.
Here’s more on that, from the Post:
Investigators said that Jason Gray shared information that he “likely obtained” from his access to National Security Agency intelligence while he served at a base in Alaska, according to the affidavit, which was dated November 2022 and accompanied a search warrant for a Discord account that Gray said he operated.
At the time the FBI sought the warrant, Gray had already admitted to Air Force investigators that he had created a Facebook group for supporters of the loosely-organized, anti-government Boogaloo movement, whose followers anticipate a second U.S. civil war. Gray, whom investigators described as unhappy with his military career, participated in several pro-Boogaloo Discord channels and shared the classified NSA intelligence with seven other individuals possibly “in furtherance of the Boogaloo ideology,” the affidavit stated.
…
It wasn’t immediately clear if investigators initially suspected Gray of sharing classified information on Discord when he consented to let them examine his account. But given that he had been discovered months before Teixeira was arrested, the incident raises questions about what the Defense Department knew about personnel who were able to share highly guarded government secrets on a chat platform.
Progressive lawmakers, led by independent senator Bernie Sanders and Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, today unveiled another proposal for a “green New Deal” for public housing.
In a speech at the Capitol, Ocasio-Cortez cast the policy as a way both to lower housing costs and to fight the climate crisis, while providing well-paid union jobs:
Here’s more on the progressive push, from the Guardian’s Dharna Noor:
Donald Trump may have been indicted four times, but each of his criminal trials is facing delays of various sorts that could leave them unresolved before the 5 November presidential election. In his prosecution in Florida for allegedly hiding classified documents, the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports that the judge overseeing the case appears sympathetic to some of his most far-fetched arguments, which have slowed the proceedings:
The federal judge overseeing Donald Trump’s prosecution on charges of retaining classified documents appears to be entertaining his most brazen defenses that could ultimately result in ensuring the acquittal of the former president.
The issue revolves around an order from the US district judge Aileen Cannon on Monday asking Trump and prosecutors in the office of the special counsel Jack Smith to draft jury instructions for two scenarios that gave extraordinary credit to Trump’s defense theories.
The two jury instruction scenarios, as conceived by Cannon, were so beneficial to Trump and so potentially incorrect on the law of the Espionage Act that it would bring into serious doubt whether it made sense for prosecutors to take the case to trial.
In her two-page order, Cannon asked for both parties to draft jury instructions supposing it was true that Trump had the power under the Presidential Records Act to turn any White House document – classified or not – into personal records: records he was authorized to retain.
The authorization issue is key to the case because Trump was indicted for unlawfully retaining national security materials under the Espionage Act. If Trump could show that he was somehow authorized to keep the documents at Mar-a-Lago, it would preclude his prosecution.
Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg told a judge today that after reviewing recently obtained documents, he does not believe any further delays are necessary in Donald Trump’s case over alleged hush-money payments.
Bragg’s case was to be the first of Trump’s four criminal indictments to go to trial, with jury selections set to begin Monday. But Bragg last week asked for a delay of 30 days so lawyers could reviews documents received from federal prosecutors, who had previously investigated whether Trump paid an adult film star not to speak out about a sexual encounter.
A judge agreed with that request, but in a filing today, Bragg said there was no need to delay the case further, arguing there has been “more than enough time for the parties to review what the people now have good reason to believe is the limited number of relevant records in the [federal prosecutors’] recent productions. This court should accordingly deny defendant’s request for more extreme sanctions.”
Speaking of Donald Trump’s finances, the former president may get a lifeline on Friday if shareholders allow him to float his media company. But a clause in the deal means it’s unlikely to resolve his issues paying a massive civil fraud judgment. Here’s more on that, from the Guardian’s Dan Milmo:
Donald Trump’s wealth is set to increase by about $3.4bn (£2.7bn) if a shareholder vote on Friday paves the way for the float of his Trump Media business.
The former US president is preparing to list Trump Media & Technology Group, which operates the Truth Social tech platform, via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company, or Spac.
The Spac, called Digital World Acquisition, has scheduled a vote on the merger with Trump Media for Friday. However, there are complications around the planned vote after Digital World sued sponsor ARC Global Investments, which is trying to delay the deal, to back the merger.
If the merger goes ahead and Trump Media goes public as soon as next week, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee would not be able to cash in any of his potential paper wealth immediately. The merger document contains a provision that blocks major shareholders from selling stock for six months.
Trump’s finances are under pressure as he prepares to contest the US presidency with the incumbent, Joe Biden, for a second time. Last month Trump was formally ordered by a New York judge to pay $454m following a civil fraud case, in which the former president was found to have manipulated the value of his properties to obtain advantageous loan and insurance rates.
Retired federal judge Barbara Jones, who has been monitoring the finances of Donald Trump’s business empire, the Trump Organization, for over a year, has been confirmed to stay in that role for three more years, a judge decided today.
Judge Arthur Engoron, in New York, who presided in Trump’s civil fraud trial in recent months, made the announcement on Thursday. The former US president has so far been unable to raise a massive bond of $454m to cover the fine imposed by Engoron for the fraudulent conduct, ABC news reported.
As part of his judgment, he also announced that a monitor would oversee the Trump Organization and Jones will now have the power to crawl all over the family business empire’s books and also suggest changes to how it operates.
Engoron issued his financial punishment to Trump and co-defendants, including his two adult sons, Don Jr and Eric, last month. The New York attorney general, Letitia James, sued Trump for inflating the value of his assets on government financial statements.
The draft US security council resolution on Gaza marks a shift in the American position, but it is a nuanced shift, retaining the linkage between a ceasefire and hostage release while loosening that linkage and emphasising that an immediate end to hostilities is the priority.
The primary focus for now is the hostage negotiations underway in Qatar which are moving into high gear again, with CIA and Mossad chiefs, William Burns and David Barnea expected to fly into Doha on Friday.
The US draft resolution is designed to provide a sense of urgency to those talks. It also represents an attempt by the Biden administration to keep pressure on Hamas while seeking to regain some international credibility and mend ties with allies after three vetoes of UN ceasefire resolutions.
The latest veto was cast on 20 February, on an Algerian ceasefire resolution. At the time the US envoy to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, insisted that an unconditional ceasefire could derail the talks on a hostage deal, which Washington portrayed as the best way to a sustainable truce. The US mission at the UN circulated an alternative text which the security council “underscores its support for a temporary ceasefire in Gaza as soon as practicable, based on the formula of all hostages being released.”
A month has passed since then, however. There has been no hostage deal and Gaza has slipped much further towards absolute catastrophe, with a UN panel of experts warning that a famine is imminent. The US is struggling to avoid the accusation of complicity in that disaster, and February’s version of the text now looks all the more complacent.
The new version of the draft resolution circulated on Thursday morning represents stronger language.
The full article of which the above is an extract will be launched online by the Guardian very soon. All eyes are on the United Nations headquarters in New York to see what happens next.
Congress appears on course to avert a partial government shutdown that will begin over the weekend, after Republican and Democratic leaders agreed to a compromise funding the departments where spending has not yet been authorized. Both parties touted wins in the deal, with Republicans pointing to its cuts to UNRWA, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, and the White House cheering its funding for the homeland security department, while warning more was needed. But as with all things in Congress, nothing is sure until it passes, and the House and Senate have until Friday to do that if they want to prevent several federal departments from closing.
Here’s what else is going on today:
The Republican Study Committee released its conservative budget proposal, which is meant to signal GOP priorities. Joe Biden seized on it to argue Republicans want to cut Social Security and ban abortion nationwide.
Top House Republicans called on Hamas to release hostages taken on 7 October, and Qatar and Egypt to pressure the group.
Are you better off now than you were four years ago, Donald Trump asked. The Biden campaign answered.
Yesterday, at the conclusion of their latest hearing in their troubled impeachment investigation into Joe Biden, oversight committee chair James Comer proposed having the president himself testify. The White House’s reaction? “LOL”. Here’s more, from the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly:
A White House spokesperson poured cold water on Republicans’ stated intention to invite Joe Biden to testify in public in his own impeachment hearings, lamenting “a sad stunt” and telling the rightwing congressman steering the effort: “Call it a day, pal.”
James Comer of Kentucky, the Republican chair of the House oversight committee, has led attempts to impeach the president over alleged corruption involving the business dealings of his son Hunter Biden.
At the end of a long hearing on Wednesday, Comer said: “In the coming days I will invite President Biden to the oversight committee to provide his testimony and explain why his family received tens of millions of dollars … We need to hear from the president himself.”
Ian Sams, the White House spokesperson for oversight and investigations, responded swiftly and brutally.
“LOL,” Sams wrote, adding a face-palm emoji.
He added: “Comer knows 20-plus witnesses have testified that [Joe Biden] did nothing wrong. He knows that the hundreds of thousands of pages of records he’s received have refuted his false allegations. This is a sad stunt at the end of a dead impeachment. Call it a day, pal.”
On his Truth Social network, Donald Trump recently asked a question presidential candidates have posed to voters for more than 40 years: are you better off now than you were four years ago?
On X, Joe Biden’s campaign seized on the post to remind Americans that the last ten months of Trump’s presidency were catastrophic, as Covid-19 devastated the economy upended daily life, and killed hundreds of thousands of people:
The White House said it “strongly supports” passage of the bill to fund the remaining federal departments that have not yet had spending authorized for the 2024 fiscal year, calling it “a compromise between Republicans and Democrats” that would invest “in key priorities for the American people”.
But in their statement, the Office of Management and Budget has one quibble. It notes that the Biden administration “fought for and secured additional resources in H.R. 2882 so that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) can maintain its current capacity to manage the border”, which is seeing a surge in migrant arrivals, but that funding won’t be sufficient:
However, DHS funding levels are still inadequate and the Administration reiterates its call to the Congress to take up and pass the bipartisan border security agreement, which would provide DHS with policy changes and resources it needs to better secure our border and protect the homeland.
The bipartisan border security agreement they are referring to appears to be dead, killed by Republicans who felt it did not go far enough – even though their lawmakers were involved in negotiating it.
Congress is in the midst of passing a consensus budget that will avert a government shutdown set to begin over the weekend. But, as it does every year, the conservative Republican Study Committee (RSC) yesterday released a budget proposal that would enact a number of rightwing policies on everything from immigration to abortion to taxation.
The RSC is the largest caucus among House Republicans, and its budget is meant to show where lawmakers stand on various issues. It’s also fodder for Democrats, as they seek to convince voters that Republican intend to enact extreme policies. Here’s what Joe Biden has to say about it, in a statement:
My dad had an expression, “Don’t tell me what you value. Show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value.” The Republican Study Committee budget shows what Republicans value. This extreme budget will cut Medicare, Social Security, and the Affordable Care Act. It endorses a national abortion ban. The Republican budget will raise housing costs and prescription drugs costs for families. And it will shower giveaways on the wealthy and biggest corporations. Let me be clear: I will stop them.
A summary of the RSC’s budget can be found here.
The Biden administration’s plans to at the United Nations call for a ceasefire in Gaza may mark a significant shift in its policy towards Israel, the Guardian’s Julian Borger and Peter Beaumont report:
The US has drafted a new UN security council resolution calling for an “immediate ceasefire” and hostage deal in Gaza, amid mounting pressure on Israel to halt its military campaign and allow the delivery of substantial amounts of humanitarian aid into the Palestinian territory.
The secretary of state, Antony Blinken, presented the resolution as calling for “an immediate ceasefire tied to the release of hostages”.
The US has consistently argued that the route to a ceasefire has to be through a hostage deal, but the new draft resolution presented on Thursday, seen by the Guardian, is more ambiguous about the linkage.
The draft says the UN security council “determines the imperative of an immediate and sustained ceasefire to protect civilians on all sides, allow for the delivery of essential humanitarian assistance, and alleviate humanitarian suffering, and towards that end unequivocally supports ongoing international diplomatic efforts to secure such a ceasefire in connection with the release of all remaining hostages”.
A European diplomat at the UN said the stress on an “immediate” ceasefire and the phrase “towards that end” showed significant movement in the US position. “I think it is a shift in saying that a ceasefire is not contingent on a specific deal,” the diplomat said.
Three top-ranking Republicans in the House, speaker Mike Johnson, majority leader Steve Scalise and foreign affairs committee chair Michael McCaul, have called on Hamas to release the remaining hostages taken in the 7 October attack, and on Qatar and Egypt to use their leverage to get the group to accept a deal:
It is despicable that Hamas continues to hold over 130 innocent civilians hostage, including American citizens, nearly half a year later. As negotiations to secure their release resume, we urge Qatar and Egypt to use all of their leverage to immediately secure the release of the hostages on reasonable terms. There must be tangible, severe consequences for delaying or impeding negotiations, and Hamas should understand that delays or further harm to these civilians will come at a cost. Lives are at stake and time is of the essence. Continued negotiations should carry a vital sense of urgency.
Donald Trump’s campaign and his Save America Pac reported raising a combined $15.9m in February and ended the month with more than $37m on hand, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission last night.
That is up from January, when the committees raised only $13.8m, but it is still lagging behind Joe Biden’s campaign, which said he and the Democratic National Committee raised $53m last month and ended February with $155 on hand.
In a statement, Trump’s campaign communications director, Steven Cheung, said:
Americans know that they were better off with President Trump four years ago than with Crooked Joe Biden and his disastrous policies. We need a return to America First policies that successfully kept our country safe and supercharged the economy for all Americans.
“If Donald Trump put up these kinds of numbers on The Apprentice, he’d fire himself,” Biden’s campaign communications director, Michael Tyler, said in a statement.
The US government on Thursday filed a sprawling antitrust case against Apple, alleging that the tech giant has illegally prevented competition by restricting access to its software and hardware.
The case is a direct challenge to the company’s core products and practices, including its iMessage service and how devices such as the iPhone and Apple Watch connect with one another.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in New Jersey, alleges that Apple has monopoly power in the smartphone market and uses its control over the iPhone to “engage in a broad, sustained, and illegal course of conduct”, the Associated Press reported.
The US Department of Justice’s suit against Apple is a landmark case targeting the most valuable publicly traded company in the world and follows a raft of antitrust suits aimed at big tech. Amazon, Apple, Meta and Google have all faced investigations from regulators in recent years, both in the United States and Europe, over allegations that they have consolidated power while illegally stifling competition. All have market capitalizations above a trillion dollars.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
