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      For all his bombast, Trump is plummeting – financially, legally and politically | Lloyd Green

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      Donald Trump is doing his best Wizard of Oz imitation. These days, Trump is not looking like the “winner” he needs voters to believe him to be. Like the title character in L Frank Baum’s 1900 children’s fantasy and the 1939 movie, there is less there than meets the eye. The 45th president’s lead in the polls evaporates while his cash stash shrinks.His upcoming felony fraud trial in Manhattan looms. For the record, he is zero for three in his bids to adjourn the trial, and lawyers are expensive.At the same time, the stock price of Trump Media & Technology Group – his eponymous meme stock, DJT – has plummeted this week. “DJT stock is down again,” announced Barron’s on Thursday. “Trump’s stake in Truth Social parent has taken a hit.”Elsewhere a headline blared: “Trump’s ‘DJT’ stock dives to lowest close since Ron DeSantis dropped out”. Reminder, Trump is a guy whose businesses are no stranger to bankruptcy or allegations of fraud. He leaves wreckage in his wake.The spirit of Trump University remains alive. Like life in Oz, so much in Trump World is illusory.Meanwhile, Trump’s attempts to bond New York state’s $454m judgment have run into a legal roadblock. The purported bond posted to avoid enforcement pending appeal may be legally insufficient. Letitia James, the state’s attorney general, demands clarification. Whether the paperwork will be sustained will be decided at a court hearing later this month.If the court finds the bond to be insufficient or invalid, James may be able to immediately seek to collect what the state is owed. Financial humiliation set against the backdrop of the campaign is something that Trump can ill afford.For the record, he has already posted a $91m bond to stave off enforcement in the second E Jean Carroll defamation case. His assets are getting tied up, his liquidity ebbs. To him, image is almost everything.At the same time, abortion has re-emerged as a campaign issue, to the horror of the presumptive Republican nominee and his minions. The death of Roe v Wade cost the Republican party its “red wave” in the 2022 midterms. This time, it may lead to another Trump loss and Hakeem Jeffries of Queens wielding the speaker’s gavel in the US House of Representatives.Hell hath no fury like suburban moms and their daughters. The last thing they need is a thrice-married libertine seventysomething with a penchant for adult film stars and Playboy models telling them how to raise their kids or meddling in their personal lives.When a guy who hawks Bibles for a side-hustle refuses to say whether any of his partners ever had an abortion, it’s time to roll your eyes and guard your wallet.“Such an interesting question,” he replied to Maureen Dowd in 2016, when asked about his days as a swinging single. “So what’s your next question?”For the moment anyway, the party faithful ignore Trump’s pleas to rectify the decision of Arizona’s highest court to allow the criminalization of all abortions except when the life of the mother is endangered. On Wednesday, the Republican-controlled Arizona legislature refused to revoke the 1864 law in the middle of this latest controversy.In case anyone forgot, once upon a time Trump himself had called for the criminalization of abortion. There had to be “some form of punishment” for women who have abortions, Trump said at a 2016 town hall.Likewise, Kari Lake – a Republican Senate candidate in Arizona, Trump acolyte and frequent guest at Mar-a-Lago – had demanded that her state enact an abortion regime that copied Texas’s draconian law.Not any more. Live by Dobbs, die by Dobbs. Arizona is the new ground zero of this election. This is what states’ rights looks like.Having feasted on Hunter Biden’s depredations, it is once again time for the Republican party to stare into the mirror and cringe. Trump is more Caligula and Commodus than Cyrus, the biblical paradigm of a virtuous heathen king.For all of Joe Biden’s missteps and mistakes, his candidacy is demonstrating unexpected vitality. Then again, he is running against a defeated former president who lost the popular vote in 2016 to Hillary Clinton and again four years later.Trump’s lead is now a matter of fractions. According to Real Clear Politics, he is now ahead by a microscopic two-10ths of 1%. Indeed, Reuters’s latest poll shows the 46th president with a four-point lead up from a single percentage point a month ago. Said differently, Trump’s campaign is in retrograde.Joe Biden is in the hunt and Donald Trump is looking like the old man behind the curtain. Substitute Stormy Daniels for Dorothy and the only things missing from this tableau are Toto, the little dog, ruby slippers and Kansas.
      Lloyd Green is an attorney in New York and served in the US Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992 More

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      Campaign funds used to pay Biden legal bills in classified documents inquiry

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      Campaign donations to Joe Biden were used to help pay legal bills during the special counsel investigation of his retention of classified information when out of office, Axios reported on Friday.Citing a review of campaign finance records and two unnamed sources “familiar with the matter”, the site said filings by the Democratic National Committee showed it paid more than $1.5m to lawyers or firms representing Biden during Robert Hur’s investigation.The news opens the Biden campaign to charges of hypocrisy, given its own attacks on Donald Trump and his campaign for using donations to pay legal bills.But the two candidates’ legal situations – and legal costs – are vastly different.Trump faces 88 criminal charges (for election subversion, retention of classified information and hush-money payments) and multimillion-dollar penalties in civil suits over tax fraud and defamation, the latter arising from a rape claim a judge said was “substantially true”.Denying wrongdoing but seeking to delay trials until he can retake power next year and dismiss them, Trump has fought prosecutors at every step, appealing all the way to the US supreme court. Nonetheless, Trump’s first criminal trial – in the hush-money case and the first criminal trial ever to involve a former president – is scheduled to begin in New York on Monday.The New York Times has reported that Trump’s legal bills since leaving office have topped $100m.Biden was investigated for retaining classified information after his 36-year stint as a US senator from Delaware and eight years as vice-president to Barack Obama. Unlike Trump, he cooperated with the special counsel throughout. Unlike in Trump’s case, the special counsel declined to bring charges – though he did deliver a controversial report.Hur’s investigation began in January last year. Axios said DNC filings showed payments of $1.05m to a company run by Bob Bauer, Biden’s lead attorney, between July 2023 and February 2024 and “largely” relating to the special counsel’s investigation.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAsked about those payments and others, the DNC declined to tell Axios exactly how much was spent on matters concerning the special counsel. Bauer did not comment.Axios pointed to recent statements by Biden campaign officials aimed at Trump’s methods of meeting legal costs, including “We are not spending money on legal bills or hawking gold sneakers” and a hit at the Republican for relying on “a handful of billionaires figuring out how to pay his legal bills”.Alex Floyd, a DNC spokesperson, said: “There is no comparison – the DNC does not spend a single penny of grassroots donors’ money on legal bills – unlike Donald Trump, who actively solicits legal fees from his supporters and has drawn down every bank account he can get his hands on, like a personal piggy bank.” More