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      Stormy Daniels: Donald Trump legal team ‘pushes for end to hush money case’

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      Donald Trump’s legal team recently urged the Manhattan district attorney’s office not to indict the former president over his role in paying hush money to a porn star, arguing that the payments would have been made irrespective of his 2016 presidential candidacy, sources familiar with the matter have said.The lawyer who represented the Trump team at the meeting with the district attorney’s office, Susan Necheles, also argued that campaign funds had not been used for the payments to the porn star, known as Stormy Daniels, and were therefore not a violation of campaign finance laws.The arguments presented to the district attorney’s office mark the most formal defense that the Trump team have raised to date, as they attempt to settle on a strategy to avoid conviction in the event that the former president is charged with a misdemeanour or felony over the payments.Trump may face an uphill struggle with those arguments, given the fact that having “mixed motives” to protect himself personally and to protect his campaign could leave him liable, and the timing of the payments suggests there was an urgency to pay the money before the end of the 2016 campaign.The effort to convince the district attorney, Alvin Bragg, not to bring charges may also prove futile amid increasing signals that an indictment is likely.On Wednesday, Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen testified for around two hours before the grand jury and told the Guardian that he provided the most complete account of the hush money scheme. He added that every juror asked a question, which suggested a particularly engaged grand jury.That is a typical sign for prosecutors as they weigh potential charges, legal experts say, because it could indicate the grand jury found him to be a compelling witness – and a jury at an eventual trial might be similarly convinced.Cohen is the crucial witness because he made the $130,000 payment to Daniels in late October 2016, buying her silence about the story of an affair with Trump. Trump later reimbursed him as president, through monthly $35,000 checks from his personal checking account, and Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to federal charges involving the hush money.The district attorney’s case is likely to focus on how Trump and the Trump Organization handled the reimbursements. According to court filings in the federal case, the Trump Organization falsely recorded the payments as legal expenses, referencing a legal retainer with Cohen that did not exist.Falsifying business records can be a misdemeanour in New York. But it can rise to a felony if prosecutors can show beyond a reasonable doubt that a defendant’s “intent to defraud” included an effort to commit or conceal a second crime.What is unclear in this investigation is the potential second crime, though Bragg could tie the falsification to a violation of state election law, arguing the payment to Daniels was an illicit contribution to the Trump campaign, given the money stifled Daniels and helped his campaign.Also on Wednesday, Daniels herself met with the district attorney’s office at their request, her lawyer said in a tweet. Daniels responded to questions, he said, “and has agreed to make herself available as a witness, or for further inquiry if needed”.The district attorney’s office has questioned at least seven other people before the grand jury and Cohen was expected to be one of the final witnesses to make an appearance. Trump was also recently invited to testify, but his legal team is understood to have declined the offer.The recent moves by the district attorney suggest criminal charges against Trump could be imminent. It would be rare for a prosecutor to question essentially every relevant witness in a high-profile white-collar criminal case and ultimately decline to seek an indictment. More

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      Chinese business tycoon and Bannon ally Guo Wengui arrested in $1bn fraud conspiracy

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      Guo Wengui, a self-exiled Chinese tycoon with close links to prominent Trumpist Republicans including Steve Bannon, has been indicted on 12 counts relating to an alleged $1bn fraud.The charges announced by the US attorney for the southern district of New York on Wednesday include wire fraud, securities fraud, bank fraud and money laundering.Kin Ming Je, a Hong Kong and UK dual citizen also known as William Je and described as Guo’s financier, was also named in the charges and faced a further count of obstruction of justice.The US attorney for the SDNY, Damian Williams, said Guo “led a complex conspiracy to defraud thousands of his online followers out of over $1bn.“[Guo] is charged with lining his pockets with the money he stole, including buying himself, and his close relatives, a 50,000 sq ft mansion, a $3.5m Ferrari, and even two $36,000 mattresses, and financing a $37m luxury yacht.”Guo was arrested early on Wednesday at his home in a building on 60th Street and Fifth Avenue in New York City. Just after noon, a fire broke out at the same address, according to the New York fire department.ABC News reported that FBI agents were inside the $32.5m penthouse apartment when the fire broke out, and that the bureau is now investigating whether the blaze was related to the arrest.Guo’s contacts in influential circles have been widely reported.In October 2022, the New Yorker described how his application to buy the penthouse at an exclusive building on Fifth Avenue included “a personal recommendation from Tony Blair, Britain’s former prime minister, [who] said, ‘Miles is honest, forthright and has impeccable taste.’”The same report, however, said that in China, Guo was “at the center of a burgeoning scandal involving corruption and espionage”.Guo was also reported to have “paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to Trump advisers, including Steve Bannon, Rudy Giuliani and the attorney L Lin Wood, who joined efforts to overturn the 2020 election”.Bannon, who was Trump’s campaign chair when he was introduced to Guo during the 2016 election, came to call him “the Donald Trump of Beijing”.Bannon was aboard Guo’s yacht on the Long Island Sound when he himself was arrested on fraud charges in August 2020.Guo left China in 2014 during an anti-corruption crackdown led by the president, Xi Jinping.In 2017, Guo made a series of salacious accusations about the Chinese government, accusing officials of having illegitimate children, houses and large sums of money in overseas bank accounts. The Chinese police accused him of paying associates to forge Chinese government documents and requested that Interpol issue a notice for his arrest.Guo claimed that allegations against him in China were launched in retaliation for his efforts to expose graft.On Wednesday, the Department of Justice said Guo, who is also known as Miles Guo and Ho Wan Kwok, was “an exiled Chinese businessman who has resided in the US since in or about 2015 and garnered a substantial online following.“In or about 2018, Kwok founded two purported nonprofit organizations, namely, the Rule of Law Foundation and the Rule of Law Society. Kwok used the nonprofit organisations to amass followers who were aligned with his purported policy objectives in China and who were also inclined to believe Kwok’s statements regarding investment and money-making opportunities.”Je, the department said, “owned and operated numerous companies and investment vehicles central to the scheme and served as its financial architect and key money launderer”.Guo was also charged with laundering hundreds of millions of stolen funds to conceal the conspiracy’s illegal activities and continue the fraud’s operations, Williams said.Michael J Driscoll, assistant director of the FBI, said: “Fraudulent investment scams make victims out of innocent people, ultimately harming the public’s confidence in the integrity of financial systems.“The FBI continues to make investigating complex financial crimes a top priority, and anyone attempting these crimes will be made to face the consequences in the criminal justice system.”Maximum sentences for the charges range from five years in prison, for conspiracy to commit wire fraud, bank fraud, securities fraud and money laundering, to 20 years. More

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      Trump would have believed aliens stole votes, key ally reportedly told jury

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      Such was Donald Trump’s troubled state of mind after the 2020 election that he would have believed aliens had stolen his ballots if anyone had told him so, a leading Republican senator said, according to a member of the special grand jury in the investigation of the former president’s attempt to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden in Georgia.According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, an unnamed juror described Senator Lindsey Graham, from South Carolina and a close Trump ally, as saying: “During that time, if somebody had told Trump that aliens came down and stole Trump ballots … Trump would’ve believed it.”Running for the Republican nomination again, Trump continues to push the lie that his conclusive defeat was the result of electoral fraud.The Atlanta paper interviewed five of the 23 members of the Fulton county grand jury, whose report was made partially public last month. The jury recommended indictments. Against whom is not known.In Georgia, Trump and his allies, including Graham, pressed state officials to investigate or overturn Biden’s narrow win.The Journal-Constitution said Emily Kohrs, the jury foreperson who spoke to the media last month, was not among jurors it spoke to.Lawyers for Trump have tried to use Kohrs’ comments to have the case dismissed.One juror said criticism of Kohrs led to the group being “portrayed as not serious. That really bothered me because that’s not how I felt. I took it very seriously.”Another said: “One of the most important things we’ll be a part of in our life was this eight-month process that we did … [it was] incredibly important to get it right.”Describing evidence not previously public, jurors described a call in which Trump tried to persuade the state House speaker, David Ralston, to convene a special session and overturn Biden’s win.Ralston, who died in November, “basically cut the president off”, the juror said.“He said, ‘I will do everything in my power that I think is appropriate’ … He just basically took the wind out of the sails. ‘Well, thank you,’ you know, is all the president could say.”The jurors heard from poll workers targeted by Trump and threatened by his supporters.“I was pretty emotional throughout the whole thing,” one juror said. “I wouldn’t cry in front of any of the witnesses, but when I would get in my car, I was like, I just left that and I have to just go do my job now? … I just know things that are hard to know.”Witnesses who invoked their fifth-amendment right against self-incrimination – reported to have included the former national security adviser Michael Flynn, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani – proved frustrating.“When people would take the fifth over and over, we could kind of go, ‘Ugh,’” a juror said. “Not because we’re like, ‘Oh my gosh you’re guilty, whatever.’ It was like, ‘We’re going to be here all day.’”One juror said prosecutors used video of speeches, interviews or other testimony if a witness did not answer.Trump did not appear. One juror said: “With the benefit of hindsight, we should have sent a voluntary invitation.”The juror said his mind had been changed by moves to indict Trump in New York, over a hush money payment to a porn star.The Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, is now deciding whether to convene another grand jury to issue indictments. The full report remains under wraps.One juror said: “A lot’s gonna come out sooner or later. And it’s gonna be massive. It’s gonna be massive.” More

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      Federal investigators examined Trump Media for possible money laundering, sources say

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      Federal prosecutors in New York involved in the criminal investigation into Donald Trump’s social media company last year started examining whether it violated money laundering statutes in connection with the acceptance of $8m with suspected Russian ties, according to sources familiar with the matter.The company – Trump Media, which owns Trump’s Truth Social platform – initially came under criminal investigation over its preparations for a potential merger with a blank check company called Digital World that was also the subject of an earlier probe by the Securities and Exchange Commission.Towards the end of last year, federal prosecutors started examining two loans totaling $8m wired to Trump Media, through the Caribbean, from two obscure entities that both appear to be controlled in part by the relation of an ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin, the sources said.The expanded nature of the criminal investigation, which has not been previously reported, threatens to delay the completion of the merger between Trump Media and Digital World, which would provide the company and Truth Social with up to $1.3bn in capital, in addition to a stock market listing.Even if Trump Media and its officers face no criminal exposure for the transactions, the optics of borrowing money from potentially unsavory sources through opaque conduits could cloud Trump’s image as he seeks to recapture the White House in 2024.The extent of the exposure for Trump Media and its officers for money laundering remains unclear. The statutes broadly require prosecutors to show that defendants knew the money was the proceeds of some form of unlawful activity and the transaction was designed to conceal its source.But money laundering prosecutions are typically based on circumstantial evidence and can be based on materials that show that the money in question was unlikely to have legitimate origins, legal experts said.The first $2m payment to Trump Media came in December 2021 when the company was on the brink of collapse after the planned merger with Digital World – that would have unlocked millions for the company – was delayed when the SEC opened an inquiry into whether the arrangement broke regulatory rules.Trump Media needed a bridge loan to keep the company afloat. But it struggled to get financing until Digital World’s chief executive Patrick Orlando sourced a $2m loan wired from Paxum Bank registered in Dominica, according to the wire transfer receipt reviewed by the Guardian.The wire transfer identified Paxum Bank as the beneficial owner, although the promissory note identified an entity called ES Family Trust as the lender. Two months later, an unexpected second $6m payment arrived in Trump Media’s account from ES Family Trust, the transfer receipt showed.In both instances, Orlando declined to provide details about the true identity of the lenders or the origin of the money to Trump Media executives, Trump Media’s since-ousted co-founder turned whistleblower Will Wilkerson recounted in an interview.Though the two payments to Trump Media ostensibly came from two separate entities – first Paxum Bank and second ES Family Trust – the trustee of ES Family Trust, a person called Angel Pacheco, appears to have simultaneously been a director of Paxum Bank.The Russian connection, as being examined by prosecutors in the US attorney’s office for the southern district of New York, centers on a part-owner of Paxum Bank – an individual named Anton Postolnikov, who appears to be a relation of Putin ally Aleksandr Smirnov.Smirnov, who heads the Russia-controlled maritime company Rosmorport, worked in the Central Office of the Russian government until 2017. Before that, Smirnov was the First Deputy Minister of Justice of Russia until 2014, and for most of Putin’s first two terms as president, Smirnov served in the executive office of the president.A spokesman for the justice department, the US attorney’s office for the southern district of New York and outside counsel for Trump Media declined to comment about the investigation. Rosmorport and Paxum Bank did not respond to requests for comment.Concern inside Trump MediaThe obscure origins about the $8m loans caused alarm at Trump Media and, in the spring of 2022, Trump Media’s then-chief financial officer Phillip Juhan weighed returning the money, according to Wilkerson.But the money was never returned, Wilkerson said, in part because losing $8m out of the roughly $12m cash that Trump Media had in its accounts at that time would have placed significant stress on its financial situation.Prosecutors appear to have also taken a special interest in the payments because the off-shore Paxum Bank has a history of providing banking services for the pornography and sex worker industries, which makes it higher risk of engaging in money laundering and other illicit financing.There appears to have been some awareness at Trump Media that the first $2m was to come through because Trump’s eldest son Don Jr, who joined the board with Trump ally Kash Patel and former Republican-turned Trump Media chief executive Devin Nunes, had confirmed to the company’s lawyers to proceed with the transaction.“Just want to keep you in the loop – no guaranty that these will get signed and funded, but we remain hopeful,” John Haley, outside counsel for Trump Media said in a 24 December 2021 email seen by the Guardian, to which Don Jr replied: “Thanks john much appreciated. d.”Since Orlando, who arranged the $8m financing, is an SEC-licensed broker-dealer, he would be subject to SEC rules governing anti-money laundering and “Know Your Customer” requirements that mandate due diligence of investors to combat the proliferation of illicit money.As a private company arranging private loans, the obligations for Trump Media to vet the financing under the SEC rules are less clear. But the securities regulations are separate to the US criminal money laundering statutes, which apply universally.A spokesman for Don Jr declined to comment. Orlando, Nunes, Patel and Juhan did not respond to requests for comment.Federal prosecutors’ interest in the two payments appear to have started when Wilkerson, through his attorneys Patrick Mincey, Stephen Bell and Phil Brewster, alerted the US attorney’s office for the southern district of New York to the payments on 23 October 2022.Trump was the chairman of Trump Media at the time, though it was unclear whether he was aware of the opaque nature of the two loans. Trump typically did not seem to be particularly interested in managing the day-to-day running of Trump Media, Wilkerson said.But Trump was interested in the deal, Wilkerson said, because he got to own 90% of the shares without putting in any money into the company. According to one source familiar with the matter, however, Trump invested some money into Digital World, which could allow him to cash out twice in the event the merger was consummated. More

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      Trump says the Queen, Diana and Oprah Winfrey ‘kissed my ass’ in letters

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      Queen Elizabeth II, Diana, Princess of Wales, Richard Nixon, Oprah Winfrey, Hillary Clinton and other correspondents will be shown to have “kissed my ass”, Donald Trump said on Tuesday, promoting a forthcoming book of their letters.Letters to Trump will contain 150 missives from figures also including Kim Jong-un and Ronald Reagan. Drawn from Trump’s life before and after he ran for president, the book is due to be published next month.“I think they’re going to see a very fascinating life,” Trump told the far-right Breitbart News of what readers might expect.“I knew them all – and every one of them kissed my ass, and now I only have half of them kissing my ass.”His son Donald Trump Jr told Breitbart his father had corresponded with “some of the most interesting people in the world” but “it’s amazing how quickly their adoration of him changed when he ran for office as a Republican.“Letters to Trump shows you exactly how they felt about him and how phony their newfound disdain truly is.”Trump has not announced a deal to write a conventional memoir of a presidency which ended in disgrace and a second impeachment after the deadly January 6 attack on Congress. His reputation has not improved out of office.Running for the Republican nomination in 2024, Trump remains under the threat of criminal indictments including a reportedly imminent New York charge related to hush money paid to a porn star. He is also under investigation for retaining classified material, reportedly including letters from Kim Jong-un.Trump continues to claim his conclusive defeat by Joe Biden in 2020 was the result of electoral fraud, the lie that incited the Capitol attack.Far-right support courted by Trump, meanwhile, includes devotees of the QAnon conspiracy theory, which holds that leading Democrats are members of a cannibalistic, paedophilic cabal.QAnon followers also believe John F Kennedy Jr, the son of President John F Kennedy, did not die in a plane crash in 1999 and will soon come to their aid.Trump shared with Breitbart a letter in which JFK Jr, then a magazine publisher, thanked Trump for visiting his office to “discourse on politics, New York, men and women”.Trump said JFK Jr was a friend, “even though we were of a different persuasion”.The Kennedy family is one of the most powerful in the Democratic party. In fact, Trump was a Democrat too for a while.Trump said: “I believe [JFK Jr] would have run for the Senate and that he would have been president someday. He was a handsome guy. He was a fantastic guy. He had the ‘it factor’ and he would have gone to the top of the world in the Kennedy family.”Trump’s admission that many correspondents no longer flatter him was telegraphed in the first report on the new book, by Axios last week.Axios said an Oprah Winfrey letter from 2000 says: “Too bad we’re not running for office. What a team!” Thanking Trump for compliments, the TV host says: “It’s one thing to try and live a life of integrity – still another to have people like yourself notice.”According to Axios, Trump writes: “Sadly, once I announced for president [in 2015], she never spoke to me again.”Letters to Trump will sell for $99 unsigned or $399 signed. It follows another pricey tome, Our Journey Together, a primarily visual account of Trump’s time in the White House.Trump published his picture book after blocking plans for a White House photographer to publish a book of her own. More

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      ‘You can blame him’: Trump shifts responsibility for January 6 on Pence

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      Donald Trump on Monday responded to Mike Pence’s contention that history will hold him accountable for the January 6 attack on Congress, saying the deadly attack was his former vice-president’s fault.“Had he sent the votes back to the legislatures, they wouldn’t have had a problem with January 6, so in many ways you can blame him for January 6,” Trump told reporters on a flight to Iowa for a campaign appearance.He was referring to his attempt to have Pence, in his role as Senate president, refuse to certify election results in battleground states, on grounds of supposed electoral fraud, thereby overturning Trump’s conclusive defeat by Joe Biden.Trump added: “Had he sent them back to Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona … I believe, number one, you would have had a different outcome. But I also believe you wouldn’t have had ‘January 6’ as we call it.”Nine deaths have been linked to the attack on Congress, including law enforcement suicides. The riot happened after Trump told supporters to “fight like hell”. More than a thousand rioters have been arrested, hundreds charged and many convicted, some with seditious conspiracy. Others remain wanted.Trump was impeached for inciting an insurrection but acquitted when enough Senate Republicans remained loyal. Last year, the House January 6 committee made four criminal referrals of Trump to the Department of Justice. Its investigation continues.The January 6 committee outlined how Pence refused to go along with Trump’s plan to block certification, after advisers told him he did not have the authority to do so.On the plane to Iowa on Monday, Trump falsely claimed again Pence “had the right” to refuse to certify results.Pence was otherwise a doggedly loyal vice-president but he is now preparing his own presidential bid. He addressed Trump’s culpability for the riot on Saturday, in remarks to the Gridiron dinner in Washington.“President Trump was wrong,” he said. “I had no right to overturn the election, and his reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day, and I know that history will hold Donald Trump accountable.”On January 6, some rioters chanted “Hang Mike Pence” while a makeshift gallows was erected outside. Pence was spirited to safety by his Secret Service detail, whose fears amid the chaos were highlighted by the January 6 committee.“What happened that day was a disgrace,” Pence said on Saturday, adding: “For as long as I live, I will never, ever diminish the injuries sustained, the lives lost, or the heroism of law enforcement on that tragic day.”Pence has, however, resisted a subpoena for testimony in the justice department investigation.On Monday, Norm Eisen, a former White House ethics chief, said: “Pence says he thinks history will hold Trump accountable. But Pence himself is not willing to do so. If he were, he’d quit making the baseless argument that the constitution grants him absolute immunity from testifying.”Trump dominates polling regarding the Republican nomination. His strongest rival is the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, who has not yet declared a campaign.Pence and the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley are in the next tier, far behind but with the potential to split the vote, giving Trump the nomination without a majority.On his way to Iowa, Trump told reporters: “I guess [Pence] figured that being nice is not working. But, you know, he’s out there campaigning. And he’s trying very hard. And he’s a nice man, I’ve known him, I had a very good relationship until the end.” More

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      Republican response to the January 6 Capitol attack divides party

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      Republican response to the January 6 Capitol attack divides partyLine are drawn between the extremist wing and those who distance themselves from portraying the rioters as ‘sightseers’Some Republicans have rebuked efforts by Donald Trump and Fox News host Tucker Carlson to whitewash the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, underscoring a significant split in the party over attempts to downplay the events of the day.Kevin McCarthy, the speaker of the House, turned over more than 40,000 hours of security footage from the Capitol to Carlson earlier this year. This week, Carlson aired selectively edited portions of that footage, falsely claiming the rioters were “sightseers” and “not insurrectionists”. At least 1,000 people have been arrested for their role in the January 6 attack. Five people died as a result of it.Mike Pence: history will hold Donald Trump accountable over Capitol attackRead moreMore than 999 people have been arrested so far, according to the justice department. Around 518 people have pleaded guilty to federal crimes to date and 53 have been found guilty at trial.Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, quickly distanced himself from Carlson’s portrayal. “It was a mistake, in my view, for Fox News to depict this in a way that’s completely at variance with what our chief law enforcement official here at the Capitol thinks,” he said on Tuesday.Thom Tillis, a Republican senator from North Carolina, was blunter in his critique. “I think it’s bullshit,” he said earlier this week.“I was here. I was down there, and I saw maybe a few tourists, a few people who got caught up in things,” he said. “But when you see police barricades breached, when you see police officers assaulted, all of that … if you were just a tourist you should’ve probably lined up at the visitors’ center and came in on an orderly basis.”Mitt Romney, the junior Republican senator from Utah, told reporters that attempts to downplay the January 6 attack were “dangerous”.“It’s a very dangerous thing to do, to suggest that attacking the Capitol of the United States is in any way acceptable and it’s anything other than a serious crime, against democracy and against our country,” he said, according to NBC. ““And people saw that it was violent and destructive and should never happen again. But trying to normalize that behavior is dangerous and disgusting.”McCarthy has defended his decision to give Carlson the footage. “I said at the very beginning: transparency. What I wanted to produce for everyone was exactly what I said so people could look at it and see what went on that day,” he told reporters this week.Trump, who is under investigation for his role in the January 6 attack, praised Carlson on Tuesday. “GREAT JOB BY TUCKER CARLSON TONIGHT,” he wrote on Truth Social on Tuesday. “The Unselect Committee of political Hacks & Thugs has been totally discredited. They knowingly refused to show the Videos that mattered. They should be tried for Fraud and Treason, and those imprisoned and being persecuted should be exonerated and released, NOW!”“LET THE JANUARY 6 PRISONERS GO. THEY WERE CONVICTED, OR ARE AWAITING TRIAL, BASED ON A GIANT LIE, A RADICAL LEFT CON JOB. THANK YOU TO TUCKER CARLSON AND SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE KEVIN McCARTHY FOR WHAT YOU BOTH HAVE DONE. NEW VIDEO FOOTAGE IS IRREFUTABLE!!!” Trump posted on Truth Social earlier this week.Trump recently recorded a single for charity with some of the people in prison for the January 6 attack.The far-right Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has long downplayed the January 6 attack. Andrew Clyde, a Georgia congressman, in 2021 compared the rioters to tourists at the Capitol.But Dan Crenshaw, another conservative Republican congressman from Texas, said that continuing to downplay the attack would just be embarrassing to the party.“It’s definitely stupid to keep talking about this … So what is the purpose of continuing to bring it up unless you’re trying to feed Democrat narratives even further?” he told Politico.“I don’t really have a problem with making it all public. But if your message is then to try and convince people that nothing bad happened, then it’s just gonna make us look silly.”TopicsRepublicansUS Capitol attackUS politicsKevin McCarthyMitt RomneyDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More