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      Suit yourself: Trump offers scraps of his indictment outfit for $4,699.53 a pop

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      Despite his claims, Donald Trump’s business career has had many more failures than successes.His record of catastrophic investments has never held Trump back, however, and now the one-term, twice-impeached, 91-time felony-charged former president has embarked on a new hustle: selling little cut-out pieces of a suit he wore during one of his arrests.“It was a great suit, believe me, a really good suit. It’s all cut up, and you’re gonna get a piece of it,” Trump said in a video announcing the sale.Trump wore a blue suit when he was arrested and had his mugshot taken at an Atlanta jail in August. The former Apprentice host has already monetized the mugshot: on his campaign website, people can buy coffee mugs, T-shirts and Christmas stockings bearing the image.The move into fabric sales is a new one, however.To buy a piece of the suit, people first have to buy 47 “digital trading cards”, each featuring an illustration of Trump, through the Collect Trump Cards website. Buyers will then receive a bit of the suit, or tie, that Trump wore when he was arrested – on charges related to his attempts to overturn the election – at Fulton county jail in August 2023.The suit, according to the website description, is “the most historically significant artifact in United States history”.The suit is described as “priceless”. People can buy a piece of it for $4,699.53.Trump, a former TV host, touted his business career as a reason why he should be elected during the 2016 presidential campaign.His efforts have included Trump Vodka, Trump Mortgage and Trump Shuttle, a short-lived airline. All failed.GoTrump, a travel site, didn’t last, nor did Trump Steaks. A Trump board game was discontinued after two years, a Trump magazine folded, and Trump University was forced to settle fraud lawsuits for $25m after being accused of “swindling thousands of Americans out of millions of dollars”.Trump has also filed for corporate bankruptcy six times.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIndeed, in 2021, Forbes found that Trump, 77, would be far richer had he simply invested the inheritance he got from his father, who ran a successful, if problematic, real estate company.It is the third series of cards Trump has sold. A batch of 45,000 cards sold out in December 2022 for a total of nearly $4.4m. Trump only netted between $100,000 and $1m from the sales, Forbes reported.The cards include Trump sitting in the chair occupied by Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial, and an image of Trump wearing a white cowboy hat, superimposed over an illustration of some running horses.Others show Trump as a kind of half robot, and there is one of him dressed as a Captain America-type character. One card shows Trump, who was medically exempted from the military during the Vietnam war due to a questionable diagnosis of bone spurs, dressed in army garb.It is unclear how many pieces of the suit are available. In 2018 a medical exam, conducted by a doctor-turned-Republican congressman, Trump was 6ft 3in and weighs 239lb, although when Trump claimed to weigh 215lb when he was arrested in Georgia. The former president is known to favor billowy suits with shoulder pads, but the measurements of his chest, waist and inseam are not publicly available.In any case, buyers seeking a piece of suit should beware. Business Insider found that the fine print on Collect Trump Cards includes a disclaimer that if delivery of the bit of suit “cannot be fulfilled due to an issue in the manufacturing, production, or delivery”, purchasers will have to settle for a “limited edition Trump NFT” instead. More

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      in Elections

      Rudy Giuliani faces third day of trial for defaming Georgia election workers

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      The third day of a federal trial against Rudy Giuliani for defamation against two Georgia election workers begins on Wednesday after a day of harrowing testimony from Shaye Moss, whose life was upended after Giuliani spread election lies about her.Moss and Ruby Freeman are suing Giuliani for his claims, from which the former New York City mayor and Trump ally has not backed down this week. After the first day of trial, Giuliani doubled down on his claims, saying they were true, leading the judge to question Giuliani’s mental fitness.Just as they have been all week, Moss, Freeman and Giuliani are in the courtroom. Moss and Freeman are sitting next to each other at a table with their lawyers. Freeman’s back is to Giuliani, who is sitting at a table parallel to them with his lawyer.Freeman is expected to testify later today.Both women are seeking up to $43m in damages over Giuliani’s false claims that accused them of fraudulently counting mail-in ballots, a sum that Giuliani’s lawyer said would be like a “death penalty” for his client.Ashlee Humphreys, a professor at Northwestern who studies social media, is the first witness on Wednesday. She is expected to testify about how she calculated the damages Moss and Freeman are entitled to.The case is seen as a test for one avenue pro-democracy groups are using to try to hold election deniers accountable for the consequences of spreading conspiracy theories. More

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      Rudy Giuliani faces trial over defamation of 2020 election workers

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      Rudy Giuliani arrived slightly late to the Washington DC federal courtroom where a defamation lawsuit seeking to force him to pay tens of millions of dollars in damages to two election workers after making inflammatory false statements about them in the aftermath of the 2020 election.Ruby Freedman and her daughter Shaye Moss, the two Black election workers from Fulton county who said they faced death threats because of Giuliani’s claims, were also in the courtroom on Monday.Giuliani has already conceded he made the defamatory statements and the US district judge Beryl Howell, who is overseeing the case, has already found him liable for defamation, so the week-long jury trial will focus on what penalty he should have to pay. Freeman and Moss are seeking between $15m and $43.5m in damages. Jury selection and opening statements are expected on Monday.The case is significant because it is one of the most aggressive and advanced efforts to get accountability from Donald Trump allies who spread lies about the election as part of the ex-president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. It is one of several cases testing whether defamation law can be used as a new tool to combat misinformation. And perhaps more than any other episode in the chaotic aftermath of the 2020 election, it crystallizes the human toll of election denialism. Giuliani also faces criminal charges in Georgia as part of the wide-ranging case there over Trump’s efforts to turn the election.After the 2020 election, Giuliani had amplified and circulated misleading security footage he claimed showed Freeman and Moss counting ballots after tallying had ended on election night. Even after Georgia election officials quickly debunked the claim, Giuliani continued to spread the false claims.Freeman and Moss say their lives were upended as they became the subject of vicious attacks. They faced death threats, and strangers came to Freeman’s home to try to execute a “citizen’s arrest”.Freeman told the US House committee that investigated the January 6 attack that she was afraid to give her name in public. On election night in 2020, she was wearing a shirt that proudly proclaimed her name, but she now refuses to wear it in public.“I won’t even introduce myself by my name any more. I get nervous when I bump into someone I know in the grocery store who says my name. I’m worried about people listening. I get nervous when I have to give my name for food orders. I’m always concerned of who’s around me,” she told the committee.“There is nowhere I feel safe. Nowhere. Do you know how it feels to have the president of the United States target you?”Moss told Reuters in 2021 that she suffered anxiety and depression, and her son, who used a cellphone with a phone number once registered to her, started receiving death threats and began failing in school.Both women have not spoken much publicly since the 2020 election, but are expected to take the witness stand this week.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionGiuliani has already conceded he made false statements about Freeman and Moss. But he argues that he is not responsible for the harm they suffered as a result of his false statements. “Giuliani will argue that Plaintiffs cannot show more than a de minimis relationship between their alleged harm and Giuliani’s conduct,” his lawyers wrote in a court filing in November.Giuliani has also already been sanctioned more than $200,000 for refusing to turn over documents as part of the lawsuit. Howell, the judge, also berated Giuliani’s attorney last week after Giuliani failed to show up for a hearing.He is also expected to testify during the trial, and his lawyer indicated last week that the former New York City mayor does not plan to invoke his fifth amendment rights during the proceeding.The original lawsuit, filed in December 2021, sought damages from both Giuliani and One America News, the far-right channel that spread countless pieces of misinformation after the 2020 election. Freeman and Moss settled with OAN in 2022. While the terms of the agreement haven’t been publicly disclosed, the network acknowledged on air shortly after that there was no widespread voter fraud in Georgia in 2020. More

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      in US Politics

      What price will Rudy Giuliani pay for smearing Georgia election workers?

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      Rudy Giuliani, the politician who was once lauded as “America’s mayor” but descended into the rabbit hole of Donald Trump’s election denial lies, will face a Washington DC jury on Monday in a landmark case which could see him saddled with millions of dollars in damages.For the first time at trial, Giuliani will be confronted in a federal district court with the consequences of the conspiracy theories he disseminated as Trump’s 2020 election lawyer. He will come eye-to-eye with the mother and daughter poll workers from Georgia who claim that he destroyed their lives and caused them ongoing emotional distress by maliciously accusing them of election fraud.The stakes of the civil trial are exceptionally high. The plaintiffs are asking the jury to set damages of up to $43m as punishment for Giuliani’s “outrageous conduct”.Legal experts and democracy advocates will also be watching closely to see whether a rarely used complaint of defamation can act as a deterrent on anyone contemplating another round of election denial in next year’s presidential election and beyond. There could also be ramifications for the Rico organised crime prosecution that Giuliani is facing in Fulton county, Georgia, that also relates to his actions in the 2020 election.After jury selection and opening statements on Monday, there will be three days of testimony in the DC trial. Headlining the witness list are the poll workers themselves, Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss.“While nothing will fully repair all of the damages that Giuliani and his allies wreaked on our clients’ lives, livelihoods and security, they are eager and ready for their day in court to continue their fight for accountability,” said the women’s legal representatives at Protect Democracy, a non-partisan advocacy group.Freeman and Moss became household names after they gave a moving televised account to the House investigation into the 6 January 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol. They recounted how their lives had been turned upside down by Giuliani’s relentless attacks.“Be glad it’s 2020 and not 1920,” Moss, who is African American, told the hearing, invoking the history of lynching in the deep south.Giuliani has already been found liable by the judge presiding in the case, Beryl Howell, for smearing the poll workers, intentionally inflicting emotional distress on them, and engaging in a conspiracy with at least two others to defame them. It now falls to the jury to decide the scale of damages.Giuliani defamed the poll workers by accusing them falsely of criminal misdeeds during the critical count of presidential election votes in the State Farm Arena in Atlanta. As one of the key swing states in the 2020 race, Georgia’s 16 electoral college votes had the potential to determine whether Trump or Joe Biden would be the next occupant of the White House.As part of the Trump team’s extensive efforts to undermine the election count and thereby foil Biden’s victory, Giuliani bore down on Freeman and Moss. He helped circulate a misleadingly edited tape of security footage from the arena which he inaccurately claimed showed them stealing votes for Biden.He propagated the “Suitcase Gate” conspiracy theory – a video that falsely claimed to show the poll workers removing phoney ballots from suitcases stored under their table, then counting them “three, four, five, six, seven times …” The court will be shown a sample of the ginger mint that Freeman passed to Moss during the counting process – Giuliani claimed it was a USB drive used to change the vote count on electronic tabulation devices.His wild claims were fully debunked by Georgia officials at the time he was making them. In June a full investigation by the state’s election board cleared Freeman and Moss of any wrongdoing and dismissed Giuliani’s fraud claims as “unsubstantiated”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDespite the official pushback, Giuliani continued to attack the pair. In several hours of scheduled testimony, mother and daughter are expected to describe to the jury the storm of death threats and harassment they and their families suffered – and continue to suffer – in the wake of the smear campaign.In the fallout, they were forced to flee their homes, go into hiding and change their appearance. Moss quit her job as a poll worker.Giuliani’s lawyers have indicated that he may testify in person at the trial. If he does so he will not be allowed to repeat any of the defamatory slurs about the plaintiffs, as he has already accepted that he defamed them.His lawyers have indicated that he will, though, attempt to show that his actions had minimal connection to the blizzard of violent threats and harassment that the women have endured. That way he will hope to minimize the damages awarded by the jury.Several other former members of the legal team in Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign are also likely to be called upon during the trial, with their testimony drawn from depositions. They include the former New York police commissioner Bernard Kerik, Jenna Ellis, who has been charged alongside Giuliani in the Fulton county Rico case, and Christina Bobb.Court documents show that Ellis refused to answer questions from Freeman and Moss’s lawyers during her deposition. She pleaded the fifth amendment right to remain silent 448 times. More

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      Georgia Republicans finalize district maps to comply with judge’s order

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      Republican state lawmakers in Georgia have finalized new district maps to comply with a federal judge’s order, though Democrats and advocacy groups say the new maps create one majority-Black district at the expense of another diverse district.US district judge Steve Jones ordered Georgia lawmakers to redo their redistricted maps in October after a lawsuit claimed they violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting the voting power of Black people.He gave lawmakers until 8 December to redraw maps to create “an additional majority-Black district” in west metro Atlanta. He warned “the state cannot remedy the section 2 violations found herein by eliminating minority opportunity districts elsewhere in the plans”.Georgia lawmakers did not appear to heed that instruction. They created the additional majority-Black district in west Atlanta, but dismantled another district where Black voters had been joining with other racial minorities to elect the candidate of their choosing. The dismantled district is now represented by Lucy McBath, a Democrat. The plan ensures that Republicans are able to maintain a 9-5 advantage in the state’s congressional delegation.It’s not legally settled whether districts with a collection of voters from various minority groups are protected under the Voting Rights Act in the way Black voters are, though critics of the Republican plan say it doesn’t fix the problem of diluting the Black vote.State representative Sam Park, Georgia’s Democratic caucus whip, said on the statehouse floor today that “it’s self-evident that the Republican party’s primary goal is to maintain political power at all costs – even to the detriment of Georgia voters’ freedoms, our representative democracy and the rule of law”.The new maps will require court approval. With candidates finalizing plans to run in these new districts next year, there’s a time crunch on the case. A 20 December hearing is scheduled to go over the new maps.Georgia Republicans planned to appeal the case while also working in a special session to comply with Jones’s order.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Georgia redistricting case comes as several other southern states contend with similar rulings to redo their maps after facing lawsuits over Black voting power. While redistricting happens every decade and maps are usually finalized in a year or two, some of these states have slowed the process to try to keep their preferred maps for the 2024 cycle. More

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      in Elections

      Georgia prosecutors predict jail sentences in Trump 2020 election case

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      Fulton county prosecutors have signaled they want prison sentences in the Georgia criminal case against Donald Trump and his top allies for allegedly violating the racketeering statute as part of efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, according to exchanges in private emails.“We have a long road ahead,” the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, wrote in one email. “Long after these folks are in jail, we will still be practicing law.”The previously unreported emails, between Willis and defense lawyers, open a window on to the endgame envisioned by prosecutors on her team – which could inform legal strategies ahead of a potential trial next year, such as approaches toward plea deal negotiations.Prosecutors are not presently expected to offer plea agreements to Trump, his former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and his former election lawyer Rudy Giuliani, but left open the possibility of talks with other co-defendants, the Guardian previously reported.The emails also underscore the increasing breakdown in trust with a growing number of defense lawyers who have regarded prosecutors’ tactics – including Willis assuming she will win – as inappropriately aggressive and presumptuous given the case remains months from a potential verdict.The district attorney raised the prospect of defendants in prison in a 29 November exchange, which started with Trump’s lawyer Steve Sadow complaining about an incomplete Giuliani transcript the defense received in discovery, according to two people with direct knowledge of the emails.Willis responded that the defense lawyers would receive the full transcript in the next production of discovery and, in increasingly tense exchanges, took offense that she was not being referred to by her formal title as well as the implicit accusation that they were withholding evidence.“No one placed me here and I have earned this title,” Willis said, apparently taking umbrage that she was not referred to specifically as the district attorney, but as a prosecutor. “I’ve never practiced law by hiding the ball, I’ve enjoyed beating folks by making sure they have the entire file.”The email took a turn when Willis added that they should remain professional because their legal careers would continue even after the election case co-defendants went to jail. Willis signed off: “yours in service”.Trump and 18 co-defendants in August originally pleaded not guilty to charges that they violated Georgia’s state racketeering statute as they sought to overturn the 2020 election. In the following weeks, four of the 18 negotiated plea deals and extricated themselves from the case.The remark about jail caused consternation with some of the defense lawyers, who have been aghast that the district attorney’s office would throw around what they took as a prison threat in a cavalier manner, according to multiple people familiar with the situation.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionA spokesperson for Willis declined to comment.Relations between prosecutors and defense lawyers have been particularly strained in recent weeks, people close to the case have said, mainly since several media outlets published videotaped “proffer” statements that the former Trump lawyers Jenna Ellis, Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro gave as part of plea deals.The district attorney’s office had privately believed Trump’s team leaked the videos, only to be surprised when the lawyer for the former Coffee county elections official Misty Hampton acknowledged at a court hearing that he had disseminated videos to a certain news outlet.The leak of the proffer statements prompted prosecutors to seek an emergency protective order on discovery materials and to refuse to provide copies of any future proffer videos to defense lawyers, who would instead have to view them in the district attorney’s offices in Atlanta.In the separate federal 2020 election subversion case brought against Trump in Washington, the discovery materials were subject to a protective order almost as soon as Trump was charged. But special counsel prosecutors have not forced Trump’s lawyers to only view the discovery in person.The Fulton county superior judge Scott McAfee, who is presiding in the case, ultimately agreed to impose a protective order governing the release of discovery materials marked as “sensitive”, though the threat to only have proffer videos available in the district attorney’s offices was dropped. More

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      Trump victory in 2024 would mean no trial in Georgia for years, lawyer argues

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      Donald Trump’s trial on charges that he conspired to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia would be delayed until 2029 if he won re-election next year because the US constitution prohibits states from interfering with federal government functions, his lawyer argued at a court hearing on Friday.“I believe that the supremacy clause and his duties as president of the United States – this trial would not take place at all until after his term in office,” the former president’s lawyer Steve Sadow said.The remark came during an hours-long hearing before the Fulton county superior court judge Scott McAfee, who is presiding over the sprawling conspiracy and racketeering case connected to the efforts taken by Trump and dozens of his top allies to reverse his 2020 election defeat in the state.While that argument – that Trump would be shielded from the criminal case brought by the Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis were he to become president once more – has been privately discussed for months, this marked the first time Trump’s lawyer affirmed the position in open court.The remark from Sadow came as the judge grappled with how to schedule a trial date in the case. Fulton county prosecutors had previously asked the judge to set trial for 5 August 2024, positioning it after Trump’s other criminal cases in Washington, New York and Florida.Trump’s current schedule includes: his Washington trial on federal charges over efforts to overturn the 2020 election on 4 March, his New York trial on local charges over hush-money payments to an adult film star on 25 March, and his classified documents trial in Florida on 20 May.Fulton county prosecutors’ proposal envisioned going to trial after those cases were complete. But with the New York case and the Florida case are almost certain to be delayed for months, and Trump likely to be the GOP presidential nominee, McAfee put off setting a trial date at the hearing.The judge said an August trial date was “not unrealistic”, though he added he was uncertain that could be determined months in advance.McAfee gave no indication how he might rule on a trial date and tried to navigate its politically and legally sensitive nature by questioning Trump’s lawyer and prosecutors on whether proceeding in the summer, just months before the election, would amount to “election interference”.The arguments were predictable: Trump’s lawyer Sadow argued it would take Trump off the campaign trail during the most crucial time, while prosecutor Nathan Wade contended that Trump was a defendant and it was “moving forward with the business of Fulton county”.The judge then turned to the question of whether Trump’s trial could even continue should he win the election, with prosecutors anticipating the case stretching into 2025. “Could he even be tried in 2025?” McAfee asked.Sadow responded that Trump could not, because the supremacy clause in the constitution meant the state’s interest in prosecuting him would be secondary to the federal government’s interest in him fulfilling his presidential role, although how it would apply in a criminal prosecution remains untested.The situation would apply only to Trump, Sadow conceded – and the judge indicated he would break up the remaining 14 co-defendants so that they would go to trial in several groups. McAfee added that it was still too early to decide how many groups he would create.Trump and the original 18 co-defendants in August pleaded not guilty to the indictment handed up by an Atlanta-area grand jury charging them with reversing his defeat in the state, including by advancing fake Trump electors and breaching voting machines.In the weeks that followed, prosecutors reached plea deals in quick succession with the former Trump lawyers Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis and Kenneth Chesebro – all of whom gave “proffer” statements that were damaging to Trump, to some degree – as well as the local bail bond officer Scott Hall.The district attorney’s office currently does not intend to offer plea deals to Trump and at least two of his top allies, including his former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and his former lawyer Rudy Giuliani, the Guardian reported this week. More

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      Georgia County Signs Up to Use Voter Database Backed by Election Deniers

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      The decision ignores warnings from voting rights groups and some election experts.A suburban county in Georgia agreed on Friday to use a new voter information database endorsed by the election denial movement, a move that defied warnings from voting rights groups, election security experts and state election officials.Columbia County, a heavily Republican county outside Augusta, is the first in the country known to have agreed to use the platform, called EagleAI. Its supporters claim the system will make it easier to purge the rolls of ineligible voters.Among the leading backers for this new system is Cleta Mitchell, a central figure in former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election and the leader of the Election Integrity Network, a national coalition of activists built around the false idea that the 2020 election was stolen.Ms. Mitchell and others have billed EagleAI as an alternative to the Election Registration Information Center, a widely used interstate system that made it easier for officials to track address changes and deaths as they maintain the voter rolls. That system, known as ERIC, has become the subject of conspiracy theories and misinformation that prompted nine states to withdraw with few backup plans.Ms. Mitchell declined to answer questions about the county’s decision.At an election board meeting Friday, around 40 people packed a room, with all speakers favoring the new system, according to Larry Wiggins, a Democratic member of the board who said he voted in favor.Mr. Wiggins said he was hopeful the tool would help the county handle an expected influx of voter eligibility challenges next year. A 2021 law made it easier for individuals to challenge large numbers of other voters’ registrations at once. Those challenges have often come from the same community of Republican activists now helping to push the EagleAI software.EagleAI was developed by a retired doctor in Columbia County, John Richards Jr., who did not response to a request for comment.Georgia state officials, who reviewed the EagleAI presentations, have found them riddled with errors and said the tools were unnecessary, according to documents provided by the groups American Oversight and Documented.In May, William S. Duffey Jr., the chairman of the State Election Board in Georgia, sent a letter to the county board of elections warning that EagleAI’s software might violate state privacy laws and state election statutes.The county responded in November that it would not allow access to private voter information and that the use of the tools would be limited.In a statement, the Georgia secretary of state’s office noted that the state still belonged to the Election Registration Information Center and that counties needed to follow state laws.Election experts have labeled the new system unnecessary and flawed.“EagleAI cannot be trusted to provide reliable information regarding who on the voter rolls is not eligible to remain there,” wrote seven voting rights and election organizations in a letter to Columbia County commissioners. It continued: “It will point you towards false positives and waste your staff’s time.”But Mr. Wiggins said the board wasn’t convinced. “We don’t put much faith in letters from outside groups,” Mr. Wiggins said. “We pay more attention to local individuals.” More