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Trump was found guilty – what could his punishment be?
A Manhattan jury has convicted Donald Trump on all 34 counts of falsifying business records in the hush-money case.The immediate next question is: what punishment the former US president should receive?It’s a decision that rests entirely with Juan Merchan, the judge overseeing the case. The crimes Trump has been found guilty of, falsifying business records in the first degree, are class E felonies in New York, the least serious category, and punishable by up to four years in prison. His sentencing is set for 11 July.But Trump is unlikely to be sentenced to prison, experts say. He is a first-time offender, and the crime he has been found guilty of is a non-violent paper crime.“I think the judge would probably not incarcerate him under those circumstances alone,” said Cheryl Bader, a law professor at Fordham University who called any sentence of incarceration “unlikely”.“But also given that he is a former president, has a Secret Service detail and is also the presumptive Republican nominee, I think a term of incarceration would be logistically very difficult, but also would have political implications that I think Judge Merchan would want to avoid.”Any punishment is likely to consist of fines, probation, community service or some combination of those.“I would like to see community service – picking up trash on the subway,” said Karen Friedman Agnifilo, a former top prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office.Much could depend on how Merchan interprets Trump’s conduct, including any lack of remorse.“I can’t imagine we will see a remorseful, apologetic Trump if it comes time for sentencing,” Bader said. “Judges also consider the harm caused. On one hand, Judge Merchan could view this as a technical recording violation to cover up tawdry conduct, causing only minimal harm. On the other hand, he could view Trump’s conduct as inflicting deep harm on the entire country by depriving the voting public of their right to cast an informed vote in the highest-ranking national election.”The jury did not have the option of convicting Trump of a misdemeanor – of falsifying business records but not in service of another underlying crime. Trump’s attorneys could have asked Merchan to give the jury that option, but they did not do so.Both the prosecutors and Trump’s lawyers will submit recommendations for sentencing. So too will the probation office, which will put together a confidential presentencing report for the judge.Trump will almost certainly quickly appeal. Any punishment would then probably be on hold while an appeal is pending.The appellate process would take months, even years, to play out, meaning it could be a while before the sentence would take effect. Trump has 30 days to file a notice of appeal of the guilty verdict, and then six months to file a full appeal to the first judicial department, which hears appeals from New York county. If a conviction were upheld, Trump would then likely appeal to the New York court of appeals, the seven-member body that is the highest appellate court in New York state. That court has discretion over whether to hear the case or not.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe issues argued on appeal would likely be complex legal questions – for example, whether the judge gave appropriate instructions to the jury and allowed the right evidence to be included or excluded. Facts, and the credibility of witnesses, would not be issues on appeal.If the conviction is upheld by the New York court of appeals, Trump would likely appeal to the US supreme court, which could also choose whether or not to take the case. Because the case is under New York state law, getting it into the US supreme court would require Trump to convince the justices that there is some federal or constitutional question at stake.The conviction will not affect Trump’s legal ability to run for president. The constitution does not bar felons from running for office. Whether he could serve as president from prison is untested. He would not be able to pardon himself from any conviction, since it is a state crime.The conviction will probably not affect Trump’s ability to vote in this fall’s election. Florida, where he is registered, allows people with an out-of-state conviction to vote if the state where they were convicted allows it. In New York, someone with a felony conviction can vote as long as they are not incarcerated.Merchan has already punished Trump twice during the case for violating a gag order in place, and the way the judge handled both episodes could offer insight into how he will approach any possible punishment for Trump. It underscores that Merchan is keenly aware of the logistical difficulty of incarcerating Trump and the broader political implications of doing so.“Mr Trump, it’s important to understand that the last thing I want to do is to put you in jail. You are the former president of the United States and possibly the next president, as well,” Merchan said on 6 May, when he issued a $1,000 fine holding Trump in contempt of court for the 10th time. He went on to explain why putting Trump in jail at that time was “truly a last resort for me … I also worry about the people who would have to execute that sanction: the court officers, the correction officers, the Secret Service detail, among others. I worry about them and about what would go into executing such a sanction.“Of course, I’m also aware of the broader implications of such a sanction. The magnitude of such a decision is not one-sided. But, at the end of the day, I have a job to do, and part of that job is to protect the dignity of the judicial system and compel respect,” he added. More
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Trump was just convicted of conspiracy and fraud. He could still win re-election | Lloyd Green
On Thursday, a Manhattan jury found Donald Trump guilty of all 34 counts of conspiracy and fraud in a case stemming from payments that the former president arranged to cover up an affair with the adult film actor Stormy Daniels. The presumptive Republican nominee is now a convicted felon.He was already an adjudicated sexual predator and fraudster. Trump once quipped that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it. Maybe not.Sentencing has been set for 11 July. Of course, it is unlikely that Trump will serve time in prison for what amounts to a bookkeeping offense. Rather, he could be placed on probation and required to report to New York City’s probation department, which has been described as a “humbling” experience. Regardless, the conviction does not disqualify him as a candidate or bar him from again sitting in the Oval Office.Practically speaking, Americans who support Joe Biden must internalize that Trump’s conviction is unlikely to greatly impact his odds of being re-elected president – which are already far higher than many Democrats care to acknowledge. The betting markets are in his corner.The deadline for further motions is 27 June, which is also the day of the first presidential debate. Trump, who denied the charges against him, had previously branded the trial “rigged” and a “scam”. As he exited the courthouse on Thursday, he told watching cameras: “This was a rigged, disgraceful trial. The real verdict is going to be November 5th, by the people.”In the aftermath of his defeat in 2016 in the Iowa caucus and again after losing to Biden in 2020, he resorted to the same playbook. Regardless, his disgrace and lust for vengeance are real. Just look at January 6. Someone who would otherwise be barred from obtaining a security clearance could be the next president. For its part, the Republican party, the so-called law-and-order party, has embraced a convicted criminal as its standard-bearer.Defeat in a New York courtroom, however, is not the same as a Trump loss in November. The 45th president possesses the good fortune of running against an 81-year-old with a halting gait and tentative mien.The calendar will quickly test whatever boost Biden garners from his predecessor’s criminal conviction.On 3 June, the trial of Hunter Biden on federal gun charges kicks off in Delaware. Seemingly clueless to this reality, the president hosted his prodigal son at a recent state dinner for William Ruto, the president of Kenya. Hunter Biden also faces a trial on criminal tax charges in early September, just as the fall campaign begins in earnest.By the end of June, the US supreme court too may provide Trump with another boost. It is expected that the Republican-dominated high court will further slow the special counsel’s election interference case against Trump, ostensibly over the issue of presidential immunity.Last, the first presidential debate is slated for 27 June. Four years have passed since Biden and a Covid-carrying Trump squared off before the cameras. Trump came in too hot while Biden bobbed and weaved. Biden also dinged fossil fuels, making the race in Pennsylvania closer than necessary.However you slice it, Biden’s post-State of the Union resurgence is over. He persistently trails Trump in the critical battleground states. He runs behind the Democratic Senate candidates in places like Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania.Let’s be clear, the rejection is to some extent personal. Unabated doubts swirl about Biden’s continued capacity to lead and govern. Most Americans view Biden as incapable of taming inflation, let alone securing the border.“Working-class voters are unhappy about President Biden’s economy,” Axios reports.Beyond that, the sting of inflation is actually sharper in the precincts of so-called red America. Ominously for the incumbent, his difficulties with non-college graduates cut across race and ethnicity.David Axelrod, chief political adviser to Barack Obama, has taken Biden – Obama’s vice-president – to task. It’s “absolutely true” that the economy has grown under Biden, Axelrod told CNN, but voters are “experiencing [the economy] through the lens of the cost of living. And he is a man who’s built his career on empathy. Why not lead with the empathy?”Instead, Biden keeps touting his own record to tepid applause.“If he doesn’t win this race, it may not be Donald Trump that beats him,” Axelrod continued. “It may be his own pride.”By the numbers, Biden leads among suburban moms and dads and households earning more than $50,000, but lags among people with lower incomes. His voting base bears little resemblance to the lunch-bucket coalition that powered Franklin D Roosevelt and John F Kennedy to the White House last century.“We keep wondering why these young people are not coming home to the Democrats. Why are [Black voters] not coming home to the Democrats?” James Carville, the campaign guru behind Bill Clinton’s win in 1992, recently lamented. “Because Democrat messaging is full of shit, that’s why.”Once upon a time, Carville coined the phrase: “It’s the economy, stupid.” Three decades have not diminished its truth or resonance.Similarly, Biden ignores the reality that he must hug the cultural center as he tacks leftward on economics. Working Americans want stability, safe streets and a paycheck that takes them far. Campus radicals, riots and identity politics are a turnoff.Both Trump and Biden have aged and slowed down since their paths first crossed. Trump continues to display manic stamina on the stump. In contrast, Biden’s events are uninspired, under-attended and over-scripted. For the president, “spontaneity” is synonymous with “gaffe”.Whether Biden brings his A-game to the June debate may determine his fate. If he fails, expect a long summer for the Democrats. Indeed, the party’s convention set for Chicago may rekindle unpleasant memories of 1968. And we know how that ended.To win, Biden must quickly capitalize on Trump’s conviction. The jury is out on whether the 46th president possesses the requisite skill-set.
Lloyd Green is an attorney in New York and served in the US Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992 More - in US Politics
Donald Trump found guilty of hush-money plot to influence 2016 election
Donald Trump has been found guilty of all 34 counts of falsifying business records in a criminal hush-money scheme to influence the outcome of the 2016 election.The verdict came after a jury deliberated for less than 12 hours in the unprecedented first criminal trial against a US president, current or former. It marks a perilous political moment for Trump, the presumptive nominee for the Republican nomination, whose poll numbers have remained unchanged throughout the trial but could tank at any moment.Trump was convicted by a jury of 12 New Yorkers of felony falsification of business records, which makes it a crime for a person to make or cause false entries in records with the intent to commit a second crime. He will be sentenced on 11 July at 10am ET.“This was a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who was corrupt,” Trump said at the courthouse after the verdict was read. “This was a rigged trial, a disgrace.”Joe Biden’s campaign hit back in an email sent soon after the verdict.“In New York today, we saw that no one is above the law. Donald Trump has always mistakenly believed he would never face consequences for breaking the law for his own personal gain,” wrote communications director Michael Tyler.“But today’s verdict does not change the fact that the American people face a simple reality. There is still only one way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office: at the ballot box. Convicted felon or not, Trump will be the Republican nominee for president.””In Trump’s case, the Manhattan district attorney’s office alleged Trump falsely recorded the reimbursements he made to his former lawyer Michael Cohen, who paid the adult film star Stormy Daniels $130,000 for her silence about her affair with Trump, as “legal expenses”.The prosecution alleged the falsifications were made to conceal Trump’s violation of New York state election law, which makes it a crime to promote the election of any person to office through unlawful means.Prosecutors argued in part that those unlawful means were the $130,000 payment to Daniels, which was in effect an illegal campaign contribution, because it was done solely for the benefit of his 2016 campaign and exceeded the $2,700 individual contribution cap.The Manhattan district attorney’s office called 20 witnesses who, over the course of four weeks, gave evidence of how Trump plotted with the tabloid mogul David Pecker and Cohen to bury accounts of affairs with Daniels and the Playboy model Karen McDougal.The witnesses – some friendly to Trump, others openly hostile – said Trump’s worry over the Daniels story intensified after the October 2016 release of the infamous Access Hollywood tape, in which Trump was caught on a hot mic bragging about sexual assault.The recording featured Trump boasting about being able to grab women “by the pussy” without their consent because he was famous. Trial witnesses testified the Trump campaign worried that his efforts to dismiss the tape as “locker room talk” would fail if more boorish behavior came to light.When the Daniels story threatened to become widely known weeks before the 2016 election, Cohen moved into action and paid Daniels $130,000 to buy the exclusive rights to her story – in order to suppress its publication.After the 2016 election, prosecutors argued, Cohen worked out an illicit repayment plan in which he would be paid $420,000, an inflated sum that “grossed up” for tax reasons the $130,000 and other items Cohen billed.The trial saw prosecutors elicit testimony from Cohen, Daniels and a parade of Trump’s confidants and employees, as they sought to establish that Trump concealed the alleged payoff scheme in an effort to ensure he would not lose support from female voters.Cohen proved to be perhaps the most legally consequential witness for the prosecution, as he recounted how he used a home equity loan to raise the $130,000 he then wired to Daniels’ lawyer through a shell company. Cohen did so in the belief that Trump would reimburse him, he testified.In January 2017, Cohen said, he discussed with Trump and the former Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg about being repaid for the $130,000, an overdue bonus and other expenses he incurred doing work that benefited the Trump 2016 campaign.Cohen produced 11 invoices seeking payment pursuant to a legal “retainer” that did not exist, according to Cohen, which led to 11 checks being cut to Cohen and the Trump Organization recording 12 entries for “legal expense” on its general ledger – totaling 34 instances of alleged falsifications.Cohen, who was the final witness for the prosecution, said that Trump was furious when he learned that Daniels was on the verge of going public – not least because Cohen had previously worked with Daniels’ lawyer Keith Davidson, in 2011, to remove the affair story from a gossip website.“Just take care of it,” Cohen recalled Trump saying. “This was a disaster, a fucking disaster. Women will hate me.”“Would you have made that payment to Stormy Daniels without getting a sign-off from Mr Trump?” prosecutor Susan Hoffinger asked Cohen.“No, because everything required Mr Trump’s sign-off. And on top of that, I wanted the money back,” Cohen said.Cohen said that he filed bogus invoices for legal services to cover up the reimbursements, and repeatedly said that Trump was the force behind the Daniels plot. He carried out the payoff “to ensure that the story would not come out, would not affect Mr Trump’s chances of becoming president of the United States”.In a watershed moment, Cohen told jurors these repayments started not long after an 8 February 2017 meeting with Trump in the Oval Office, where they talked about money. Cohen hadn’t been repaid anything for the payoff.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“So, I was sitting with President Trump and he asked me if I was OK, he asked me if I needed money, and I said: ‘No, all good’,” Cohen told jurors. “He said, ‘All right, just make sure you deal with Allen.’”“Allen” referenced Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer at the time, who was recently incarcerated for lying at Trump’s recent civil fraud trial. Weisselberg had previously pleaded guilty to tax crimes, for which he was also jailed.Cohen submitted $35,000 invoices for each month, listing the bill as for legal services. He said it was actually for “the reimbursement, to me, of the hush-money fee along with [another expense] and the bonus”.Hoffinger went through every invoice and pay document and asked Cohen whether it was for legal services – or false. Cohen repeatedly said that the descriptions of invoices and payments in emails and business documents were, in fact, false.“What I was doing was at the direction of and benefit of Mr Trump,” Cohen said at one point, among the many times he directly implicated Trump. “Everything required Mr Trump’s sign-off.”Daniels provided stunning testimony that undermined Trump’s denials that they had sex following a celebrity golf event in Lake Tahoe nearly two decades ago. After rejecting Trump’s invitation to dinner, Daniels decided to go at the advice of a colleague, who said: “It’ll make a great story.”Daniels said that she went to Trump’s hotel room, and they decided to chat before grabbing something to eat. He asked over and over about her work as an adult film actor, repeatedly asking her questions such as: “What about testing? Do you worry about STDs?” Had she been tested?“Yes, of course, and I volunteered it as well,” Daniels said. “He asked me, oh, well, have you ever had a bad test? I said: ‘Nope, I can show you my entire record.’”Trump started to show photos to Daniels at one point, including one of Melania, about which she commented that his wife was “very beautiful” – but allegedly added she should not worry about Melania because “we don’t even sleep in the same room”.They spoke about Trump’s show, The Apprentice, and Daniels remarked there would be no way she would make it on TV given her line of work.“You remind me of my daughter, she is smart and blonde and beautiful and people underestimate her as well,” Daniels remembered Trump saying.Daniels excused herself for the restroom, which was through a bedroom. When she came out, Trump was on the bed, in his underwear and a T-shirt.“At first I was just startled, like a jump scare,” Daniels said. “I just thought: oh my God, what did I misread to get here? The intention is pretty clear if someone’s stripped down to their underwear and on the bed.”Daniels tried to leave but he stood between her and the door, albeit “not in a threatening manner”, she said.“He said, I thought we were getting somewhere. I thought you were serious about what you wanted, if you want to get out of that trailer park … ” Daniels testified. “I was offended, because I never lived in a trailer park.” Daniels said they had sex.The description of the hotel room encounter was uncomfortable and cringe-inducing testimony, one of the prosecutors suggested in closing arguments. But that was precisely why Trump was so desperate to suppress the story – and conceal that he had done so.“This scheme, cooked up by these men, at this time, could very well be what got President Trump elected,” the prosecutor Joshua Steinglass said. More
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Supreme court chief justice declines to meet US senators about Alito upside-down flag furor – as it happened
In a statement, the Biden campaign’s Black media director, Jasmine Harris, accused Donald Trump of racism after a former producer on The Apprentice accused him of using a racial slur on set:
No one is surprised that Donald Trump, who entered public life by falsely accusing Black men of murder and entered political life spreading lies about the first Black president, reportedly used the N-word to casually denigrate a successful Black man. Anyone notice a pattern? Donald Trump is exactly who Black voters know him to be: a textbook racist who disrespects and attacks the Black community every chance he gets, and the most ignorant man to ever run for president. It’s why Black voters kicked him out of the White House in 2020, and it’s why they’ll make him a loser a second time this November.
The Biden campaign launched a new attack against Donald Trump, accusing him of racism after a former producer on The Apprentice said he used an anti-Black slur on the set. Meanwhile, jury deliberations are ongoing in Trump’s business fraud trial in New York City, and a verdict could be delivered at anytime. Earlier in the day, the supreme court released a batch of new opinions, covering topics from banking regulation to free speech rights. But the conservative-dominated court did not yet weigh in on Trump’s claim of immunity from prosecution over the 2020 election, or two abortion-related cases, all of which remain pending before the justices. Another batch of opinions is expected next Thursday.Here’s what else happened today:
Jamie Raskin, a Democratic congressman and Trump antagonist, proposed a way to force conservative justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas to recuse themselves from January 6 cases.
John Roberts, the supreme court’s chief justice, declined a request for a meeting from two Democratic senators concerned over Alito’s flag flap.
Do swing state voters care if Trump is convicted in his New York business fraud trial? Our reporters searched for the answer.
Most evidence in the New York case seems to point to Trump’s guilt, but the jury could reach a variety of conclusions.
Trump can sue his niece Mary Trump for potentially violating the terms of a settlement over his father’s estate, a New York state appeals court ruled.
Should Donald Trump win the November election, the Guardian’s Robert Tait reports that his ally, speaker of the House Mike Johnson, is prepared to move quickly to pass his agenda through Congress. Here’s what Johnson told Semafor he is looking at:Mike Johnson, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, is planning a sweeping ideological legislative drive that aims to make Donald Trump “the most consequential president of the modern era” if the Republicans win power in November.A far-reaching bill containing a range of policy priorities at once – including tax cuts worth trillions, border security and rolling back Obamacare – is being prepared to avoid the mistakes the GOP believed happened early in Trump’s first term, when Johnson says the party wasted time because its victory over Hillary Clinton took it by surprise.In an interview with Semafor, Johnson said he had already spoken to Trump about introducing an omnibus package immediately after he retakes office.“I told him that I believe he can be the most consequential president of the modern era, if we are focused on a policy and agenda-driven administration and Congress – and that’s our intention,” Johnson said.“We don’t want to make the mistake that we made in the past. Back in the 2017 timeframe and in previous years, we Republicans kind of took a single-subject approach. We did one round of healthcare reform, one round of tax reform. But for [fiscal year 2025], we want to have a much larger scope, multiple issues to address in addition to the expiration of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.”For the second time in as many days, Donald Trump has defended supreme court justice Samuel Alito amid criticism from Democrats over his display of flags associated with rightwing causes.Alito, an appointee of Republican president George W Bush, is a reliably conservative vote on the court, and Trump has loudly denounced the Democratic lawmakers who have called for him to recuse himself from cases dealing with January. Here’s what the ex-president wrote, on Truth Social:
‘Playing the Ref’ with Justice Alito doesn’t work. It works with many others, but not with him!
Here’s more from the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington about the firestorm around conservative supreme court justice Samuel Alito, and the rightwing flags found flying at his residences:Justice Samuel Alito is rejecting calls to step aside from supreme court cases involving the former president Donald Trump and January 6 defendants because of the controversy over flags that flew over his homes.In letters to members of Congress on Wednesday, Alito says his wife was responsible for flying an upside-down US flag over his home in 2021 and an “Appeal to Heaven” flag at his New Jersey beach house last year.Neither incident merits his recusal, he wrote.“I am therefore duty-bound to reject your recusal request,” he wrote.The court is considering two major cases related to the 6 January 2021 attack by a mob of Trump supporters on the Capitol, including charges faced by the rioters and whether the former president has immunity from prosecution on election-interference charges.Alito has rejected calls from Democrats in the past to recuse on other issues.In his letter to the Democratic leaders of the Senate judiciary committee, supreme court chief justice John Roberts argued it would be inappropriate to meet with them.“I must respectfully decline your request for a meeting,” wrote Roberts, who was appointed by Republican president George W Bush, and is considered among the more moderate of the court’s conservative justices.He continued in the letter addressed to the committee’s chair Dick Durbin and senator Sheldon Whitehouse, who chairs the subcommittee on federal courts:
As noted in my letter to Chairman Durbin last April, apart from ceremonial events, only on rare occasions in our Nation’s history has a sitting Chief Justice met with legislators, even in a public setting (such as a Committee hearing) with members of both major political parties present. Separation of powers concerns and the importance of preserving judicial independence counsel against such appearances. Moreover, the format proposed – a meeting with leaders of only one party who have expressed an interest in matters currently pending before the Court – simply underscores that participating in such a meeting would be inadvisable.
Last week, the two Democrats had requested a meeting with Roberts, after reports emerged that conservative justice Samuel Alito had flown flags associated with rightwing causes at two of his properties.“We therefore call for Justice Alito to recuse himself from certain proceedings as outlined above, renew our call for the Supreme Court to adopt an enforceable code of conduct for Supreme Court justices, and request a meeting with you as soon as possible. Until the Court and the Judicial Conference take meaningful action to address this ongoing ethical crisis, we will continue our efforts to enact legislation to resolve this crisis,” Durbin and Whitehouse wrote to Roberts.John Roberts, the chief justice of the US supreme court, has rebuffed a request from senior Democratic US senators to meet as the lawmakers push for supreme court justice Samuel Alito to recuse himself from cases before the court that relate to Donald Trump and will ripple into the 2024 presidential election.Roberts declined an invitation to talk about supreme court ethics and the controversy over flags that flew outside homes owned by Alito, the Associated Press further reports.Roberts’ response came in a letter to Democratic senators Dick Durbin a day after Alito separately wrote to them and House of Representatives members to reject their demands that he recuse himself from major cases involving Trump and the January 6 rioters because of the flags, which are like those carried by some rioters at the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol.Senate judiciary committee chair Dick Durbin of Illinois and senator and committee member Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island had written Roberts a week ago to ask for the meeting and ask that Roberts take steps to ensure that Alito recuses himself from any cases before the court concerning the January 6 attack or former president Trump’s attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat.Trump, the Guardian adds, is being prosecuted in a federal criminal case on charges relating to election interference and obstructing an official proceeding. The supreme court will rule next month on two cases before it that have grave implications in that case, and for the election.A recap that a year ago a judge in New York threw out Donald Trump’s 2021 lawsuit accusing New York Times reporters of an “insidious plot” to obtain his tax records.Trump was ordered to pay all attorneys’ fees and legal expenses that the Times and its reporters had incurred. The lawsuit alleged that the newspaper sought out Trump’s niece Mary Trump and persuaded her “to smuggle the records out of her attorney’s office”.At the time, Trump’s claim against his niece had not been ruled on. Today, we learned that Donald is permitted to proceed with suing Mary.The Times’s 2018 Pulitzer-winning stories relied on information from Mary Trump to cast doubt on the ex-president’s claims that he was a self-made millionaire, showing that he had inherited hundreds of millions through “dubious tax schemes”. The series also revealed a history of tax avoidance.Robert Reed, the New York supreme court justice, said at the time of his ruling, in May 2023, that Trump’s claims “fail as a matter of constitutional law”, which allows for reporters to engage in legal, ordinary news-gathering. “These actions are at the very core of protected first amendment activity,” Reed wrote.Alina Habba, a lawyer for Donald Trump, said the former president looked forward to holding his niece, Mary Trump, “fully accountable for her blatant and egregious breach of contract” in her exchanges with New York Times journalists for a story about her uncle’s finances and evasive tax habits.Thursday’s decision upheld a June 2023 ruling by Justice Robert Reed of the New York state supreme court.Also, Reed had dismissed Donald Trump’s claims against the New York Times and three reporters, and in January ordered him to pay $392,639 of their legal fees, Reuters reports.In November 2022, Reed dismissed Mary Trump’s separate lawsuit accusing her uncle and two of his siblings of defrauding her out of a multimillion-dollar inheritance.The New York Times’ reporting challenged Donald Trump’s claim that he was a self-made billionaire. It said he received the equivalent of $413m from his father, largely the result of “dubious” tax schemes in the 1990s, including undervaluing his family’s real estate holdings. Donald Trump has denied wrongdoing.Mary Trump previously identified herself as a Times source in her 2020 tell-all bestseller Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man.Here’s more on the news that a court has said Donald Trump can sue his niece Mary Trump.The court in New York ruled that the former president can sue Mary Trump, 59, a psychologist and writer, for supplying information to the New York Times as part of its coverage into the then president’s finances and his alleged effort to avoid taxes. The coverage won the Pulitzer prize.The appellate division in Manhattan found a “substantial” legal basis for Donald Trump to claim that his niece violated confidentiality provisions of a 2001 settlement over the estate of his father, Fred Trump Sr, Reuters reports.A five-judge panel said it was unclear whether Mary Trump’s disclosures were subject to confidentiality, or how long both sides intended the provisions to remain in effect. It also signaled that Donald Trump might deserve only minimal damages, not the $100m he sought.The court said:
At a minimum, nominal damages may still be available on the breach of contract claim even in the absence of actual damages.
Lawyers for Mary Trump said the lawsuit violated a state law barring frivolous cases designed to silence critics and “chill and retaliate against” their free speech. These cases are called strategic lawsuits against public participation, or Slapps.Anne Champion, Mary Trump’s lawyer, said in a statement:
Mary has made valuable contributions to the public’s knowledge of the former president with her unique perspective as a family member. We are confident she will be vindicated as the case proceeds.
Champion also said Donald Trump “can claim no injury for the publication of truthful information.”A New York state appeals court said Donald Trump can sue his niece Mary Trump for giving the New York Times information for its Pulitzer Prize-winning 2018 probe into his finances and his alleged effort to avoid taxes.The appellate division in Manhattan found a “substantial” legal basis for Donald Trump to claim that his niece violated confidentiality provisions of a 2001 settlement over the estate of his father, Fred Trump Sr, Reuters reports.More to come on this. Adding from the Guardian, Trump originally sued his estranged niece and the New York Times in 2021 over a 2018 story about his family’s wealth and tax practices that was partly based on confidential documents she provided to the newspaper’s reporters, and there has been a whole legal odyssey ever since.The Biden campaign has launched a new attack against Donald Trump, accusing him of racism after a former producer on The Apprentice said he used an anti-Black racial slur on the set. Meanwhile, jury deliberations are ongoing in Trump’s business fraud trial in New York City, and a verdict could be delivered at anytime. Earlier in the day, the supreme court released a batch of new opinions, covering topics from banking regulation to free speech rights. But the conservative-dominated court did not yet weigh in on Trump’s claim of immunity from prosecution over the 2020 election, or two abortion-related cases, all of which remain pending before the justices. Another batch of opinions is expected next Thursday.Here’s what else has happened today:
Jamie Raskin, a Democratic congressman and Trump antagonist, proposed a way to force conservative justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas to recuse themselves from January 6 cases.
Do swing state voters care if Trump is convicted in his New York business fraud trial? Our reporters searched for the answer.
Most evidence in the New York case seems to point to Trump’s guilt, but the jury could rule in any direction.
In a statement, the Biden campaign’s Black media director, Jasmine Harris, accused Donald Trump of racism after a former producer on The Apprentice accused him of using a racial slur on set:
No one is surprised that Donald Trump, who entered public life by falsely accusing Black men of murder and entered political life spreading lies about the first Black president, reportedly used the N-word to casually denigrate a successful Black man. Anyone notice a pattern? Donald Trump is exactly who Black voters know him to be: a textbook racist who disrespects and attacks the Black community every chance he gets, and the most ignorant man to ever run for president. It’s why Black voters kicked him out of the White House in 2020, and it’s why they’ll make him a loser a second time this November.
In addition to handing the National Rifle Association a lifeline in its lawsuit against New York state, the supreme court also denied resentencing to an Arizona man on death row, the Guardian’s Joanna Walters reports:The US supreme court issued opinions on Thursday relating to free speech and the death penalty, in one case clearing the way for a National Rifle Association (NRA) lawsuit against a former New York state official.The court gave a boost to the influential gun rights group that has accused the official of coercing banks and insurers to avoid doing business with it and, in the process, violating the NRA’s free speech rights.The justices, in a unanimous decision from the nine-member bench, threw out a lower court’s ruling that dismissed the NRA’s 2018 lawsuit against Maria Vullo, a former superintendent of New York’s department of financial services.The NRA, in the case NRA v Vullo, claimed that Vullo unlawfully retaliated against it following a mass shooting in which 17 people were killed at a high school in Parkland, Florida.The NRA was represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and the Biden administration argued some of its claims should go forward, an unusual alliance between often opposing parties considering the NRA is a strongly Republican-aligned organization.Meanwhile, the supreme court, in a 6-3 decision, struck down an appeals court ruling giving Danny Lee Jones a new sentencing hearing in a death penalty case in Arizona. The conservative supermajority decided that errors in Jones’s legal defense, in the case Thornell v Jones, did not justify him having a chance at resentencing.The supreme court just scheduled its next opinion release day.The court is expected to issue more decisions on Thursday, 6 June. Among the pending cases is Donald Trump’s claim of immunity from prosecution over trying to overturn the 2020 election, and two lawsuits related to abortion access. More - in US Politics
Alito refuses to step aside from Trump supreme court cases amid flag scandal
Justice Samuel Alito is rejecting calls to step aside from supreme court cases involving the former president Donald Trump and January 6 defendants because of the controversy over flags that flew over his homes.In letters to members of Congress on Wednesday, Alito says his wife was responsible for flying an upside-down US flag over his home in 2021 and an “Appeal to Heaven” flag at his New Jersey beach house last year.Neither incident merits his recusal, he wrote.“I am therefore duty-bound to reject your recusal request,” he wrote.The court is considering two major cases related to the 6 January 2021 attack by a mob of Trump supporters on the Capitol, including charges faced by the rioters and whether the former president has immunity from prosecution on election interference charges.Alito has rejected calls from Democrats in the past to recuse on other issues.The New York Times reported that an inverted American flag was seen at Alito’s home in Alexandria, Virginia, less than two weeks after the attack on the Capitol.The paper also reported that an “Appeal to Heaven” flag was flown outside the justice’s beach home in New Jersey last summer. Both flags were carried by rioters who violently stormed the Capitol in January 2021 echoing Trump’s false claims of election fraud.Alito said he was unaware that the upside-down flag was flying above his house until it was called to his attention. “As soon as I saw it, I asked my wife to take it down, but for several days, she refused,” he wrote in nearly identical letters to Democrats in the House and Senate.Trump praised Alito’s rebuff of demands for his recusal, posting on his Truth Social account that the rightwing justice had showed “INTELLIGENCE, COURAGE, and ‘GUTS’”. Writing as he waited for the jury to return its verdict at his criminal hush-money trial in New York, Trump added: “All US Judges, Justices and Leaders should have such GRIT”.Alito’s flat-out refusal to address doubts about his impartiality in the wake of the flags scandal underlines the weakness of the supreme court’s current ethical guidelines. Following a public outcry over undeclared luxury trips and other gifts that had been received by Alito and his fellow hard-right justice Clarence Thomas, the court was forced to adopt its first ethics code last November.To the dismay of advocates of judicial reform, however, the code contained no enforcement provision. Individual justices are left to their own devices to decide whether or not they should recuse from cases in which there might be an appearance or reality of conflict of interest or impartiality.Thomas has also been accused of conflict of interest after he became the only vote on the court to oppose the release of digital communications to the congressional committee investigating the January 6 insurrection. It later transpired that the stash of documents included emails between Thomas’s wife, the conservative activist Ginni Thomas, and Trump’s then top White House aide Mark Meadows over how to block Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.The lack of response from either Thomas or Alito to the welter of criticism over their ethical positions is starting to attract the attention of Congress.In an opinion article in the New York Times, Jamie Raskin, the Democratic Congress member from Maryland who led the second impeachment trial of Trump, said that it was “unfathomable that the two justices could get away with deciding for themselves whether they can be impartial in ruling on cases affecting Donald Trump’s liability for crimes he is accused of committing on January 6”.Raskin proposed a solution to the conundrum: the US justice department could petition the other seven justices on the nine-member supreme court under the federal recusal statute to require Alito and Thomas to recuse themselves in the January 6 cases. “The supreme court cannot disregard this law just because it directly affects one or two of its justices,” Raskin wrote.Democratic leaders in the US Senate are also pressuring the court to take more robust action. The Senate judiciary chairman, Dick Durbin, and fellow committee member Sheldon Whitehouse have written to the chief justice, John Roberts, asking for a meeting to discuss what he was proposing to do about Alito’s refusal to recuse himself.The Associated Press contributed to this report More
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‘Heads, we win; tails, you lose’: how rightwing hush-money trial coverage boosts Trump
Donald Trump has retained much of his political support amid his ongoing hush-money trial in part due to a combination of the courtroom’s ban on cameras and conservative media echoing his claims that both the prosecutor and judge are corrupt, media analysts say.The experts suggest that the former president could retain political support on the right even if the jury determines he is guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records related to his reimbursements to Michael Cohen for a payment to Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential campaign.Conservative media like Fox News, Newsmax and One America News Network are “running a sort of ‘heads, we win; tails, you lose’ play”, said Matt Gertz, a senior fellow at Media Matters for America, a leftwing advocacy group. They are portraying the trial as a “witch-hunt ginned up by Joe Biden, and obviously because of that”, they say “he will be found not guilty, but at the same time, they are arguing that if he is found guilty, it will be because the jury and the judge are partisan and corrupt”.The trial in New York concerns one of four criminal indictments Trump faces, but will probably be the only one that concludes before the November election.As of this month, Trump leads Biden in several recent polls.A camera ban in the Manhattan courtroom is hardly unique to the Trump hush-money case. In the US, only the District of Columbia is more restrictive than New York in terms of allowing audio-visual coverage of court proceedings, among 48 jurisdictions reviewed in a report by the Fund for Modern Courts. And a shortage of in-house visuals means the public has to rely on courtroom sketches and secondhand accounts of what occurred during trial proceedings.“You know the saying, ‘The camera never blinks,’ I think if you just had a fixed camera in the courtroom, it wouldn’t interpret; it would just be what is in front of the camera,” said Howard Polskin, president of The Righting, a newsletter and website that monitors conservative media.Both Polksin and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a University of Pennsylvania communications professor and director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, which publishes Factcheck.org, contrasted coverage of the Trump trial with that of the OJ Simpson murder trial in 1995. The judge allowed live camera coverage of the courtroom, and the case captivated the nation.“When we are actually observing something, we are making judgments in the moment that are potentially very powerful in shaping perceptions,” said Jamieson. “When someone recounts something to us, the effect is less vivid, less immediate.”Since a retelling makes for less dramatic content than photos and videos of, for example, recent protests on college campuses concerning the war in Gaza, analysts said that cable news networks – particularly Fox News – have devoted less time to it.From 15 April to 17 May, Fox News mentioned the trial about half as much as CNN and MSNBC, according to calculations provided by Roger Macdonald of the Internet Archive TV News in a Politico report.During the first week of the trial, 55% of Americans said that they were not closely following or not watching it at all, according to a poll from the PBS NewsHour, NPR and Marist.“It’s Christmas in May for Trump,” Polskin said. “It was a gift for Trump that there were no cameras in the courtroom. I think there would have been a lot more coverage on both left, right and mainstream if that were the case.”That void then provided more space for Trump to shape the narrative, Jamieson said.Trump has repeatedly ignored a gag order imposed by Judge Juan Merchan in March after the former president attacked people including the judge, the judge’s daughter, Cohen, the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, and members of the jury.On his social media platform Truth Social, Trump has shared posts in which he quoted the Fox News host Jesse Watters describing potential jurors as “undercover liberal activists” and a New York Post story that labeled Cohen a “serial perjurer”.While Trump refrained from violating the order in recent weeks of the trial, high-profile supporters have instead leveled similar charges outside the courtroom. Sean Hannity and other cable news hosts followed suit.“Tonight, as your mentally vacant president shuffles through the halls of the White House in his maximum-stability sneakers, lawyers and bureaucrats in the Democratic Party – they are hard at work,” Hannity said at the start of his Fox News show on 21 May. “You see, they are determined to get Donald Trump by any means necessary and are using America’s system of justice as a political weapon.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHannity also hosted legal analysts such as Gregg Jarrett and Alan Dershowitz, who have described it as a “corrupt case” and called Stormy Daniels a “shakedown artist”.Trump later repeated such assertions when he spoke outside the courtroom.“There is a kind of feedback loop that happens between Fox News and Trump’s public-facing legal commentary in which he is quoting figures like [Jarrett and Dershowitz] and then saying, ‘This is what all the experts are saying,’ just the experts [are] from Fox News,” Gertz said.Fox News, Newsmax and One America News Network have also frequently described the criminal charges against Trump as “lawfare” committed by Democrats. (And it’s not just the cable news personalities – Hannity quoted the film-maker Oliver Stone, who described the lawfare as a “new form of warfare”.)The goal, Polskin said, was to convey that the trial is “completely politically motivated”.Still, is it possible that rather than Fox News devoting too little time to the trial, CNN and MSNBC are devoting too much time to it?The Daily Show host Jon Stewart critiqued the media for its coverage of events at the start of trial, such as the former president driving from Trump Tower to the courtroom. During the 2016 presidential election, networks drew big ratings by airing his rallies live and uninterrupted and later faced criticism for giving the candidate free airtime.“Perhaps if we limit the coverage to the issues at hand and try not to create an all-encompassing spectacle of the most banal of details. Perhaps that would help,” Stewart said of the early trial coverage.On whether CNN and MSNBC were again spending too much time on Trump, Jamieson said: “The question always is, what else is in the news agenda? And as a result, what aren’t you covering? We are in a relatively quiet period legislatively in the United States, so it’s hard to make the argument that there is some big major story that’s being downplayed.”Gertz, of Media Matters for America, points out that Trump has spent the last nine years engaged in a cycle of saying and doing shocking things, followed by rightwing media hosts and pundits condemning backlash against Trump as unfair, so their handling of the trial is not particularly novel.“They know that every alleged infraction or crime committed by Trump is an opportunity for them to prove that they are onboard with the Maga movement and with Trump specifically,” he explained, “by loudly saying that he did nothing wrong and that his pursuers are in fact the real criminals.” More
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Samuel Alito’s wife claimed upside-down flag was ‘international sign of distress’
The wife of US supreme court justice Samuel Alito reportedly justified the display of an upside-down American flag at the couple’s home by saying it was “an international signal of distress”, as senior Democrats have requested a meeting with the chief justice over the growing scandal.Martha-Ann Alito made the comments to a Washington Post reporter, the outlet reported on Saturday, when the journalist visited the couple’s Virginia home in January 2021, not long after the attack on the US Capitol by extremist supporters of Donald Trump.She reportedly told the Washington Post at the time that the flag had been run up their flagpole in that way in response to a neighborhood dispute.Flying the Stars and Stripes flag upside down is acceptable as a rare distress signal, according to the official US flag code. But these days it is more often associated with activists making an extremist sign of protest, and at the time of the January 6 insurrection it had been adopted by some on the far right amid efforts, ultimately unsuccessful, to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory over Trump.The Washington Post report said on Saturday, quoting the outlet’s own spokesperson, that “the Post decided not to report on the episode at the time because the flag-raising appeared to be the work of Martha-Ann Alito, rather than the justice, and connected to a dispute with her neighbors … It was not clear then that the argument was rooted in politics.”In another twist, it was the New York Times that first reported earlier this week the display of the American flag in that fashion at the Alitos’ residence in early 2021, during a political row with neighbors.That was swiftly followed by a second report from the Times that another flag, one originally associated with the American revolution but now associated with the far right and known as the “Appeal to Heaven” flag, was flying last year above a holiday home of the Alitos in New Jersey.View image in fullscreenTwo leading Democratic senators are requesting a meeting with the supreme court chief justice, John Roberts, in the wake of these reports. This comes on top of calls demanding that Justice Alito recuse himself from election-related cases before the court and face investigation by the US Senate, the congressional chamber that confirms federal and supreme court judges.The Senate judiciary committee chair, Dick Durbin, and the senator and judiciary committee member Sheldon Whitehouse wrote a letter to Roberts earlier this week asking him for a meeting to discuss court ethics and to take steps to ensure that Alito recuses himself from any cases before the court concerning the January 6 attack or Trump’s attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat.The court did not respond to a request for comment regarding the letter.The court is considering two major cases related to the Capitol attack, including one related to charges faced by the rioters and another on whether Trump has immunity from prosecution on election interference charges. Alito is participating in both cases and has rejected calls from Democrats in the past to recuse himself on other issues.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAlito earlier said he had no part in the flying of the inverted American flag. He and the court declined to respond to requests for comment on how the “Appeal to Heaven” banner came to be flying and what it was intended to express.Durbin and Whitehouse said they will continue to pressure the court. The plea for a meeting is a new approach after Roberts declined to testify at a hearing on supreme court ethics last year, amid a scandal over accusations of political influence and corruption aimed at Alito and Clarence Thomas, the two most conservative justices on the supreme court bench.“Until the court and the judicial conference take meaningful action to address this ongoing ethical crisis, we will continue our efforts to enact legislation to resolve this crisis,” Durbin and Whitehouse wrote.The American Legion US flag code states of the Stars and Stripes that “the flag should never be displayed with the union down, except as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property”.The Associated Press contributed reporting More
