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      Trump’s son Donald Jr to testify at real estate fraud trial in New York

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      Donald Trump’s eldest son will take the stand today at the New York civil fraud trial surrounding the former president’s business empire.Donald Trump Jr, a defendant in the case alongside his father, is set to testify as the judge considers whether the Trump Organization and its top executives lied about the value of its properties.Both Don Jr and his brother Eric – executive vice-presidents at the company – are due to be questioned in court this week. Donald Trump, a former president, is expected to testify next week, before his daughter, Ivanka, who is not a defendant in the case, is set to appear.In an interview with Newsmax on Monday, Don Jr claimed the “mainstream media, the people in [Washington] DC … want to throw Trump in jail for a thousand years and/or the death penalty. Truly sick stuff, but this is why we fight.”Judge Arthur Engoron has already ruled that Trump and his family business committed fraud. Engoron is using this trial – focused on remaining claims of conspiracy, insurance fraud and falsifying business records – to decide on punishment.The $250m fraud case against the former president, his eldest sons and other Trump executives has been brought by the office of the New York attorney general, Letitia James.The trial is a bench trial, with no jury. Engoron is presiding over the case, and will be the sole decider. Because this is a civil trial, Trump will not be sent to prison if found guilty. While he is not required to appear in court, he has on several occasions, including for last week’s testimony by Michael Cohen, his former fixer.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionEngoron imposed a gag order on Trump after he criticised the judge’s law clerk on social media. He has since fined the former president twice: first $5,000 after the offending post remained online, and then $10,000 for comments outside the court last week that he concluded amounted to a further attack. More

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      Democrats plan to subpoena Leonard Leo over perks to supreme court justices

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      Senate Democrats plan to subpoena Republican mega-donor Harlan Crow and conservative activist Leonard Leo to quiz them about their roles in organizing and paying for lavish perks for justices on the hard-right wing of the US supreme court.The announcement by Democrats on the Senate judiciary committee came on Monday amid a storm of controversy that has blown up in recent months about conservative justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito not only accepting but also not disclosing free travel and other luxury favors provided or facilitated by influential public figures.The supreme court is now being pressed to adopt an ethics code – a move that has been publicly endorsed by three of the nine justices amid the rows about ethical controversies, including the risks of outside influence corrupting the court.The committee could act as soon as next week to authorize Illinois senator Dick Durbin, the panel’s chairman, to issue subpoenas to Crow, Leo and another wealthy donor, Robin Arkley II.Crow has been identified as a benefactor of associate justice Clarence Thomas for more than two decades, paying for nearly annual vacations, purchasing from Thomas and others the Georgia home in which the justice’s mother still lives, and helping pay for the private schooling for a relative.Leo, an executive of the Federalist Society, the powerful Washington-based conservative and libertarian advocacy group, worked with former US president Donald Trump to move the court and the rest of the federal judiciary to the right by nominating ultra-conservative judges.And Arkley helped arrange and pay for a private jet trip to Alaska for Justice Alito in 2008.Arkley and Leo have refused to cooperate with the committee’s investigation of the justices’ largely undisclosed private travel, the committee said.Crow “offered to produce certain limited information that fell well short of what the Committee needs and to which it is entitled”, Durbin and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, said in a joint statement.In a statement after Durbin’s announcement, Crow’s office called the subpoena politically motivated and said Crow had offered information to the committee.“It’s clear this is nothing more than a stunt aimed at undermining a sitting supreme court justice for ideological and political purposes,” the statement said.Leo voiced a similar objection. “I will not bow to the vile and disgusting liberal McCarthyism that seeks to destroy the supreme court simply because it follows the constitution rather than their political agenda,” Leo said in a statement.In July, the Senate judiciary panel approved legislation that would force the justices to abide by stronger ethics standards. The bill would set ethics rules for the court and a process to enforce them, including new standards for transparency around recusals, gifts and potential conflicts of interest.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe bill has little chance of passage in the closely divided Senate. Republicans have united against it, saying it could “destroy” the court. And Republicans control the House of Representatives, further providing a block on Democratic led legislation.Apart from the judiciary committee, Democrats on the Senate finance committee issued the results of their separate probe of the $267,000 loan that enabled Thomas to buy a luxury, 40-ft motorcoach in 1999. The committee found that the loan, made by longtime friend Anthony Welters, appears to have been largely if not totally forgiven after Thomas made payments of interest, only, over nine years.Durbin and Whitehouse put out a statement which said: “The Supreme Court is in an ethical crisis of its own making. Thanks to investigative reporting, we now know that for decades, some justices have been joining billionaires with business before the Court on their private planes and yachts or receiving gifts … the justices have enabled their wealthy benefactors and other individuals … to gain private access to the justices while preventing public scrutiny of this conduct.”“Due to Crow, Leo, and Arkley’s intransigence, the committee is now forced to seek compulsory process to obtain the information they hold … Durbin will be asking the committee to grant him authorization to issue subpoenas to these individuals. The chief justice could fix this problem today and adopt a binding code of conduct. As long as he refuses to act, the judiciary committee will.”
      The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      Trump fake elector scheme: where do seven states’ investigations stand?

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      As Donald Trump faces criminal charges in multiple cases across the country, several states are still investigating a scheme created by Trump allies and boosted by Trump himself to cast fake electoral votes for the Republican candidate for the 2020 election.As part of the US electoral college system, states cast a set number of votes for the candidate who wins the popular vote in their state, the winner of which then takes the presidency. Seven states that the former president lost saw slates of fake GOP electors falsely claim Trump had won their electoral votes. These fake electors included high-profile Republicans, such as sitting officeholders and state party leaders.Two prosecutors, in Michigan and Georgia, have already filed charges against fake electors. Others have confirmed investigations but provided few details. One state prosecutor said local laws did not address this kind of crime, which is unprecedented.Kenneth Chesebro, a Trump campaign legal adviser and the supposed mastermind of the fake electors scheme, pleaded guilty in Georgia over his role in subverting the election. Chesebro allegedly created the plan in a secret memo based on Wisconsin’s electoral vote.At the federal level, the special counsel Jack Smith and his team brought charges against Trump and his allies over their attempts to overturn the 2020 election results, which include the fake elector scheme. Several states have confirmed they are cooperating with Smith’s investigation, and news reports have indicated Smith offered limited immunity to some fake electors for their testimony.Since the scheme had no precedent, some states and experts have struggled to figure out which laws may have been broken, and whether the charges should be state or federal. In some states, the fake electors also face civil lawsuits. Here’s where they stand.ArizonaThe former Arizona attorney general Mark Brnovich, a Republican, never publicly confirmed any investigation into the state’s fake electors, which included high-profile far-right figures such as the state senator Jake Hoffman and the former Arizona GOP chair Kelli Ward. The state actually saw two separate sets of fake electors.His successor, the Democrat Kris Mayes, told the Guardian earlier this year that her office is investigating the fake electors, but has not provided any details of the investigation so far. On a recent Arizona Republic podcast episode, Mayes said she could not say much about the contours of the investigation, but that her office was taking it “very seriously” and that it was a “very important investigation”.While the cases in Michigan and Georgia are much further along, she noted that their prosecutors have been in place much longer than she has. Mayes took office in January 2023.GeorgiaThree fake electors in Georgia were charged as part of a broader case against Trump and his allies over election subversion attempts.The Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, brought charges against the former Georgia Republican party chairman David Shafer, the state senator Shawn Still and the activist Cathy Latham, three of the 16 fake electors from that state. They face various charges, including forgery, impersonating a public officer and attempting to file false documents.Several of the others who signed on as false electors for Trump struck immunity deals or plea agreements with prosecutors.The three fake electors charged have pleaded not guilty. Their attorneys argued in September that they were not fake electors, but instead “contingent” electors who could be used should the courts overturn Biden’s win, the Associated Press reported. The three are trying to get their case moved from state court in Georgia to a federal court, arguing they were acting as federal officers who were keeping an avenue open for Trump depending on what happened in the courts.Sidney Powell, who was charged in the broader case, pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with the prosecution. The unexpected move netted Powell six years of probation and some fines and marks a major shift in the Georgia case for Trump and his allies. Chesebro, on the day jury selection for his trial was set to begin, pleaded guilty to a felony charge of conspiracy to commit filing false documents and probably will serve five years’ probation.MichiganThe Democratic attorney general Dana Nessel charged 16 Michiganders who participated as fake electors with eight felonies each, including multiple forgery charges, for their roles in the scheme. Those charged include party activists, candidates for office and state and local party officials.Attempts by two defendants to get the charges dismissed because of Nessel’s comments about how the electors were “brainwashed” were unsuccessful. The 16 people charged pleaded not guilty, and probable cause hearings are set for this month.This week, one of Michigan’s fake electors saw his charges dropped as part of a deal with the state’s attorney general. James Renner, a Republican who falsely signed that Trump had won, agreed to “full cooperation, truthful testimony and production of any and all relevant documents” in exchange for the dropped charges, filings from the attorney general’s office, obtained by NBC News, show. This includes information about how he was asked to become part of the fake slate and the circumstances of meetings among those involved in the scheme.NevadaNevada’s top prosecutor has said his office would not bring charges against the six people who signed on as fake electors there in 2020. The state’s Democratic attorney general, Aaron Ford, said current state laws did not address this kind of situation, “to the dismay of some, and I’m sure, to the delight of others”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Democratic state senator Skip Daly attempted to solve that problem, and the state legislature passed a bill that would have made it a felony for people to serve as false electors, punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Ford had endorsed the bill.But the Republican governor, Joe Lombardo, vetoed the bill, saying the penalties were too harsh, though he said he believed those who undermine elections should face “strict punishments”.New MexicoThe former New Mexico attorney general Hector Balderas started an investigation into the five Republicans who signed as false electors there, then referred the matter to federal prosecutors, according to Source New Mexico.The office of the current attorney general, Raúl Torrez, confirmed there was an active state investigation into the fake electors to see if they violated state law, but details about the case have been scant. Torrez’s office said it would work with Jack Smith to get any evidence related to a state inquiry, according to KOAT Action News.Like Pennsylvania, the fake electors in New Mexico included a caveat in their documents that could help them, should charges be filed. They wrote that they signed the documents “on the understanding that it might be later determined that we are the duly elected and qualified electors”.PennsylvaniaThe 20 fake electors in Pennsylvania are unlikely to face any criminal charges because of how they worded the documents they signed. The documents say the false electoral votes would only be considered valid if the courts deemed the slate to be the “duly elected and qualified electors” for Pennsylvania.Governor Josh Shapiro, then the state’s Democratic attorney general, said the hedged language would spare the false electors from a criminal investigation by his office. His successor as attorney general, Michelle Henry, told Votebeat that the office’s position remained that charges were not warranted.“Though their rhetoric and policy were intentionally misleading and purposefully damaging to our democracy, based on our initial review, our office does not believe this meets the legal standards for forgery,” Shapiro said in 2022.WisconsinThe Democratic attorney general, Josh Kaul, has not said whether his office is investigating the state’s 10 fake electors for potential state law violations, though a civil lawsuit against the alternate slate is moving forward. Kaul has said he supports the federal investigation and that he expects to see “further developments” in that case.Governor Tony Evers, a Democrat, said in August he wanted to see the Wisconsin fake electors “held accountable” via prosecution.“What those ten fake electors did was wrong,” Evers wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “People have to be held accountable for that, and I hope to hell somebody does.”Federal prosecutors, in the Trump indictment, said the fake electors scheme started in Wisconsin with the attorney Kenneth Chesebro, who suggested electors meet there to sign on to a slate in case Trump’s team won in the courts. More

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      US supreme court allows delay in redrawing Louisiana map that dilutes Black voters’ power

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      The US supreme court said on Thursday it would not immediately lift a lower court’s order blocking a judge from holding a hearing to consider a new congressional map for Louisiana that increases the power of Black voters. The decision could mean that Black voters in Louisiana will have to vote under a map that has been found to illegally weaken their votes for a second time.The decision, which had no noted dissents, is the latest step in an increasingly complex legal battle over Louisiana’s congressional maps. A federal judge last year ordered the state to redraw its six districts to add a second district where Black voters could elect a candidate of their choice. Black voters currently represent about a third of Louisiana’s population but have a majority in just one district.The US supreme court put that decision on hold while it considered a similar case from Alabama. After the court upheld a ruling requiring Alabama to redraw its maps in June, it allowed the Louisiana case to move forward.In a highly unusual move, a split three-judge panel from the US court of appeals for the fifth circuit issued an order in late September blocking a judge from holding a hearing on a remedial map. The two highly conservative judges in the majority, Edith Jones and James Ho, said the lower judge had not given Louisiana Republicans enough of a chance to defend themselves or prepare a legally compliant map.The challengers in the case immediately appealed to the US supreme court, warning that putting off the hearing could mean that Louisiana might not get a new congressional map until after the 2024 election. Such a ruling would mean that Black voters in the state would have to be subject to two federal elections under maps that illegally weakened their votes.“The writ issued by the panel risks injecting chaos into the 2024 election cycle by leaving in place a preliminary injunction barring use of the map the legislature adopted in 2022, while casting doubt on whether or when a lawful remedial map can be promptly developed and implemented,” lawyers for the challengers wrote.Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, part of the liberal wing on the US supreme court, wrote a concurring opinion saying that the court’s decision not to get involved should not be seen as condoning the decision from the fifth circuit panel “in these or similar circumstances”.She also noted that she understood the panel’s ruling to halt proceedings until Louisiana had had an opportunity to draw its own maps. The state, she noted, had conceded in a court filing that it would not draw maps while the case was pending, clearing the lower court to “presumably resume the remedial process” while the full fifth circuit considered an appeal of the case.Michael Li, a redistricting expert at the Brennan Center for Justice, noted that Louisiana won’t hold its congressional primaries until November 2024, so there should still be plenty of time to hold a full trial on the maps and get new ones in place before then. “The real question is whether any appeals after that trial mean that the redrawing gets put on hold pending appeals,” he wrote in an email.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionStephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas, said the supreme court’s ruling made it “somewhat less likely” there would be a new map before 2024, but added: “It’s still a real possibility that there’ll be a new map in time.”In addition to Alabama and Louisiana, observers are closely watching Georgia and Florida, where lawsuits seek to give Black voters a chance to elect their preferred candidate. Because voting in the US south is often racially polarized, any districts designed to give Black voters an opportunity to elect their preferred candidate is likely to benefit Democrats. More

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      Trump’s ex-lawyer Sidney Powell pleads guilty in Georgia election case

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      Former lawyer for then-president Donald Trump Sidney Powell has pleaded guilty in the Georgia election interference case in Fulton county, just days before jury selection for her trial was scheduled to start.The plea agreement has Powell paying a $6,000 fine and $2,700 restitution to the state of Georgia as well as writing an apology letter to the citizens of Georgia, testifying at trial, and serving six years of probation.More details soon … More

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      Trump given limited gag order in criminal case over efforts to overturn 2020 election

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      Donald Trump has been issued a limited gag order by the federal judge overseeing the criminal case over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, prohibiting him from making public statements attacking prosecutors, court staff and potential trial witnesses.The former president was not prohibited from generally disparaging the Biden administration, the US justice department and the trial venue of Washington DC, and will continue to be allowed to allege that the case was politically motivated.Those were the contours of a tailored protective order handed down on Monday by Tanya Chutkan, the US district judge who said she would enter a written ruling at a later date but warned Trump’s lawyers that any violation of the order could lead to immediate punitive sanctions.The ruling was the culmination of a two-hour hearing in federal district court after prosecutors in the office of the special counsel Jack Smith had asked the judge to impose restrictions on Trump’s attacks that they felt could intimidate witnesses – and Chutkan agreed.“There is a real risk that witnesses may be intimidated,” Chutkan said as she explained her decision from the bench, adding that just because Trump was a 2024 presidential candidate and the GOP nomination frontrunner did not give him free rein to “launch a pre-trial smear campaign”.At issue were dozens of public remarks by Trump and Truth Social posts from him disparaging the case since he was indicted in August on charges he conspired to reverse his 2020 election defeat and obstructed the transfer of power, including the January 6 congressional certification.The judge separated into five categories Trump’s inflammatory comments about: the trial venire of Washington DC, the Biden administration and the justice department, Smith and his staff, Chutkan and her staff, as well as people who might be called to testify at trial.Chutkan appeared to have decided that she would not restrict Trump from disparaging the trial venue because biased jurors could be filtered out before trial. She also indicated she would not restrict Trump from attacking the government because it would be within the scope of political speech.But the judge took issue with Trump’s attacks on the special counsel. Chutkan repeatedly asked Trump’s lead lawyer John Lauro why the former president needed to call Smith a “thug” in order to suggest that the criminal case against him was politically motivated.In a contentious moment, Lauro asked rhetorically what Trump was supposed to do “in the face of oppression”. Chutkan sharply raised her finger and instructed him: “Let’s tone this down.”An aggrieved Lauro retorted: “If your honor wants to censor my speech.”The judge also took issue with Trump’s track record of attacking court staff. Chutkan suggested she was less concerned by Trump’s personal attacks on her as an “Obama-appointed hack” but was disturbed by his recent post in his New York civil fraud trial where he disparaged the judge’s clerk.Lauro tried to insist that the New York case was the New York case, and he repeated his assertion that nothing like that happened in this case. Chutkan disputed that claim with an exasperated laugh earlier in the hearing.The judge appeared most unconvinced by the Trump legal team’s contention that the former’s president’s statements against certain potential trial witnesses were not intimidating or might chill other witnesses from testifying against him at trial.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionProsecutors had flagged, among others, attacks on Gen Mark Milley, the former chair of the joint chiefs of staff. “In times gone by,” one post said, “the punishment would have been DEATH! A war between China and the United States could have been the result of this treasonous act. To be continued!”The Trump legal team had argued that prosecutors had no evidence that people like Milley or Trump’s former attorney general William Barr had felt intimidated by the former president’s criticisms of them, adding that they were high-profile public figures who were used to political rhetoric.But Chutkan remained skeptical. She told the Trump legal team that the ex-president, as a criminal defendant, did not have unfettered first amendment rights and did not get to respond to every criticism levelled by Milley or Barr or others.The point was buttressed by the assistant special counsel Molly Gaston who argued to the judge about Trump: “He isn’t campaigning – he’s using his campaign to intimidate witnesses and pollute the jury pool.”Before Chutkan finally made her decision, she ran through a list of four hypothetical Trump statements that she had drawn up. She asked Lauro to say whether he thought the statements violated the conditions of Trump’s release conditions about intimidation or should be permissible generally.The hypotheticals included one about if “Barr was a slimy liar”. Lauro responded half-jokingly he did not want to say that the truth was a defense but insisted that it was not intimidating.Chutkan appeared to disagree and suggested it impermissibly cast doubt on Barr’s testimony. More

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      The US supreme court is facing a crisis of legitimacy | Steven Greenhouse

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      Donald Trump’s rightwing appointees to the US supreme court have insisted that they’re neither “politicians in robes” nor “partisan hacks”, but many Americans strongly disagree about that, and that’s a major factor behind the court’s extraordinary crisis of legitimacy. With the court lurching to the right in recent years, three in four Americans say it has become “too politicized”, according to a recent poll, while just 49% say they have “trust and confidence” in the court, a sharp decline from 80% when Bill Clinton was president.As the supreme court’s new term begins this week, it should be no surprise that many Americans are questioning the court’s legitimacy considering all of the following. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito have taken lavish favors from rightwing billionaires with business before the court and then failed to disclose those favors. The court’s conservative majority has often served as a partisan battering ram to advance the Republican party’s electoral fortunes. Mitch McConnell brazenly stole a supreme court seat from Merrick Garland to preserve the court’s rightwing majority. Not stopping there, McConnell and the Republican-led Senate raced to ram through Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation even after voting had started for the 2020 election.Many ethics experts say Thomas and Alito – supposed guardians of the law – violated ethics laws by failing to disclose the luxurious favors they took from billionaires. Adding to the overall stench, the court still hasn’t adopted an ethics code and acts as if the extravagant favors Thomas and Alito received are in no way a problem. Dismayed by the court’s ethical lapses, 40 watchdog groups have called on Chief Justice Roberts to require Thomas and Alito to recuse themselves in cases with links to their billionaire donor friends.Among many Americans, there’s a growing sense that the Roberts court, with its 6-3 hard-right supermajority, is irrevocably broken. Prominent critics say the conservative justices too often act like partisan activists eager to impose their personal preferences, whether by banning affirmative action at universities, overturning gun regulations or torpedoing President Joe Biden’s plan to forgive student loans.Concerns about the court’s legitimacy multiplied after it issued the blockbuster Dobbs decision overturning Roe v Wade and women’s right to choose. With nearly two-thirds of voters believing that Roe was correctly decided, many Americans complained that the court’s conservatives, in toppling Roe, were imposing their personal religious views on society.On one hand, the justices can assert they have legitimacy – they were duly nominated by a president and confirmed by the Senate. But on the other hand, using other democratic measures, the court seems squarely illegitimate. One might say the conservative supermajority is the product of counter-majoritarianism cubed. First, four of the six right-wing justices were nominated by presidents elected with a minority of the popular vote, and second, they were confirmed by Senators who represented a minority of the nation’s population. Third, these hard-right justices are often deeply out of synch with a majority of the public. They’re far more opposed to abortion rights, business regulations, labor unions and government measures that advance economic and social justice.Back in 1982 when I graduated from law school, many people thought the Rehnquist court was too conservative, but no one questioned its legitimacy. But then came the Bush v Gore ruling in which the conservative majority exerted its muscle in an extraordinary partisan fashion to deliver victory in the 2000 election to George W Bush – and thereby assure continued conservative control of the court.At his confirmation hearing, John Roberts famously said he would merely call balls and strikes as chief justice. But that statement has proven to be flatly untrue, an unfortunate curveball. As chief justice, Roberts has repeatedly gone far beyond calling balls and strikes, often in rulings that increased the Republican’s chances of winning elections. In Citizens United, Roberts engineered an atom bomb of a decision that blew up our campaign finance system and overturned century-old rules that sought to prevent corporations and the mega-rich from having undue sway over our politics and government. In Citizens United, the Roberts court did grievous damage to our democracy, helping transform our nation into a plutocracy where billionaires’ money dwarfs the voices of average Americans.Roberts also led the way in overturning a pivotal part of the Voting Rights Act that required Alabama, South Carolina and other states with a dismal history of racial discrimination to obtain pre-clearance from the federal government before they changed voting rules. Showing how out of touch he was with political realities, Roberts wrote a majority decision that essentially said that racial discrimination on voting matters was a thing of the past and that pre-clearance unduly interfered in those states’ internal affairs, despite their disturbing legacy of racism. That decision was one of supreme judicial arrogance, overturning a law that the Senate passed 98 to 0 and the House passed 390 to 33 to extend the Voting Rights Act for 25 years.Roberts handed the Republicans another huge victory when he led the court in turning a blind eye to egregious gerrymandering. In doing so, Roberts gave a green light to brazen gerrymanders and minority rule, like that in Wisconsin where in a recent election, the Republican party won nearly two-thirds of state assembly seats even though its candidates received just 46% of the vote. The supreme court is supposed to safeguard America’s democracy for the ages, and we should all question the legitimacy of a court that in decision after decision has eroded our democracy in a way that favors one political party. (I should note that Roberts, embarrassed by the court’s headlong lurch to the right, recently sought to shore up the court’s flagging legitimacy by mustering a 5-4 majority to overturn an Alabama voting map that diluted Blacks’ voting power.)Clarence Thomas’s corrupt behavior has raised concerns about the court’s legitimacy to new heights. As ProPublica reported, not only did rightwing billionaire Harlan Crow provide Thomas with a free nine-day yacht vacation in Indonesia, but Crow has ferried him around on private jets, purchased properties belonging to Thomas and his relatives and paid private school tuition for a grandnephew Thomas was raising. Separately, Thomas was flown to California to be the star attraction at a far-right Koch network fundraising weekend. Flouting ethics laws, Thomas disclosed none of this.Thomas seems to see a judge’s lifetime tenure as a license to skirt ethics and disclosure laws as well as a lifetime pass to take lavish favors from whomever he wants, even people with cases before the supreme court. As for Alito, he didn’t disclose that billionaire Paul Singer, who later had cases before the supreme court, paid for his luxury fishing trip to Alaska.For decades, the nation’s law schools have taught aspiring lawyers about the importance of judicial restraint and humility, of not overreaching. At a time when so many Americans are questioning the court’s legitimacy, the court should try all the harder to act with restrain and humility – and caution. Instead, the conservative supermajority, enamored with its power, seems intent on acting boldly and overreaching to stamp its rightwing vision on our constitutional order. These unelected justices seem happy to hobble our democratically elected president, in ways large and small, and in doing so, to dangerously undermine our democracy.
      Steven Greenhouse is an American labor and workplace journalist and writer More

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      As Trump’s presidential chances get better, his legal and financial woes get worse | Lloyd Green

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      Donald Trump laps the Republican field and leads Joe Biden, but the judiciary is unimpressed. Since Tuesday, the 45th president went zero-for-three in New York and DC courtrooms. After all the smoke cleared, his financial assets and personal freedom remain in jeopardy.On Monday, his latest trial begins in Manhattan. He and his adult sons face civil fraud charges. Last Tuesday a New York trial judge found that Trump had defrauded his lenders and insurers. In hindsight, The Art of the Deal bordered on the art of the steal.Earlier in the week, Arthur F Engoron, a state trial judge, reviewed the evidence and determined that Trump had committed fraud. Engoron held that the annual financial statements that Trump had submitted to lenders and insurers “clearly contain fraudulent valuations that defendants used in business”.As a real estate developer, Trump both overvalued and undervalued assets when it suited him, according to the court. He exaggerated his net worth to the tune of billions of dollars. In hindsight, the students at Trump University were not alone. All were fair game in Trump’s eyes.In his decision, Engoron essentially determined that no further trial was needed to ascertain that Trump had illicitly obtained favorable terms on his company’s loans and insurance. “The documents here clearly contain fraudulent valuations that defendants used in business, satisfying [the attorney general’s] burden to establish liability as a matter of law against defendants,” Engoron wrote in a 35-page decision.“The documents do not say what they say; that there is no such thing as ‘objective’ value … ” the judge wrote, characterizing Trump’s arguments. “Essentially, the court should not believe its own eyes.” That did not happen.The decision could ultimately cost Trump his brand. Business certificates of the Trump Organization and other Trump subsidiaries will be cancelled, ditto certificates of companies owned by Trump and his two older sons. In addition, defendants could face up to $250m in penalties.The Trumps aren’t known for their liquidity. Bankruptcies dot their companies’ landscapes.In July 2016, the Guardian reported that a statement filed to the Securities and Exchange Commission by Wells Fargo Securities on Trump’s behalf in 2012 indicated that the real estate developer was then worth roughly only $4.2bn with comparatively few liquid assets, pegged at more than $250m.To be sure, that is a lot of money, but a bit on the low side given Trump’s present legal crush. Indeed, in a lawsuit Trump brought against the journalist Tim O’Brien for raising the possibility that he was not a billionaire, Trump acknowledged that his asset valuations were not objective measures.“You said that the net worth goes up and down based upon your own feelings?” Trump was asked in a deposition.“Yes, even my own feelings, as to where the world is going, and that can change rapidly from day to day,” he replied.On the campaign trail in 2016, Trump has touted a net worth north of $10bn.Still, Tuesday’s ruling wasn’t the final word. Things grew worse on Thursday when an intermediate appellate court refused to bar the case from proceeding to trial. “It is ordered that the motion for a stay of trial is denied,” the order read.One day earlier, Tanya Chutkan, the judge presiding over the special counsel’s election interference case, had refused to disqualify herself. The basis of that unsuccessful motion was Team Trump elevating Chutkan’s characterization of positions taken in separate January 6 cases as her own views.“The court has never taken the position the defense ascribes to it, that former ‘President Trump should be prosecuted and imprisoned,’” Chutkan stated.It is unlikely that any of these developments will impact Republican primary voters or the Republican field. Since Trump was first indicted in late March, his popularity among Republicans has only grown. At the same time, his leading rivals won’t raise his legal woes as an issue. They know the base wouldn’t stand for it.Ron DeSantis, Tim Scott, Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy have internalized that the Republican party’s machinery belongs to Trump. When news broke in March of Trump’s indictment, Florida’s governor reflexively rushed to his defense. In the moment, he accused Alvin Bragg, Manhattan’s district attorney, of pushing an “un-American” political “agenda”.DeSantis also stood ready to fight Trump’s extradition to New York, a meaningless gesture. Trump voluntarily surrendered days later.These days, there is nothing they can do other than bleat like sheep and wait. Even Brian Kemp, Georgia’s governor and Trump nemesis, knows the score. He pledged to back Trump if he is the Republican nominee. The self-abasement continues.
      Lloyd Green is an attorney in New York and served in the US Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992 More