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      Student and Teacher, Moving Up Together

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      More from our inbox:Trump LackeysDon’t Call Them ‘Conservative’Precious Views: Saving the Skyline of New York Katy FreemanTo the Editor:Re “Kids Benefit From Having One Teacher Twice,” by Adam Grant (Opinion guest essay, Oct. 24):Dr. Grant is right on target on the value of “looping” for kids and teachers who stay with them for a grade or more. In my dissertation research on middle-school teacher teams, I found that the most effective team was one that followed the same group of students for three years.As the teachers explained, when they had students for just one year, they could blame the shortcomings of students on their previous teachers. After three years, they knew they should be able to show significant results for all their kids.One other advantage of looping was creating a more cohesive professional community; after a couple of years away from a particular grade’s curriculum, teachers reached out to colleagues to learn from their more recent experience with that grade.A win-win for everyone, and especially the students whom teachers never gave up on and built strong relations with over these years.Rick GordonJackson, Wyo.The writer was the founding director of the Compass School in Vermont.To the Editor:Adam Grant’s advocacy for “looping” in education is a compelling invitation to deepen teacher-student relationships and nurture personalized learning. But as a high school junior, I find myself grappling with this idea.Although looping’s promise is enticing, I’m concerned that it might inadvertently constrain students’ ability to adapt, leaving us ill prepared for our future.High school has been an essential stage of transformation for me, marked by an ever-shifting landscape of diverse experiences, teaching styles and perspectives. I’m concerned that looping, which emphasizes a personalized relationship with a single teacher, may curtail the range of experiences essential for nurturing adaptability.This quality, vital for future success in both college and the work force, is arguably honed through adapting to various teaching styles and methods that diverse teachers bring. In an era that demands versatile skills, we should recognize the value of a variety of experiences in education.Taiki YamauchiAlexandria, Va.To the Editor:As an elementary-school teacher who did “loop” a kindergarten to first-grade class, I agree with Adam Grant in his praise for the practice. Knowing where your students left off and where you could begin was a big improvement over the mystery that would commonly occur with a new class.In addition to the benefit to academics, there were the friendships that could continue in the classroom as well as the improved insights between teacher and student.Another benefit was the communication between the parents and me. Having their child for two years enabled us to immediately pursue common goals and solve problems much more easily than starting fresh.Parents can be asked for their preference concerning looping, so if there’s not a good fit for the child, the parent can opt out. I remember that out of 20 students, 19 remained in my next class. The parent who opted out came to me at the end of the year to tell me she’d made a mistake!Some children would be OK with another teacher. But for others, looping meant a great deal and perhaps enabled them to succeed more than they might have without the teacher’s extra knowledge of the students.Daina SchumanStamford, Conn.Trump LackeysTop Trump allies, including Russell Vought, seated in the middle, have come to view the Republican Party’s legal elites — even leaders with impeccable conservative credentials — as out of step.Andrew Harnik/Associated PressTo the Editor:Re “Seeking Lawyers to Bless Trump’s Full Ambition” (front page, Nov. 2):In his first term as president, Donald Trump made, from his point of view, several key mistakes. Among them was selecting well-known conservatives with at least some experience and gravitas for important positions in his administration.The problem with these people was that they had at least a shred of decency and, ultimately, respect for the law and the Constitution. They, and others in his administration, refused in the end to execute his orders when those orders clearly violated the law.He won’t make that mistake again. As this article reveals, a second-term Trump cabinet, and the rest of his administration, would be filled with inexperienced sycophants whose only qualifications are their total loyalty to him alone and their willingness to do anything he says, illegal or not.Mr. Trump’s presidency was by far the worst in our history. A second Trump term, supported by these carefully chosen lackeys, would be nightmarish.Tim ShawCambridge, Mass.Don’t Call Them ‘Conservative’ Mark Peterson/Redux, for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “The Roots of Republican Dysfunction,” by Jamelle Bouie (column, Oct. 22):The MAGA supporters who call themselves “conservative” yet supported the Big Lie are not conservative. Overthrowing a legitimate election and installing a strongman you like is radical; it is not the least bit conservative.I wish America had a real conservative party, which would serve a legitimate purpose in balancing the urges of us liberals. But nobody should be allowed to impose authoritarianism on fellow citizens and call it “conservative.” That is radical extremism.Brett LindenbachNorth Haven, Conn.Precious Views: Saving the Skyline of New York George Etheredge for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Regulate the Skyline? What’s Your View?,” by Michael Kimmelman (Critic’s Notebook, Oct. 26):Fifty years ago, when I was young, the Empire State Building could be seen from almost everywhere. It was, in the words of John Milton, “the cynosure of neighboring eyes.” Now, as Mr. Kimmelman writes, a uniquely unobstructed view can be glimpsed from an alley he found off 28th Street.“The alley framed a postcard view of the Empire State Building,” he writes, “magically” preserving something lost elsewhere in the city, as widespread new construction has blotted out views, “occasionally breaking hearts.”The Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the Empire State Building a landmark. But operating under existing law, the agency could not protect the view corridors nearby.Old photographs will tell us something about what the Empire State Building once was. But will the historic preservation movement offer any strong strategic criticism of the planning policy vacuum Mr. Kimmelman’s criticism reveals? Who else will now defend the public interest in preserving views of our distinctive local architecture?Christabel GoughHudson, N.Y.To the Editor:We fall deeply in love with our favorite views and hope they will never change. But, like people, views have life spans. I have mourned several lost cityscapes in recent years, but learned a valuable lesson in the process: Hold back your tears until the new building is revealed.The Copper building on First Avenue near 35th Street took away the span of open sky that had delighted me for years with its unobstructed sunrises. But the quirky K-shaped Copper now serves as a compelling centerpiece for my sky photography. The sunrises are as splendid as ever, and there is a bonus: The Copper reflects the setting sun, lush with light as its colors fade to black.On the other hand, I am angry to hear that a precious Manhattan view will no longer exist. Sign me up to support view cones. If the Empire State Building can be eclipsed, what will be next?Roberta HershensonNew York More

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      Trump’s Allies Pledged Loyalty to Him. Until They Didn’t.

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      The former president is facing down Michael Cohen, his longtime fixer, in a Manhattan courtroom, while other ex-loyalists are cooperating in a case against him in Georgia.Donald J. Trump could not hide his anger. Sitting at the front of a crowded New York courtroom this week, he folded his arms tightly across his chest. He tossed his head and scowled. He stared into the middle distance and scrolled through his phone.His ire was directed at Michael D. Cohen, his former personal lawyer and fixer, who had taken the witness stand 15 feet away and had promptly called Mr. Trump a liar. Mr. Cohen has told his share of lies as well. But in court, he swore he had done so “at the direction of, in concert with and for the benefit of Mr. Trump.”Mr. Cohen’s two days of dramatic testimony this week provided the first glimpse of what could become a familiar scene: Mr. Trump, sitting at a defense table, watching as a lawyer who once did his bidding now cooperated with the authorities seeking to hold him to account.On the same day Mr. Cohen began his testimony, Jenna Ellis, who had sought to help Mr. Trump overturn the results of the 2020 election, pleaded guilty to state charges in Georgia. She was preceded by Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro, both lawyers who worked with Mr. Trump’s campaign, both now expected to cooperate in the criminal case that the Georgia prosecutors brought against him.The circumstances surrounding the Georgia criminal case and the Manhattan civil fraud trial are vastly different. But near the center of each case are lawyers who pledged public fealty to Mr. Trump — until they very publicly did not.Mr. Trump has long relied on a phalanx of legal attack dogs to speak on his behalf, or to do or say things he would rather not do or say himself. And because Mr. Trump has such a tenuous relationship with the truth, those lieutenants often spread a message that prosecutors and investigators consider to be outright lies. Lies about an election he lost, a relationship with a porn star he may have had and a net worth he may not quite have achieved.Now those statements are ricocheting back at Mr. Trump as he contends with the civil trial in New York, brought by the state’s attorney general, Letitia James, and with four criminal indictments up and down the East Coast. And while Mr. Trump is quick to blame his betrayers — Mr. Cohen is “proven to be a liar,” he said outside the courtroom this week — his predicament was born from his own lopsided approach to relationships.Mr. Trump has a history of disavowing people who were once close to him and find themselves in trouble. He had long since cut ties with Mr. Cohen — until Tuesday, they had not seen each other in five years — and more recently he distanced himself from the lawyers in the Georgia case. He had also refused to pay their mounting legal bills.Their relationships, a one-way street flowing in Mr. Trump’s direction, appeared to work for a time. But when those loyal soldiers faced their own legal jeopardy, their allegiance to the former president became strained or even shattered.There have been exceptions since Mr. Trump’s split with Mr. Cohen. Mr. Trump’s political action committee has picked up the legal bills for his co-defendants in the federal criminal case involving his handling of classified government documents, as well as those of several witnesses connected to the case.Mr. Trump’s company also agreed to dole out a $2 million severance payment to his longtime chief financial officer, Allen H. Weisselberg, and continues to pay for Mr. Weisselberg’s lawyers. Mr. Weisselberg pleaded guilty to tax fraud and testified at the company’s criminal trial last year, but has stopped short of turning on Mr. Trump.Mr. Cohen was among several in a series of people who Mr. Trump turned to over decades in the hopes they would emulate his first fixer and defender, the lawyer Roy Cohn. “Roy was brutal, but he was a very loyal guy,” Mr. Trump told one of his biographers, Timothy O’Brien, in an interview. “He brutalized for you.”That brutality — along with Mr. Cohn’s method of conflating public relations defenses with legal ones, making showy displays in court and accusing the federal government of “Gestapo-like tactics” against Mr. Trump in a 1970s suit alleging housing discrimination — became Mr. Trump’s preferred model for a lawyer.Mr. Cohen has often said that those sort of tactics influenced what Mr. Trump looks for in those who defend him.While it is unclear how useful Ms. Ellis and the other two lawyers will be to the case against Mr. Trump in Georgia, Mr. Cohen has already been tormenting Mr. Trump for the last five years. Ms. Ellis became critical of him publicly in the last several months.Mr. Trump made a point of attending the trial in Manhattan this week to watch Mr. Cohen’s testimony in person.Dave Sanders for The New York TimesFor Mr. Trump, the feud with Mr. Cohen is personal. Although he is running for president and fighting the four indictments, none of those obligations could pry him away from the Manhattan courtroom to watch Mr. Cohen’s testimony. Mr. Trump did not have to attend the testimony, but people close to him say he believes events go better for him when he is present.Mr. Trump’s falling out with Mr. Cohen stemmed from their dealings with the porn star Stormy Daniels.In the final stretch of the 2016 presidential campaign, Mr. Cohen paid Ms. Daniels $130,000 to silence her story of an affair with Mr. Trump years earlier — an affair that Mr. Trump denied had ever taken place.The deal came to light in 2018, and soon, the F.B.I. had searched Mr. Cohen’s home and office. As Mr. Cohen’s life imploded, Mr. Trump began to distance himself from his fixer, and eventually, his company stopped paying Mr. Cohen’s legal bills altogether.Mr. Cohen soon lashed out and began to speak with prosecutors. When he pleaded guilty that year for his role in the hush-money deal, he stood up in court and pointed the finger at the then-president. Mr. Trump, Mr. Cohen declared, had directed the payment of the hush money.Although the federal prosecutors declined to indict Mr. Trump, this year the Manhattan district attorney’s office brought charges against him related to the deal, using Mr. Cohen as a potential star witness for a trial scheduled to start in the spring. Mr. Cohen has also testified before Congress that the former president’s company had manipulated financial statements to reach Mr. Trump’s desired net worth. That testimony was the catalyst for Ms. James to open her investigation.When Ms. James’s team questioned Mr. Cohen on Tuesday, he repeated many of the same accusations, testifying that Mr. Trump had directed him to “reverse engineer” annual financial statements to reach the former president’s desired net worth.Mr. Cohen spoke calmly and confidently as he recounted Mr. Trump’s obsession with his net worth.But the Trump team’s cross-examination exposed the perils of relying on a disgruntled former aide, especially one as temperamental as Mr. Cohen.Mr. Trump’s lawyers seized on Mr. Cohen’s inconsistent statements about the former president and his own crimes, leading him to admit to having lied a number of times. Toward the end of the second day of cross-examination, Mr. Cohen appeared visibly flustered as he tripped over rapid-fire questions about whether Mr. Trump had personally directed him to inflate numbers on his annual financial statements. Mr. Cohen said he had not, prompting Mr. Trump and one of his lawyers, Alina Habba, to throw their hands up in victory.Ms. Habba also resurfaced a series of glowing remarks Mr. Cohen once made about his boss, further underscoring his about-face.“I think he’s going to be an amazing president”; “I’m the guy who would take the bullet for the president”; “I think the world of him, I respect him as a business man and I respect him as a boss,” Ms. Habba emphatically read, as she circled the courtroom with a hand-held microphone like a preacher delivering a sermon.This appeared to delight Mr. Trump, who turned to watch Ms. Habba while draping his arm over her empty chair.Before Mr. Cohen completed his testimony on Wednesday, one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers asked Justice Arthur J. Engoron to dismiss the case, citing Mr. Cohen’s contradictions.Justice Engoron denied the request, and Mr. Trump stormed out of the courtroom.Kate Christobek More

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      Trump’s Trial Starts Monday. It Will Spotlight What He’s Really Worth.

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      The judge in the civil case has already decided Donald J. Trump inflated his financial statements. Now, he will make rulings that will affect Mr. Trump’s future as a businessman.Follow our live coverage of Trump’s civil fraud trial.From his earliest days as a real estate developer to his renegade run for the White House, Donald J. Trump honed a very particular skill: the art of the boast.“I look better if I’m worth $10 billion than if I’m worth $4 billion,” he once said, disputing his ranking on the Forbes billionaires list.After decades of exaggerating with impunity, Mr. Trump will go on trial Monday, facing a lawsuit brought by New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, that accuses him of inflating his riches by billions of dollars and crossing the line into fraud. It will be the first of several government trials he will face in the coming year, a procession of high-stakes courtroom battles that coincide with his third White House run.And it will be an avidly scrutinized spectacle that will lift the curtain on Mr. Trump’s reputation as a businessman, a core piece of his identity.Ms. James’s civil case, separate from Mr. Trump’s four criminal indictments, accuses the former president, his adult sons and their family business of inflating the value of Mr. Trump’s assets to secure favorable loan terms from banks. Mr. Trump, who has denied wrongdoing, is expected to attend the opening day of the trial and eventually will be called to testify.Before the trial even begins, Mr. Trump is losing. The New York State Supreme Court judge overseeing the case ruled last week that Mr. Trump had persistently committed fraud, deciding that no trial was needed to determine the veracity of the claims at the core of Ms. James’s lawsuit. The judge, Arthur F. Engoron, also imposed a heavy punishment, stripping the Trumps of control over their signature New York properties — a move that could crush much of the business known as the Trump Organization.Ms. James is now asking for more from Justice Engoron, who will determine the outcome of the trial himself; there will be no jury. She wants Mr. Trump to be fined as much as $250 million and to be permanently barred from running a business in New York. If she succeeds, the former president would be unceremoniously evicted from the world of New York real estate that made him famous.The New York attorney general, Letitia James, brought the case under a state law that gives her sweeping power.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesWhile there is no doubt that the former president is worth a lot of money, the trial will determine how much he and his adult sons exaggerated that wealth and what the ultimate consequences will be.Howard M. Erichson​, a professor at Fordham Law School who specializes in civil procedure, emphasized that Justice Engoron’s earlier decision had already resolved the question of fraud at the heart of the case. What remained were details, he said.“But those details are important,” he said, “Because those details determine what Donald J. Trump and the Trump Organization will be prohibited from doing, as well as the size of any civil penalty.”Until last week, it appeared as if the trial might not start on time, or have much impact on the former president. Mr. Trump had sued Justice Engoron and Ms. James, claiming that they had ignored an appeals court decision in June that raised the prospect that some of the accusations were too old to proceed to trial. The appeals court granted a brief pause while it considered his case.On Thursday, the appeals court rejected that last-ditch effort, clearing the way for the trial to begin.Mr. Trump has accused Ms. James and Justice Engoron, who are both Democrats, of carrying out a political crusade against him. He has called the judge “deranged” and Ms. James, who is Black, a racist.The former president and his sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, who took the reins of the family business when their father ascended to the White House, are all expected to be called to the witness stand. Ms. James has already questioned Mr. Trump twice under oath, though at one session he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. A lawyer for Ms. James indicated last week that Mr. Trump will be one of the last witnesses called.Harlan Levy, who served as chief deputy New York state attorney general under one of Ms. James’s predecessors and is now a partner at Foley Hoag, called the former president’s testimony “a wild card.”Whether or not Mr. Trump ultimately takes the stand, Ms. James’s trial kicks off what is shaping up to be one of the most painful periods in his long public life.In March, he will stand trial on federal criminal charges for his effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election. In May, the federal case accusing him of mishandling classified documents and obstructing the government’s efforts to wrest them back is scheduled to go to trial. And after that, he will face two criminal trials from local prosecutors: one in Manhattan, where he was charged related to hush-money payments to a porn star, and the other in Georgia, where he is accused of racketeering for trying to alter the outcome of the state’s vote in the election.The criminal consequences in those cases are starker than the punishments Ms. James is seeking in her civil proceeding; in some of the proceedings, Mr. Trump could face years behind bars.All the legal peril, however, has only helped him politically. Mr. Trump is running far ahead of the rest of the Republican field — his polling went up after he was first indicted this spring — and is a heavy favorite for the 2024 nomination.Yet even as he thrives in the race, Mr. Trump faces a threat to the heart of his identity: Ms. James’s case rips away the facade of unlimited wealth that he is most proud of and that provided the platform for his political rise.The trial will begin at 10 a.m. at the New York State Supreme Court Building on Foley Square in Lower Manhattan, which is emblazoned with the slogan “the true administration of justice is the firmest pillar of good government.”The witness lists suggest that the trial could last months — and will involve a who’s who of Mr. Trump’s universe. More than 50 people are on Ms. James’s list — including Allen H. Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s former financial gatekeeper who testified in the company’s criminal tax fraud trial last year and who is also a defendant in this case. The list may shrink, and although the trial was scheduled to last nearly until Christmas, it is likely to be shorter.Presiding over it all will be Justice Engoron, a charismatic and eccentric judge who has been a thorn in the side of Mr. Trump and his lawyers for more than a year.Justice Engoron maintains a light atmosphere in the courtroom, often ribbing the lawyers, particularly Christopher M. Kise, who represents Mr. Trump. But he has been harsh at times: Even before he removed Mr. Trump’s control of his New York companies last week, he fined the former president $110,000 for failing to comply with a subpoena. And he fined Mr. Trump’s lawyers $7,500 each for repeating arguments that he had previously rejected.Donald Trump Jr., far left, and Eric Trump took the reins of the family business when their father ascended to the presidency. Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesThose defense arguments essentially amounted to no harm, no foul. Mr. Trump, his lawyers argued, is accused of misleading banks that actually made money from their dealings with him. He never missed a loan payment, and the banks did not rely on the financial statements that Ms. James believes are a work of fiction.But Justice Engoron noted in his ruling last week that a powerful state law allows Ms. James to pursue “persistent fraud” without having to show that a defendant actually intended to defraud anyone, or that their actions resulted in financial loss — a lower bar than most fraud cases. It also affords drastic remedies, empowering her to seek steep financial punishments and the cancellation of Mr. Trump’s certificates to operate a business in New York.Justice Engoron’s decision last week went property by property — from Trump Tower on Fifth Ave to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and a golf course in Scotland — concluding that Mr. Trump had in fact engaged in fraud as Ms. James said. (The accusations concern some of Mr. Trump’s properties outside New York, but any consequences would apply to his assets within the state.)Take, for example, Mr. Trump’s triplex apartment in Trump Tower. Ms. James accused Mr. Trump of overestimating its size, saying it was 30,000 square feet, when it was actually about 11,000. Justice Engoron noted that Mr. Trump’s lawyers had “absurdly” suggested that the calculation of square footage was subjective.“A discrepancy of this order of magnitude, by a real estate developer sizing up his own living space of decades, can only be considered fraud,” he wrote. The matters still to be hashed out at trial will require Ms. James to show that Mr. Trump intended to commit fraud and may require her to convince Justice Engoron that the inflated financial statements were taken seriously by the banks and insurance companies that received them.If Mr. Trump testifies, he will have to do a better job of defending himself than he did in his sworn deposition earlier this year. Justice Engoron was not impressed, as he made clear in his order last week.“The defenses Donald Trump attempts to articulate in his sworn deposition are wholly without basis in law or fact,” the judge wrote. More

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      Giuliani’s Upper East Side Apartment Is For Sale

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      Judith Giuliani, his ex-wife, said, it’s “no longer a home,” while Mr. Giuliani’s lawyer told a judge recently that the former mayor is “close to broke.”Apartment 10W at 45 East 66th Street went up for sale for $6.5 million in July. The prewar apartment includes “an abundance of sunshine, high ceilings, and beautiful hardwood floors,” according to the listing. The layout is “thoughtful and inviting.” The dining room is “ideal for a tranquil breakfast or cozy dinner.” Oh, and “pets are welcome” in this co-op building.The seller, Rudolph W. Giuliani, could certainly use the cash. His lawyer, Adam Katz, filed an article about the apartment being listed for sale as an exhibit to show that Mr. Giuliani, 79, “was close to broke.” That was earlier this month at a court hearing where lawyers for Smartmatic, an election technology company that sued Mr. Giuliani and Fox News in 2021 over false claims of election fraud, argued that Mr. Giuliani was using his financial state as an excuse for not sharing discovery documents.There “are a lot of bills that he’s not paying, from a $57,000 phone bill to significantly more,” Mr. Katz said at the hearing. “I think that this is very humbling for Mr. Giuliani.” It’s a precipitous fall for “America’s Mayor” — the lawsuit is among several legal matters entangling Mr. Giuliani. Last week, he surrendered at an Atlanta jail for the racketeering case against former President Donald J. Trump. Mr. Giuliani has been identified as a co-conspirator.The controversies have left stains not just on Mr. Giuliani’s reputation, but on the apartment’s as well. It was raided by the F.B.I. in 2021, overshadowing its walking distance to Nobu and Bergdorf Goodman.Years ago, “it was a very positive thing” to prospective buyers that Mr. Giuliani lived there, said Dolly Lenz, a luxury real estate agent, who has had multiple listings in the co-op.“It was like, it’s America’s mayor, he chose this building — all very good things ascribed to him living in the same building,” she said. But today, Ms. Lenz said she “would suspect it would be wildly different.”The Sotheby’s broker currently listing Mr. Giuliani’s apartment is Serena Boardman who New York magazine once called the “broker to the fallen stars” when she won the task of marketing a different disreputable owner’s property — Bernie Madoff’s Manhattan penthouse. She did not respond to requests for comment. Mr. Katz also did not respond.The Giulianis first moved into the apartment in 2002. By then, Mr. Giuliani was a national household name in the wake of 9/11.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesThe PenthouseJudith Giuliani, Mr. Giuliani’s ex-wife, recalled the apartment’s glory days, which coincided with Mr. Giuliani’s peak as a national household name in the wake of 9/11. By 2002, his mayoral term had ended, and he embarked on his apartment search on the Upper East Side while staying at a hotel, the New York Post reported at the time. He needed a home that matched his heft, and he wouldn’t settle — Ms. Giuliani said that he wanted a top-floor apartment.After some negotiating, they snagged the 66th Street co-op apartment for $4.77 million.“He never even saw the apartment until we had already decided to buy it,” she said, adding that the interior design and decoration was done by her. “I found it, I decorated it, I made it his home.” There, she hosted many luncheons, holidays and charity events — but it was primarily about hosting and entertaining friends and family, not work, Ms. Giuliani said. “It was home for us,” said Ms. Giuliani, 68, who was married to Mr. Giuliani for 15 years. “He was my husband, and he loved coming home,” she said. “It was a place where he went for it to be a respite.” In the paneled library room, Ms. Giuliani installed a special humidifying system and plasma TV for Mr. Giuliani, “where he could smoke cigars and relax and watch his Yankee games.”One of the main appeals of the apartment was that it was “built for entertaining,” Ms. Giuliani said. “The dining room seats 40 people,” she said. “I loved giving my themed luncheons — make an Easter egg for Easter, Valentine’s — I’m known for that, I still do that.” The Giulianis’ guest lists were just as impressive; the Kissingers, Vera Wang and George Pataki, among others, attended the events, she said. Difficult times were spent there too. “Rudy had prostate cancer, when we first met, which we also lived through in that apartment,” Ms. Giuliani said. In 2014, Mr. Giuliani tried to stop the construction of a new penthouse in the building. “It was extremely important to Rudy that he lived in a penthouse,” Judith Giuliani said.Seth Wenig/Associated PressOver the years, Mr. Giuliani’s real estate portfolio also included a Hamptons home which he bought for $3.2 million in 2004, a private locker at the storied Nat Sherman smoking lounge in Midtown Manhattan and two Palm Beach condos — “I’m just going to play some golf and relax,” he told the New York Daily News while in Florida in 2009.But the Upper East Side apartment has remained at the center of his assets. The gothic-style apartment complex was built between 1906 and 1908, and it was designated as a landmark in 1977. When architects applied to build a new penthouse addition at the top of the building, Mr. Giuliani sought to block the construction. In 2014, Curbed reported that Brian Morgenstern, a lawyer for Mr. Giuliani, said that a “penthouse on top of a penthouse on top of a penthouse” would be too much. The concern, on Mr. Giuliani’s part, was perhaps because at the time, his apartment was on the top floor, and he didn’t want to lose his own penthouse status.“At the time that we bought it, it was a penthouse. It was extremely important to Rudy that he lived in a penthouse,” she said. The new addition was approved by the Landmarks Preservation Commission.Mr. Giuliani was no longer at the top.The Giulianis got married in 2003, but divorce proceedings were underway by 2018. “I’m sad to know that the hero of 9/11 has become a liar,” Ms. Giuliani told The Times in 2019.Matthew Peyton/Getty Images‘I Wish Rudy Well.’His marriage would soon wane.By 2018, Ms. Giuliani filed for divorce. Mr. Giuliani’s dealings with Mr. Trump were well underway and public opinion started to turn against him. “I’m sad to know that the hero of 9/11 has become a liar,” Ms. Giuliani told The Times in 2019, of the legal battle to get from the divorce what she felt she was owed.Though she had decorated the apartment and had fond memories of her parties, “I wanted to move on,” said Ms. Giuliani, who is represented by the lawyer Dror Bikel. “He was, after all, the Mayor of the City of New York, at one point a very well respected one. So, it seemed logical that he would have that apartment.”But it’s “no longer a home,” Ms. Giuliani said. His decision to film in the library for a podcast series in 2020 “gobsmacked me.” And then came the search by the F.B.I., as part of a criminal investigation into his Ukraine dealings as Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer. “No matter how things ended up, there were many, many, many happy memories in that apartment,” said Ms. Giuliani. “And I wish the next person well, and I wish Rudy well.” Alain Delaquérière More

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      How Many of Trump’s Trials Will Happen Before the Election?

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      Donald J. Trump is the target of four separate criminal indictments, but the prosecutions could drag on for months or even years.Three different prosecutors want to put Donald J. Trump on trial in four different cities next year, all before Memorial Day and in the midst of his presidential campaign.It will be nearly impossible to pull off.A morass of delays, court backlogs and legal skirmishes awaits, interviews with nearly two dozen current and former prosecutors, judges, legal experts and people involved in the Trump cases show. Some experts predicted that only one or two trials will take place next year; one speculated that none of the four Trump cases will start before the election.It would be virtually unheard of for any defendant to play a game of courthouse Twister like this, let alone one who is also the leading contender for the Republican nomination for the presidency. And between the extensive legal arguments that must take place before a trial can begin — not to mention that the trials themselves could last weeks or months — there are simply not enough boxes on the calendar to squeeze in all the former president’s trials.“This is something that is not normal,” said Jeffrey Bellin, a former federal prosecutor in Washington who now teaches criminal procedure at William & Mary Law School and believes that Mr. Trump might only be on trial once next year. “While each of the cases seems at this point to be strong, there’s only so much you can ask a defendant to do at one time.”Any delay would represent a victory for Mr. Trump, who denies all wrongdoing and who could exploit the timeline to undermine the cases against him. Less time sitting in a courtroom equals more time hitting the campaign trail, and his advisers have not tried to hide that Mr. Trump hopes to overcome his legal troubles by winning the presidency.If his lawyers manage to drag out the trials into 2025 or beyond — potentially during a second Trump administration — Mr. Trump could seek to pardon himself or order his Justice Department to shut down the federal cases. And although he could not control the state prosecutions in Georgia or Manhattan, the Justice Department has long held that a sitting president cannot be criminally prosecuted, which very likely applies to state cases as well.Ultimately, the judges overseeing the four cases might have to coordinate so that Mr. Trump’s lawyers can adequately prepare his defense without needlessly delaying the trials. Judges are permitted under ethics rules to confer with one another to efficiently administer the business of their courts, experts said, and they periodically do so.“The four indictments can appear to resemble four cars converging on an intersection that has no lights or stop signs — but that won’t happen,” said Stephen Gillers, a legal ethics professor at New York University School of Law. “Well before the intersection, the judges will figure it out.”For now, Mr. Trump’s court schedule looks to be nearly as crowded as his campaign calendar, with potential trials overlapping with key dates in the Republican primary season. Claiming he is a victim of a weaponized justice system that is seeking to bar him from office, Mr. Trump may end up bringing his campaign to the courthouse steps.A federal special counsel, Jack Smith, has proposed Jan. 2 of next year (two weeks before the Iowa caucuses) as a date for Mr. Trump to stand trial in Washington on charges of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election. In a Thursday night court filing, Mr. Trump’s lawyers countered with a proposed date of April 2026.Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County, Ga., district attorney who this week announced racketeering charges against Mr. Trump, accusing him of orchestrating a “criminal enterprise” to reverse Georgia’s election results, wants that trial to begin on March 4 (the day before Super Tuesday).It is possible that the election interference case brought against Mr. Trump by special counsel Jack Smith may be given scheduling priority, the experts said.Doug Mills/The New York TimesMr. Smith’s recent case in Washington, and Ms. Willis’s in Georgia, were filed after Mr. Trump was already scheduled for two additional criminal trials next spring: in New York, on March 25, on state charges related to a hush-money payment to the porn star Stormy Daniels; and in Florida, on May 20, on federal charges brought by Mr. Smith accusing Mr. Trump of mishandling classified material after leaving office.Although the New York and Florida indictments were unveiled earlier, affording them first crack at the calendar, some experts now argue that they should take a back seat to the election-related cases, in Georgia and Washington, in which the charges strike at the core of American democracy. Trial scheduling is not always a first-come, first-served operation, and deference could be given to the most serious charges.In a radio interview last month, the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, said that having been the first to indict did not necessarily mean he would insist on being the first to put the former president on trial. However, he said, the judge in the case, Juan M. Merchan, ultimately controls the calendar.“We will follow the court’s lead,” Mr. Bragg said.There has not yet been any direct communication among judges or prosecutors about moving the Manhattan case, according to people with knowledge of the matter.Still, Mr. Bragg’s comments suggest that he would not oppose moving the Manhattan case, which carries a lesser potential punishment than the three others, backward in line.“My own belief is Alvin Bragg will be true to his word and remain flexible in the interests of justice,” said Norman Eisen, who worked for the House Judiciary Committee during Mr. Trump’s first impeachment and believes that prosecutors might be able to squeeze in three Trump trials next year.And Mr. Eisen, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, argued that voters deserve to know whether Mr. Trump was convicted of subverting the will of the people in the previous election before they vote in the next one.“There could not be a more important question confronting the country than whether a candidate for the office of the presidency is innocent or guilty of previously abusing that office in an attempted coup,” he said.The most likely candidate to take over Mr. Bragg’s March trial date would be Mr. Smith and his election interference case. Recently, nearly a dozen Republican-appointed former judges and high-ranking federal officials submitted a brief to the judge overseeing that case, arguing that the trial should take place in January as Mr. Smith has proposed and citing a “national necessity” for a “fair and expeditious trial.”But this is the case in which Mr. Trump’s lawyers have asked for a 2026 trial date, citing the voluminous amount of material turned over by the government — 11.5 million pages of documents, for example — that the defense must now review. Mr. Trump’s lawyers estimated that to finish by the prosecution’s proposed January trial date would mean reading the equivalent of “Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace,’ cover to cover, 78 times a day, every day, from now until jury selection.”In that case, Mr. Smith brought a narrow set of charges against Mr. Trump in connection with efforts to overturn the 2020 election, totaling four felony counts, and with no co-defendants.In contrast, Ms. Willis’s election case is a sweeping 98-page indictment of not only Mr. Trump, who faces 13 criminal counts, but also 18 co-defendants, including Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, and Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City. Already, Mr. Meadows has petitioned for his case to be moved from state to federal court, and other defendants are likely to follow suit. That process could take months and could be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, probably making Ms. Willis’s proposed trial date of March 4 something of a long shot.In contrast to the relatively narrow election interference case brought by Mr. Smith in federal court, Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County, Ga., district attorney, has charged Mr. Trump and his associates with a multitude of felonies related to the 2020 presidential election.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesThe sheer size of Mr. Trump’s Georgia case, and the fact it was the last of the four cases to be brought, suggests any Georgia trial of Mr. Trump could be delayed even beyond next year.It is exceedingly rare for a criminal defendant to face so many trials in such a concentrated period of time. The once high-flying lawyer Michael Avenatti seemed to be heading for three federal trials after he was charged in Manhattan in 2019 in a scheme to extort the apparel giant Nike; and, separately, with stealing money from Ms. Daniels, a former client; and in California, with embezzling money from other clients. (He was eventually convicted in the New York trials and pleaded guilty in the California case.)E. Danya Perry, a lawyer who represented Mr. Avenatti in the Nike case, the first to go to trial, said the challenge was “sequencing the cases in a way that would be most advantageous” to her client. And because there was some overlap in the evidence, she said, the defense had to be careful not to open the door for prosecutors to introduce evidence against Mr. Avenatti from another of the cases.“You’re not just trying the case in front of that particular judge,” Ms. Perry said. “Evidence from one case could bleed into other cases.”Before any trial, Mr. Trump’s cases are also likely to become bogged down as his lawyers review and potentially argue over large amounts of documents and other case material turned over by the government. Certain judicial rulings could also lead to drawn-out pretrial appeals.In the Florida documents case, disputes over the use of classified information could delay the proceeding as well. And in the federal court in Washington, which is already contending with lengthy backlogs amid prosecutions of hundreds of Jan. 6 rioters, Mr. Trump’s lawyers have suggested they plan to litigate complex constitutional issues, including whether some of Mr. Trump’s false claims about the election were protected by the First Amendment.Even the jury selection process could drag on for weeks or months, as courts summon huge pools of prospective jurors for questioning over whether they harbor bias in favor of or against the polarizing former president.Michael B. Mukasey, a former U.S. attorney general and longtime Manhattan federal judge, said because of the complex issues raised in all four of Mr. Trump’s cases, “I think the odds are slim to none that any of them gets to trial before the election.”And Mr. Trump’s criminal cases are not the only courtroom battles he’s waging.In October, he faces trial in a civil suit filed by Attorney General Letitia James of New York, accusing him, his company and three of his children of a “staggering” fraud in overvaluing his assets by billions of dollars. In January, Mr. Trump faces two civil trials arising from private lawsuits: one a defamation claim by the writer E. Jean Carroll and the other accusing him of enticing people into a sham business opportunity.“We fully expect both cases to go to trial in January 2024,” said Roberta A. Kaplan, the plaintiffs’ lawyer in the two private suits.Although Mr. Trump need not be in court for the civil cases, he almost certainly will have to attend the criminal trials, said Daniel C. Richman, a former Manhattan federal prosecutor and now a professor at Columbia Law School.“If you asked all the prosecutors in each case, they’d firmly and sincerely say that they want these trials to happen in the first half of 2024,” Mr. Richman said. “But wishing does not make it so.”Maggie Haberman More

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      Georgia Looms Next After Trump’s Indictment in New York

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      Former President Donald J. Trump now faces a very different legal challenge in the culmination of a more than two-year Atlanta investigation into election interference.ATLANTA — The indictment of Donald J. Trump in New York over hush-money payments to a porn star was a global spectacle, with the former president glumly returning to his old stomping grounds in Manhattan as TV networks closely tracked his procession of black SUVs on their way to the courthouse.But strip away the high drama, and the actual charging document in the case was far less grand — 34 felony counts of a fairly narrow and common bookkeeping charge that Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, described as the “bread and butter” of his office’s white-collar criminal prosecutions.In Georgia, however, there is another criminal investigation of Mr. Trump nearing completion, this one also led by a local prosecutor, Fani T. Willis of Fulton County. While nothing is certain, there are numerous signs that she may go big, with a more kaleidoscopic indictment charging not only Mr. Trump, but perhaps a dozen or more of his allies.Her investigation has targeted a wide range of conduct centered around efforts to subvert the democratic process and overturn Mr. Trump’s 2020 election loss. Nearly 20 people are already known to have been told that they are targets who could face charges, including Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer, and David Shafer, the head of the Georgia Republican Party.For Mr. Trump, the possibility of a second and potentially more complex criminal indictment in another state underscores the blizzard of legal challenges he is facing, even as he emerges as the clear front-runner among Republican presidential candidates.For Ms. Willis, the choice to pursue a narrowly focused indictment or more a sprawling one — a classic prosecutor’s dilemma — carries with it potential risks and benefits on both sides. And American history offers few examples in which the stakes are so high.Fani T. Willis, the district attorney for Fulton County, Ga., has said that seeking an indictment under the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, or RICO, statute is an option that she is considering.Audra Melton for The New York Times“Certainly prosecutors would have this conversation of what’s in the best interest of justice and what is strategically preferable for a case,” said Barbara McQuade, a law professor at the University of Michigan and former federal prosecutor. A narrow case can be easier for jurors to understand. But it is also possible to go “too narrow,” Ms. McQuade said, denying a jury the ability to see the entire scope of a defendant’s criminal behavior.If, on the other hand, a wide-ranging scheme is charged, “you allow them to see the full scope of criminal conduct,” she said. But going big could cause jurors to become lost amid a profusion of evidence, with a long trial increasing the possibility of a mistrial.In Georgia, the investigation is focused on myriad efforts to overturn Mr. Trump’s narrow loss in Georgia after his 2020 election defeat, including his January 2021 phone call to Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, in which he pressed Mr. Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, to recalculate the results and “find” him enough votes to win.Mr. Trump is also under investigation by Jack Smith, a special counsel appointed by Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, for his role in the events leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and his decisions to retain sensitive government documents at his home in Florida.If Ms. Willis chooses to seek indictments in the Georgia case, she may do so after a new grand jury begins its work in the second week of May, though nothing is set in stone. Typically, presenting such cases to a regular grand jury is a short process that takes a day or two.The wide scope of the investigation has been evident for months, and Ms. Willis has said that seeking an indictment under the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, or RICO, statute is an option that she is considering. Like the similar federal law, the Georgia RICO statute allows prosecutors to bundle what may seem to be unrelated crimes committed by a host of different people if those crimes are perceived to be in support of a common objective.Election workers counted absentee ballots in Atlanta in 2020.Audra Melton for The New York TimesMs. Willis has extensive experience with racketeering cases, including a case she won involving a group of public-school educators accused of altering students’ standardized tests. Her office is currently pursuing racketeering charges against two gangs connected to the hip-hop world, including one led by the Atlanta rapper Jeffery Williams, who performs as Young Thug.“I think jurors are very, very intelligent,” Ms. Willis said at a news conference in August, in which she announced a racketeering case against a third Atlanta-area gang known as Drug Rich. “RICO is a tool that allows a prosecutor’s office or law enforcement to tell the whole story. And so we use it as a tool so that they can have all the information they need to make a wise decision.”After starting the Trump investigation in February 2021, Ms. Willis’s office sought the aid of a special grand jury to gather and consider evidence. In Georgia, such juries do not have indictment powers but can issue subpoenas in long-running investigations. The body was empaneled last spring and completed its work in January after hearing closed-door testimony from 75 witnesses, though its recommendations have remained largely under seal.Emily Kohrs, the forewoman of that special grand jury, strongly hinted in an interview with The New York Times in February that Mr. Trump was among more than a dozen people who had been recommended for indictment. “You’re not going to be shocked,” she said, when asked whether Mr. Trump was named in the report. “It’s not rocket science.”Court records show that the special grand jury sought testimony from witnesses including Mark Meadows, who served as White House chief of staff under Mr. Trump; Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, an ally of the former president; and Trevian Kutti, a former self-described publicist for rapper Kanye West who, according to prosecutors, was involved in a plot to force a Fulton County elections worker to give a false confession of election fraud.Documents also show that prosecutors are following numerous narrative threads in Georgia involving either Mr. Trump or his allies. These include Mr. Trump’s phone calls to Georgia officials, including the one to Mr. Raffensperger; specious statements about election fraud made by Mr. Giuliani and others at state legislative hearings; the convening of pro-Trump electors to the Electoral College at the Georgia State Capitol; Ms. Kutti’s bizarre meeting with the elections worker, Ruby Freeman, two days after Mr. Trump’s phone call to Mr. Raffensperger, in which Mr. Trump falsely accused Ms. Freeman of being a “vote scammer”; and a plot by allies of Mr. Trump involving the copying of sensitive election software in rural Coffee County, Ga.In Georgia, the investigation is focused on efforts to overturn Mr. Trump’s loss in Georgia after his 2020 election defeat, including his January 2021 phone call to Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, in which he pressed Mr. Raffensperger to “find” him enough votes to win.Audra Melton for The New York TimesThe battle lines have already been drawn. Mr. Trump has steadfastly maintained his innocence and used inflammatory language to assail the prosecutors in both Georgia and New York. And last month, his legal team in Georgia filed a 52-page motion, with more than 400 additional pages of exhibits, challenging a case that has yet to be filed. Legal experts saw it as a sign of what’s to come.“That’s indicative of the type of motions you’ll see if there’s an indictment,” said Melissa D. Redmon, a law professor at the University of Georgia who has been a prosecutor in Fulton and Clayton Counties. “Every single step is going to be challenged from the beginning.”In New York, Mr. Bragg said he, too, was focusing on crimes that thwarted the democratic process, though these were from the 2016 campaign. In a statement, he said that Mr. Trump had “repeatedly and fraudulently falsified New York business records to conceal crimes that hid damaging information from the voting public during the 2016 presidential election.” He is accused of covering up a potential sex scandal involving the porn star Stormy Daniels.Mr. Trump more than once has compared his legal tribulations to those of the notorious Chicago mob boss Al Capone. He said on social media, as recently as February, that he had more lawyers working for him than Capone, who was famously found guilty in 1931 and sentenced to 11 years in prison for tax evasion — hardly the most lurid or troubling of his many misdeeds.Mr. Bragg’s decision in New York opened him up to intense criticism from Republicans, who have called the charges flimsy and politically motivated, and the alleged offenses insufficient to merit the nation’s first indictment of a former president. Even some Democrats note that the New York charges seem pedestrian compared with the allegations looming against Mr. Trump elsewhere.“Is it as problematic as Jan. 6 or what happened at Mar-a-Lago? No,” David Pepper, the former chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party, said recently, referring to federal investigations into Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his handling of classified documents. “But that doesn’t mean you don’t investigate it.”If Ms. Willis brings a sprawling RICO case, it could present its own problems, said Michael J. Moore, a former U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Georgia. Asking a jury to consider multiple acts that do not tie directly back to Mr. Trump might make it more difficult “to point the finger at him with the strength that you might have been able to in a simpler case,” he said.Mr. Moore also wondered how far a trial involving Mr. Trump would stretch into the coming presidential election season. He noted that the jury selection process in the multi-defendant racketeering case involving Young Thug had been going on for roughly four months, and that the judge in the case had estimated the trial could take up to nine months.“We’re just going to have to face the reality that we’re going to have to deal with that,” he said. More

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      Así fue la audiencia en la que se formularon los cargos contra Trump

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      Estos son algunos de los momentos más importantes de la comparecencia del expresidente ante la corte.NUEVA YORK — El expresidente Donald Trump se sentó en silencio en la sala del juzgado de Manhattan, el martes, mientras los fiscales formulaban las acusaciones en su contra. El procedimiento fue su primera experiencia como acusado penal.Una transcripción de 32 páginas de la audiencia solo ofrece un indicio de las consecuencias dramáticas de la comparecencia y el largo proceso legal que se avecina. Es uno de los procesos judiciales más esperados del mundo. Y, sin embargo, solo lo vieron de primera mano las pocas decenas de personas que estuvieron presentes en la sala donde se dieron a conocer los delitos que se le imputan a Trump.A continuación, presentamos algunos de los momentos más importantes de la audiencia:La audiencia comienza y Trump hace su declaraciónEL TRIBUNAL: Vamos a instruir al señor Trump.EL SECRETARIO DEL JUZGADO: Donald J. Trump, el Gran Jurado del condado de Nueva York ha presentado la acusación formal 71543 del año 2023 en la que se le imputan los delitos de 34 cargos de falsificación de registros empresariales en primer grado. ¿Cómo se declara ante esta acusación formal: culpable o no culpable?TRUMP: No culpable.En la sala del tribunal, las persianas estaban cerradas cuando Trump entró cerca de las 02:30 p. m., con un traje azul marino, corbata roja y un semblante inexpresivo. Estuvo flanqueado por agentes judiciales armados, mientras caminaba por el pasillo hacia el frente. Se autorizó a los fotógrafos para que entraran al palco del jurado para tomarle una foto, y él giró la cabeza y miró fijamente a las cámaras hasta que los fotógrafos tuvieron que marcharse.La comparecencia de Trump no comenzó de inmediato. Se vio obligado a esperar unos 10 minutos, sentado en silencio en la mesa de la defensa, mientras un abogado que representaba a organizaciones de medios de comunicación pedía que se concediera a los periodistas más acceso al procedimiento. El exmandatario hizo una mueca de burla cuando ese abogado afirmó que se podía confiar en los periodistas profesionales.Cuando el abogado terminó de hablar, el juez Juan Merchan, quien en la transcripción es identificado como “El tribunal”, pidió que Trump compareciera. Al expresidente se le leyeron los cargos que se le imputaban: 34 delitos graves de falsificación de registros empresariales. En la silenciosa sala, Trump se inclinó hacia delante y, hablando por el micrófono de la mesa de la defensa, dijo que era no culpable.Un fiscal presenta el casoSR. CONROY: El acusado, Donald J. Trump, falsificó registros empresariales de Nueva York con el fin de ocultar una asociación delictiva para socavar la integridad de las elecciones presidenciales de 2016 y otras violaciones a las leyes electorales.Chris Conroy, fiscal de la oficina del fiscal del distrito de Manhattan, se levantó y comenzó a detallar los cargos. Se derivan del pago de una suma de dinero para silenciar a una actriz porno, Stormy Daniels, que Michael Cohen, quien era un colaborador de Trump, pagó en el periodo previo a las elecciones de 2016. Trump reembolsó el dinero a Cohen después de ser elegido. Los fiscales acusan al exmandatario de orquestar la creación de registros empresariales falsos relacionados con los reembolsos.La falsificación de registros empresariales solo es un delito grave en el estado de Nueva York cuando se comete con la intención de “cometer u ocultar” otro delito. Al decir que Trump había falsificado registros “para ocultar una asociación delictiva”, Conroy ofreció un posible avance del caso más amplio de la fiscalía contra Trump.Los miembros del equipo de la defensa recibieron copias de la acusación. Trump le entregó una copia a uno de sus abogados, Joseph Tacopina. El exmandatario fue la única persona en la mesa de la defensa que no aceptó una copia.Las recientes publicaciones de Trump en las redes sociales se incorporan al expedienteUn momento extraordinario sucedió cuando Conroy comenzó a referirse a las publicaciones recientes que Trump ha hecho en las redes sociales. El expresidente prometió que en caso de que lo acusaran habría “muerte y destrucción” y publicó lenguaje racista e imágenes amenazantes dirigidas contra el fiscal de distrito Alvin Bragg.SR. CONROY: Nos preocupa mucho el peligro potencial que este tipo de retórica supone para nuestra ciudad, para los posibles jurados y testigos, así como para el proceso judicial.A continuación, Conroy repartió copias impresas de los mensajes de Trump al juez y al equipo de la defensa. El expresidente le dio su copia a Tacopina, pero un minuto después se la pidió de vuelta, haciéndole señas con la mano derecha. Otro de sus abogados, Todd Blanche, se opuso enérgicamente a los comentarios de Conroy sobre las publicaciones en las redes sociales.SR. BLANCHE: Es cierto que el expresidente Trump ha respondido y que lo ha hecho con contundencia. Es cierto que, como parte de esa respuesta, está absolutamente frustrado, molesto y cree que su presencia en esta sala del tribunal es una grave injusticia.Blanche afirmó que Trump “tiene derechos y se le permite pronunciarse públicamente”.Eso pareció incitar a Merchan, quien habló con calma y seriedad, cuando respondió que no tenía la intención inmediata de imponerle una “orden de mordaza” a Trump, en contra de las preocupaciones expresadas recientemente por el equipo jurídico del expresidente. Los fiscales no han solicitado una orden de mordaza.EL TRIBUNAL: Ciertamente, el tribunal no impondría una orden de mordaza en este momento aunque se solicitara. Esas restricciones son las más serias y menos intolerables sobre los derechos de la Primera Enmienda. Eso aplica por partida doble al señor Trump, porque es candidato a la presidencia de Estados Unidos. Así que es evidente que esos derechos de la Primera Enmienda tienen una importancia crítica.Pero Merchan, quien es juez de la Corte Suprema estatal desde 2009, le advirtió a la defensa que hablara con Trump “y cualquier otra persona con la que sea necesario y les recuerden que, por favor, se abstengan de hacer declaraciones que puedan incitar a la violencia o a los disturbios civiles”.La fiscalía detalla las posibles restricciones a TrumpSRA. MCCAW: El acusado no puede proporcionar los materiales que recibe a través del proceso de presentación de pruebas a terceros, lo que incluye a la prensa, y no puede publicarlos en las redes sociales.Mientras Trump seguía sentado en silencio, Catherine McCaw, otra fiscal, le dijo al juez que su equipo estaba trabajando con los abogados de Trump para redactar una orden de protección, un documento que le pondría ciertas restricciones al exmandatario.La fiscal explicó que una de esas restricciones le prohibiría al expresidente publicar material específico del caso en las redes sociales o compartirlo con los reporteros. Si Trump viola alguna de las restricciones establecidas, Merchan decidiría si lo sanciona y cómo hacerlo.Trump vuelve a hablarA medida que se desarrollaba su audiencia de instrucción, Trump se mostraba cada vez más inquieto. Entrelazaba y desentrelazaba los dedos una y otra vez. Cruzaba y descruzaba los brazos. Golpeó la mesa con los nudillos. En una ocasión, infló las mejillas en un suspiro impaciente.Por último, más de media hora después de que hizo su declaración de inocencia, habló de nuevo —tras la indicación de sus abogados—, pero solo para responderle al juez cuando informó sobre su derecho a estar presente en el proceso y de las formas en que podía perder ese derecho.EL TRIBUNAL: Si perturba hasta tal punto que afecte a mi capacidad para presidir este caso y mi capacidad para garantizar que el caso se juzgue de la manera que debe juzgarse para ambas partes, tengo la autoridad para sacarlo de la sala y continuar en su ausencia, ¿comprende?ACUSADO SR. TRUMP: Sí, comprendo.El juez solicita la presencia de TrumpEL TRIBUNAL: Espero que todos los demás acusados comparezcan ante el tribunal, incluso los acusados de alto perfil.Teniendo en cuenta que Trump estaba acusado de delitos no violentos, los fiscales tenían prohibido siquiera solicitar su encarcelamiento. Mientras Merchan se preparaba para dejar ir al expresidente, Blanche insinuó que Trump podría no comparecer a su próxima cita con el tribunal, prevista para el 4 de diciembre. Cuando se le preguntó por su razonamiento, Blanche citó “el increíble gasto y esfuerzo y los problemas de seguridad” que conllevó la comparecencia.El juez reconoció que había sido una empresa enorme para todos los implicados. Pero señaló que faltaba “bastante para diciembre”. Por último, señaló que “en aras de la transparencia y para garantizar la imparcialidad de las normas jurídicas”, iba a discrepar de Blanche. La implicación: en la medida de lo posible, el juez pretende tratar a Trump como a cualquier otro acusado.Cuando se levantó la sesión alrededor de las 03:25 p. m., Trump fue la persona de la mesa de la defensa que se levantó con más lentitud. Se alisó las solapas de la chaqueta de su traje azul, ordenó un montón de papeles que había frente a él y salió de la sala.Embed Only More

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      What It Was Like Inside the Courtroom During Trump’s Arraignment

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      Here are some of the most important moments from the hearing where criminal charges against Donald Trump were unveiled.Former President Donald J. Trump sat quietly in a Manhattan courtroom on Tuesday as prosecutors described the accusations against him. The proceeding marked his first experience as a criminal defendant.A 32-page transcript of the hearing offers only a hint of the dramatic implications of the arraignment and the lengthy legal process to come. It was one of the most-anticipated court proceedings in the world. And yet, it was seen firsthand only by the few dozen people who were present in the courtroom where the charges against Mr. Trump were unveiled.Here are some of the most important moments from the arraignment:The hearing begins, and Mr. Trump pleads.THE COURT: Let’s arraign Mr. Trump.THE CLERK: Donald J. Trump, the grand jury of New York County has filed indictment 71543 of 2023 charging you with the crimes of 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree.How do you plead to this indictment, guilty or not guilty?DEFENDANT MR. TRUMP: Not guilty.The shades were down in the courtroom when Mr. Trump entered around 2:30 p.m., wearing a navy suit, a red tie and a blank expression. Armed court officers flanked him on both sides as he walked down the aisle toward the front. Photographers were briefly allowed to enter the jury box to take his picture, and he turned and stared at the cameras until their operators were made to leave.Mr. Trump’s arraignment did not begin immediately after he came in. He was compelled to wait about 10 minutes, seated silently at the defense table, as a lawyer representing media organizations requested that journalists be granted more access to the proceeding. Mr. Trump visibly scoffed when that lawyer asserted that professional journalists could be trusted.When that lawyer was finished speaking, the judge, Juan M. Merchan, referred to in the transcript as “The Court,” called for Mr. Trump to be arraigned. The former president was read the charges against him — 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. In the hushed courtroom, Mr. Trump leaned forward and, speaking into the microphone at the defense table, said that he was not guilty.A prosecutor previews the case.MR. CONROY: The defendant, Donald J. Trump, falsified New York business records in order to conceal an illegal conspiracy to undermine the integrity of the 2016 presidential election and other violations of election laws.Chris Conroy, a prosecutor with the Manhattan district attorney’s office, then stood up and began to detail the charges. They stem from a hush-money payment that Mr. Trump’s former fixer, Michael D. Cohen, paid to a porn star, Stormy Daniels, in the run-up to the 2016 election. Mr. Trump reimbursed Mr. Cohen after he was elected. Prosecutors are accusing Mr. Trump of orchestrating the creation of false business records related to the reimbursements.Falsifying business records is only a felony in New York State when it is committed with the intent to “commit or conceal” another crime. In saying that Mr. Trump had falsified records “to conceal an illegal conspiracy,” Mr. Conroy offered a potential preview of the office’s broader case against Mr. Trump.Members of the defense team were handed copies of the indictment. Mr. Trump passed a copy to one of his lawyers, Joseph Tacopina. The former president was the only person at the defense table not to accept a copy.Mr. Trump’s recent social media posts are entered into the record.An extraordinary moment came when Mr. Conroy began to reference Mr. Trump’s recent social media posts. The former president promised that “death and destruction” would follow were he to be charged and posted racist language and threatening images directed at the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg.MR. CONROY: We have significant concern about the potential danger this kind of rhetoric poses to our city, to potential jurors and witnesses, and to the judicial process.Mr. Conroy then passed out printed copies of Mr. Trump’s posts to the judge and defense team. Mr. Trump passed his copy to Mr. Tacopina, but a minute later requested it back, beckoning with his right hand. Another of his lawyers, Todd Blanche, objected strongly to Mr. Conroy’s comments about the social media posts.MR. BLANCHE: It is true that President Trump has responded, and responded forcefully. It is true that as part of that response, he’s absolutely frustrated, upset, and believes that there is a grave injustice happening with him being in this courtroom today.Mr. Blanche asserted that Mr. Trump “ has rights, he’s allowed to speak publicly.”That appeared to prompt Justice Merchan, who spoke calmly and soberly, to respond that he had no immediate intention of placing a “gag order” on Mr. Trump, counter to concerns expressed recently by the former president’s legal team. Prosecutors have not requested a gag order.THE COURT: Certainly, the court would not impose a gag order at this time even if it were requested.Such restraints are the most serious and least intolerable on First Amendment rights. That does apply doubly to Mr. Trump, because he is a candidate for the presidency of the United States. So, those First Amendment rights are critically important, obviously.But Justice Merchan, a judge in the State Supreme Court since 2009, did warn the defense to speak to Mr. Trump “and anybody else you need to, and remind them to please refrain from making statements that are likely to incite violence or civil unrest.”The prosecution details potential constraints on Mr. Trump.MS. MCCAW: Defendant may not provide the materials he receives through the discovery process to any third party, including the press, and he may not post them to social media.As Mr. Trump continued to sit in silence, Catherine McCaw, another prosecutor, told the judge that her team was working with Mr. Trump’s lawyers to draft a protective order, a document that would place certain constraints on Mr. Trump.One of those constraints, she said, would bar the former president from posting certain case material on social media, or from sharing it with reporters. Were Mr. Trump to violate any constraints that are in place, Justice Merchan would decide whether and how to sanction him.Mr. Trump speaks again.As his arraignment went on, Mr. Trump increasingly fidgeted. He wove and unwove his fingers repeatedly. He crossed and uncrossed his arms. He knocked his knuckles on the hardwood table. Once, he puffed out his cheeks in a sigh.Finally, more than a half-hour after he entered his plea, he spoke again — after being prompted by his lawyers — but only to respond to Justice Merchan when the judge informed the former president about his right to be present at proceedings — and the ways that right could be forfeited.THE COURT: If you become disruptive to such a degree that it affects my ability to preside over this case and my ability to ensure that the case is treated the way it needs to be treated for both sides, I do have the authority to remove you from the courtroom and continue in your absence, do you understand that?DEFENDANT MR. TRUMP: I do.The judge requests Mr. Trump’s presence.THE COURT: I expect all other defendants to appear in court, even high-profile defendants.Given that Mr. Trump was charged with nonviolent crimes, prosecutors were barred from even requesting that he be put in jail. As Justice Merchan prepared to release the former president, Mr. Blanche suggested that Mr. Trump might not appear at his next court date, scheduled for Dec. 4. When asked for his reasoning, Mr. Blanche cited “the incredible expense and effort and security issues” that attended the arraignment.The judge acknowledged that it had been a huge undertaking for everyone involved. But he noted that December was “quite a ways out.” Finally, he noted that “in the interest of transparency and assuring the rules of law evenhandedly,” he was going to disagree with Mr. Blanche. The implication: As much as possible, the judge intends to treat Mr. Trump like any other defendant.When the arraignment adjourned around 3:25 p.m., Mr. Trump was the slowest person at the defense table to stand up. He smoothed the lapels of his blue suit jacket, neatened a stack of paper in front of him and walked out of the courtroom.Embed Only More