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    Trump fined $10,000 for violating gag order and described as ‘not credible’ on witness stand – as it happened

    Judge Arthur Engoron has fined Trump $10,000 after holding a brief hearing in which he called the ex-president to testify about his possible violation of a gag order this morning. Engoron previously ordered Trump not to make disparaging comments about his staff; in commentary this morning, Trump appeared to make one such statement about Engoron’s law clerk.Trump denied that he was speaking about Engoron’s clerk, and insisted he was speaking about Michael Cohen. Engoron disagreed.“As the trier of fact I find that the witness is not credible,” Engoron said in imposing the fine.Moments before it concluded, Cohen said: “Donald Trump spoke like a mob boss.”Cohen’s comment was in reference to prior statements about Trump’s directives which the ex-president’s defense team has described as inconsistent.Specifically, Trump’s team has honed in on Cohen’s testimony to Congress in which he appeared to say that his former boss didn’t tell him to inflate real estate valuations.Cohen was asked in February 2019: “Did Mr Trump direct you or Mr Weisselberg to inflate the numbers for his personal statement?”“Not that I recall, no,” Cohen said.On re-direct, Cohen explained: “He did not specifically state ‘Michael, go inflate the numbers.“As I’ve stated in my books and I’ve stated publicly, Donald Trump speaks like a mob boss,” Cohen said. Trump says what he wants without “specifically” saying.“We understood what he wanted, so when they asked me, ‘Did Mr Trump direct you or Mr Weisselberg to inflate numbers for his personal statement?’ and I stated, ‘No, not that I recall,’ that’s what I was referring to.”Court has wrapped for the day.There was a bit more bizarre courtroom drama just now. Trump abruptly left the courtroom after Cohen’s cross-examination wrapped.Faherty, a lawyer for the attorney general’s office, is now questioning Cohen on redirect. It’s unclear why Trump walked out of the courtroom.Cross-examination of Michael Cohen has resumed, but all eyes are still on the events that just transpired with Judge Arthur Engoron’s imposition of a $10,000 fine on Trump after apparently violating a gag order.Engoron imposed this punishment after calling Trump to the witness stand to explain to whom the ex-president was referring when he said: “This judge is a very partisan judge with a person who is very partisan sitting alongside him, perhaps even much more partisan than he is.’”Engoron asked Trump lawyer Chris Kise: “Mr Kise you, I believe, said on behalf of defendant Trump … that he was referring to Michael Cohen when he said what he said.”“Is that correct?”“Yes,” Kise said.“I’m going to hold a hearing right now about that,” Engoron said.Engoron called Trump to testify.“Mr Trump, did you say in the hallway this morning, ‘This judge is a very partisan judge with a person who is very partisan sitting alongside him, perhaps even much more partisan than he is.’”“Yes,” Trump said.“To whom were you referring when you said the person sitting alongside of me?”“You and Cohen,” Trump replied.“Are you sure that you didn’t mean the person on the other side of me – my principal law clerk?”“Yes, I’m sure.”Engoron asked whether he had previously referred to her as partisan.“I think she’s very biased against us,” Trump said.Trump also addressed his prior failure to remove past disparaging comments about the clerk in a timely way, which flouted a previous Engoron order.Trump said that his camp had put up a picture of her and removed it after Engoron took issue, but that “we have so many different sites”.“I believe that it was one of the political groups one of the Pacs that had it up or left it up,” Trump said.After Trump left the stand, Engoron said: “As the trier of fact, I find that the witness is not credible and that he had been referring to my law clerk.”Trump’s team unsuccessfully pushed back against the fine.Judge Arthur Engoron has fined Trump $10,000 after holding a brief hearing in which he called the ex-president to testify about his possible violation of a gag order this morning. Engoron previously ordered Trump not to make disparaging comments about his staff; in commentary this morning, Trump appeared to make one such statement about Engoron’s law clerk.Trump denied that he was speaking about Engoron’s clerk, and insisted he was speaking about Michael Cohen. Engoron disagreed.“As the trier of fact I find that the witness is not credible,” Engoron said in imposing the fine.Donald Trump has just sat down at the witness stand.The lunch break ended and court has resumed.Judge Engoron is now addressing Trump’s possible gag order violation.We’re still on the lunch break, but Trump has commented on the possible gag order violation that judge Engoron discussed earlier.Trump wouldn’t discuss what transpired after court broke for lunch; after media and public left the courtroom, it was sealed to reporters and observers.As shown in this video by Law 360’s Frank Runyeon, Trump denied violating the gag order.It’s possible we will know more about the potential gag order violation when court resumes after lunch.Habba just concluded her cross-examination of Cohen, leaning hard on her argument that he’s dishonest – and angry that his former confidant and boss didn’t help him.She prompted Cohen to say that he was being untruthful during prior congressional testimony in which he said “I don’t recall” when asked if Trump inflated asset valuations.“Did you ever ask President Trump to pardon you while he was in the White House?” Habba asked.“No,” Cohen said.“He didn’t pardon you, did he?”“No,” Cohen replied with force.Court proceedings are now on a break for lunch. They will resume at about 2.15pm, with additional cross-examination from another lawyer in Trump’s camp.Habba is now trying to portray Cohen as irrelevant and desperate to make money off of his ill-fated relationship with Trump. Did he make money off of his Trump tell-all? How much did he make?“And without stories or accusations about President Trump, you really don’t have anything to [sell]?” Habba asked.“I disagree,” Cohen responded.“Your primary income is speaking about Trump,” Habba pressed. “The more outrageous your stories are about president Trump, the more money you make, is that accurate, Mr Cohen?”“President Trump makes you relevant, doesn’t he?” she said later.“I think the circumstances make me relevant.” Before Cohen returned to the witness stand several minutes ago, Judge Engoron – who fined Trump $5,000 for violating a gag order that barred Trump from publicly commenting about his staff – said he was just alerted to comments that appeared to violate said order yet again.“It was just brought to my attention that the Associated Press reported…Mr Donald J Trump just stated the following to the press gaggle outside the courtroom: ‘This judge is a very partisan judge with a person who is very partisan sitting alongside him, perhaps even much more partisan than he is.’”“It’s really easy for the public or anyone to know who that person is,” Engoron said, referring to the law clerk whom Trump previously disparaged.“This recent statement – assuming the Associated Press is correct– obviously was intentional. I stated the last time that any future violations would be severely punished,” Engoron said. “Again, I should ask the question: Why should there not be severe sanctions for this blatant, dangerous disobeyl of a clear court order?”Trump lawyer Chris Kise insisted: “His whole commentary related to Mr Cohen and his credibility as a witness. We’re certainly aware of the order.”Engoron didn’t appear to buy the explanation, saying that the word “alongside” strongly suggested Trump was referring to his clerk. “I’ll take the whole matter under advisement,” Engoron said.Right before recess, Trump’s lawyer specifically pointed to Cohen’s use of the former president for personal gain and media content.Habba’s cross has also tried to paint Cohen as a spurned friend desperate to save his own skin.She asked Cohen whether he ever told Robert Costello, who was once a longterm Trump ally, “I don’t have anything on Donald Trump. I swear to god I don’t have anything on Donald Trump.“I don’t recall that.”“Do you recall that you told him that you would do – excuse my French – whatever the F it takes to avoid jail time?”“I don’t recall that, either.”Habba later intimated that Cohen was upset at Trump for not giving him a top White House position. She showed a series of spring 2017 texts between Cohen where someone listed as “Person 4” speculated about Trump’s chief-of-staff pick.“Keep guessing, dopey,” Cohen said.“Stop!!! You!” Person 4 replied, writing shortly thereafter: “OMG Please be true. Are you serious? You need to.”“He needs to ask, I would never,” Cohen responded.“You were never given a position in the White House, were you, Mr Cohen?”“I was given the position that I asked for. There’s no shame in being personal attorney to the president.”Court has now broken for the mid-morning break. Habba’s cross-examination of Cohen has spiraled from showmanship to campy theatrics as she has repeatedly nitpicked the former Trump fixer’s comments, down to his diction.During these exchanges–and squabbles with opposing counsel–Habba would raise the volume of her voice at key moments to make a point.While lawyers can be theatrical–and many of the best are–Cohen’s refusal to take guff contributed to the abject zaniness characterizing moments of this morning’s proceedings.“I’ve answered every question that you want, why are you screaming at me?” Cohen said.When Habba asked Cohen whether James initiated the investigation because of his comments on Trump, she pointed toward the state’s top prosecutor, who raised her hand from the first row of the gallery.“You’re welcome,” Cohen said to the courtroom. The courtroom erupted into laughter.“You’re welcome?” Habba said. “That’s telling.”“I was being comical,” Cohen said shortly thereafter.At another point, when Habba asked Cohen about the AG’s investigation, he said: “You can ask Ms. James.”“Objection,” James said from the gallery, prompting chuckles.Here are some of the latest images of key people returning to court for Trump’s civil fraud trial.Not surprisingly, Trump attorney Alina Habba is trying to cast Michael Cohen as a liar, as he’s the key witness in New York attorney general Letitia James’s civil fraud case against the ex-president.She’s also tried to catch Cohen in a trap admitting to perjury. (Lying under oath, which is perjury, constitutes a crime.)She specifically honed in on Cohen’s disavowal Tuesday of his guilt in several crimes he did, in fact, admit to five years ago.“There was no tax evasion. At best, it could be characterized as a tax omission. I have never in my life not paid taxes,” Cohen had insisted, noting that he’d spoken out against this charge many times. Cohen said there were crimes he did plead guilty to that he committed, but not everything.“I wanted to correct the record because when all of this started, it was overwhelming, the amount of misinformation, disinformation, mal-information about me was overwhelming and enormous,” Cohen said. He also disavowed arranging the payment to Karen McDougal, which he admitted to during his first plea proceeding.“I acknowledged my complicity in the Stormy Daniels matter, but…I never paid Karen McDougal,” Cohen said Tuesday. “I was tasked to review documents to ensure that Trump was protected.”Habba repeatedly asked Cohen whether he committed “perjury” during his guilty plea before the late Manhattan federal court judge William Pauley.After lawyers on both sides went head-to-head about whether Habba could use the word ‘“perjury,” Engoron instructed them to proceed without the term. She eventually got her point across, without the linguistic showmanship.“Yesterday was the first time you admitted, in open court, that you lied to Judge Pauley, correct?”“In open court?” Cohen said. “Yes.”Michael Cohen is back on the stand.Trump lawyer Alina Habba, after wishing him “good morning”, said she reminded Cohen that he was still under oath.“True,” Judge Arthur Engoron said plainly from the bench.She’s asking Cohen about the many felonies he pleaded guilty to in 2018.Within moments, the attorney general’s office took issue with these questions, as Habba on Tuesday repeatedly asked him about this.“We did this yesterday,” Colleen Faherty, a lawyer for the attorney general, said.Donald Trump has entered the courtroom. He looked forward as he walked and took his seat at the defense table without fanfare.Court was called to order several moments before his arrival; lawyers have been discussing housekeeping matters with the judge.Good morning from downtown Manhattan, where Michael Cohen is expected to soon return to the witness stand in Donald Trump’s New York state civil fraud trial.Cohen’s testimony at the 60 Centre Street courthouse stems from New York attorney general Letitia James’s lawsuit against the ex-president. Her civil claim maintains that Trump unlawfully inflated values of his properties on financial statements when it suited him.Cohen, the onetime Trump fixer who in 2018 pleaded guilty to a plethora of federal crimes related to his ex-boss, repeatedly implicated him in financial wrongdoing on Tuesday. When proceedings resume this morning, Trump attorney Alina Habba will continue her cross-examination.Here are the key points of Cohen’s testimony against Trump on Tuesday.Trump wanted to “reverse-engineer” his net worth.Cohen testified that Trump wanted him and Weisselberg to figure out a way for him to have the net worth he wanted. Per Cohen: “I was tasked, by Mr Trump, to increase the total assets based upon a number that he arbitrary selected, and my responsibility, along with Allen Weisselberg predominately, was to reverse-engineer the various different asset classes, increase those assets, in order to achieve the number that Mr Trump had [requested].”Cohen and Weisselberg altered financial statements “by hand” to give Trump his desired net worth.During meetings when Cohen and Weisselberg discussed Trump’s financials, he would make demands about what they should be. Trump, Cohen said, “would look at the total assets and he would say, ‘I’m actually not worth $4.5bn, I’m really worth more like six.’“He would then direct Allen and I to go back to Allen’s office and return after we achieved the desir[ed] goal.” Cohen said he and Weisselberg would go line-by-line on the financial statement and “mark it up by hand … in able to get the total asset number that Mr Trump asked us to achieve”.Trump allegedly had final control over business operationsThe New York attorney general’s office is working hard to prove that Trump and his inner circle conspired in defrauding lenders and insurers with inflated property valuations. Cohen’s testimony puts Trump at the center of making decisions that enabled this alleged wrongdoing. Trump, he said, made decisions about his desired net worth, how he’d present himself to insurers–and which of his underlings would carry out his wishes. “All the final decisions were done by Mr Trump,” Cohen said.Proceedings will kick off around 9.30am ET. We will be providing live coverage as they progress. More

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    Kevin McCarthy’s historic ouster as US House speaker was a tragedy foretold

    “In the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.” These words, delivered at the US Capitol by president John F Kennedy in his 1961 inaugural address, seemed particularly apt on Tuesday.Kevin McCarthy’s ousting as speaker of the House of Representatives was a personal tragedy foretold. The first seeds of destruction had been planted when, days after declaring Donald Trump responsible for the January 6 insurrection, McCarthy went grovelling at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and made his pact with the devil.Then came last year’s midterm elections when, thanks to Trump’s assault on democracy and his rightwing supreme court’s assault on abortion rights, Republicans underperformed and squeezed out only a narrow majority, handing extremists a huge influence.The power-hungry McCarthy was elected speaker after an epic 15 rounds of voting and, minutes later, publicly paid tribute to Trump for working the phones to help him secure victory. But he had cut a deal with the far right that would come back to bite him, including rules that made it easier to challenge his leadership.McCarthy then spent nine months trying to govern an ungovernable party, described by former Barack Obama strategist David Axelrod as the “Lord of the Flies caucus”. As the Democratic minority leader Hakeem Jeffries has noted, the House Republican caucus is in a state of civil war.It is further proof that the political consultant Rick Wilson was on to something when he wrote a book titled Everything Trump Touches Dies. After sneaking a win in the electoral college in 2016 while losing the national popular vote, Trump has repeatedly been a grim reaper for his party’s fortunes in 2018, 2020 and 2022.The toadies who have shown extreme loyalty to Trump have usually regretted it. His fixer Michael Cohen went to prison. His vice-president, Mike Pence, could have been hanged on January 6 and is now condemned to the purgatory of explaining to half-empty rooms why he should be president. Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows and other January 6 co-conspirators face possible jail time.Now McCarthy, who purported to be restraining Trump’s worst impulses, has become the first speaker of the US House in history to be forced out of the job. Trump did nothing to spare him the humiliation. McCarthy destroyed any hope of being rescued by Democrats by announcing a baseless impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden and blaming them for trying to shut down the government.Maxwell Frost, a Democratic congressman from Florida, wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter: “The Speaker did this to himself by lying to both Democrats AND Republicans. Speaker McCarthy will go down in history as the weakest Speaker in the history of our country.”No one who has been following US politics in the self-destructive, nihilistic, eat-one’s-own age of Trump will be surprised by Tuesday’s events. Words such as “historic” or “unprecedented” will have to be retired. There is no obvious heir apparent.The Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, summed it up: “The Republican party of Trump cannot govern at any level; The Maga parasite is eating them alive. There will be a reckoning for the GOP as the next Speaker will be even more of a Maga apologist because that’s what the party demands. No one is coming to the rescue who has the courage to tell the truth, only cowards who hide behind the chaos and pretend to look busy.”It is a recipe for more days or perhaps weeks of inertia in Congress, which instead of tackling social inequality or supporting Ukraine will be consumed with factional infighting. America’s long march of democratic decay continues. More

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    ‘Donald’s an idiot’: Michael Cohen says Trump’s rebuffing of Giuliani could backfire

    Donald Trump is an “idiot” for not paying legal expenses incurred by his attorney the former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani in the Georgia election subversion case, Trump’s former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen said.“Donald’s an idiot,” Cohen told CNN of the former president. “Let me just be very clear when it comes to paying money, he is truly an idiot.“He has not learned yet that [there are] three people you don’t want to throw under the bus like that: your lawyer, your doctor and your mechanic. Because one way or the other, you’re going to go down the hill and there’ll be no brakes.”Trump faces 13 charges in Georgia, including racketeering and conspiracy. With bond set at $200,000, he has said he would turn himself in at an Atlanta jail on Thursday.Eighteen Trump allies were also charged. Giuliani faces 13 counts including racketeering, an irony widely noted given his past as a crusading US attorney in New York, cracking down on organised crime.CNN reported last week that Giuliani in April went to Trump’s Florida home, Mar-a-Lago, to ask for help paying mounting bills also concerning other work while Trump was in the White House. Giuliani was largely rebuffed, CNN said.Cohen was long close to Trump, his work including making the hush-money payments to the porn star Stormy Daniels that are now the subject of 34 criminal charges against Trump in New York state.Trump also faces charges regarding federal election subversion and retention of classified documents, for a total of 91 counts. Such unprecedented legal jeopardy, also including civil cases concerning his business affairs and defamation arising from an allegation of rape, have not stopped him dominating the race for the Republican presidential nomination.Cohen turned on Trump after he was sentenced to three years in prison for offenses including tax fraud and lying to Congress. Becoming a leading Trump critic, he has testified against Trump in court. Last month, Cohen reached an undisclosed settlement with the Trump Organization over his own unpaid fees.Regarding Trump’s bond in Georgia, Cohen told CNN: “At the end of the day, $200,000, he’ll have no problem with raising the money. Worse comes to worse, he’ll go to his stupid supporters to do it and they’ll just pony up to one of his various” fundraising committees.“But I find it ironic or comical that I had to post a $500,000 bond for another man having an affair and [me] receiving back the money … and his is $200,000 for trying to overturn a free and fair election. I just don’t see the correlation, but it is what it is.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionCohen suggested Giuliani would be wise to “flip” on Trump.“Allegedly from Rudy’s own mouth, he claims that he has a smoking gun, information about Donald,” Cohen said. “Well, if that’s true … I don’t have to suggest anything to Rudy. He’s the one that basically came up with this concept of strong-arming when he was head of the southern district of New York. He’s going to need to speak and he’s going to need to speak before everybody else does.”Giuliani’s work for Trump also included digging for political dirt in Ukraine, efforts which contributed to Trump’s first impeachment.Cohen said: “The job that Rudy did for Donald, I don’t know if I would pay either. But at the end of the day, when your life is basically hanging on the line once again, you just don’t really want to throw another lawyer under the bus.” More

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    Trump’s indictment and the return of his biggest concern: ‘the women’

    In August 2015, at Trump Tower in New York, Donald Trump met with Michael Cohen, then his lawyer and fixer, and David Pecker, then chief executive of American Media, owner of the National Enquirer. According to the indictment of the former president unsealed in New York this week, Pecker agreed to help with Trump’s campaign for the Republican nomination, “looking out for negative stories” about Trump and then alerting Cohen.It was a “catch and kill” deal, a common tabloid practice in which Pecker would buy potentially damaging stories but not put them in print.Pecker “also agreed to publish negative stories” about Trump’s competitors. The media this week seized on that passage in the indictment, noting how the Enquirer baselessly linked the father of Ted Cruz, the Texas senator and Trump’s closest rival for the nomination, to Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who killed John F Kennedy.Last year, however, a New York Times reporter got to the heart of the matter. In her book Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, Maggie Haberman says that around the same time as the meeting with Pecker and Cohen, Sam Nunberg, a political adviser, asked Trump for his “biggest concern” about running.“Trump had a simple reply: ‘The women.’”Trump now faces 34 counts, all felonies, of falsifying business records with intent to conceal another crime: breaches of campaign finance laws. All the charges relate to the $130,000 Cohen paid Stormy Daniels, the adult film star and director who claims an affair Trump denies, and how Cohen was repaid $420,000 including $50,000 for “another expense” Cohen has said was for rigged polls, another $180,000 to cover taxes and a $60,000 bonus.But the New York indictment is not the only form of legal jeopardy Trump now faces. As well as state and federal investigations of his election subversion, a federal investigation of his retention of classified records and a civil lawsuit over his business practices, he faces a civil defamation suit arising from an allegation of rape.Trump has been accused of sexual misconduct or assault by at least 26 women. One of them, the writer E Jean Carroll, says Trump raped her in a department store changing room in New York in the mid-1990s.Trump denies the allegation. Carroll has sued him twice: for defamation and for defamation and battery, the latter suit under the Adult Survivors Act, a New York law which gave alleged victims of crimes beyond the statute of limitations a year to bring civil claims. In the defamation case, trial has been delayed. The case under the Adult Survivors Act is due to go to trial on 25 April.To the New York writer Molly Jong-Fast, host of the Fast Politics podcast, there is a some sense of poetic justice in Trump finally facing a legal reckoning in cases arising from his treatment of women.But, Jong-Fast says: “The thing I’m sort of struck by is, like, how much women continually are dismissed, even in this situation.“There’s so much talk about the Stormy Daniels case, there was so little talk about actually what happened, right? There was almost nothing about how he was married to his third wife [Melania Trump], and she had just had a child [Barron Trump], and he had this affair. He denies the affair but the affair is pretty much documented.“That’s as close to truth in Trumpworld as possible. But we’re discussing the nuances of who paid the hush money and whether or not that’s a campaign contribution, and whether that rises to a federal crime.“That can be argued, but I was surprised at how little focus women had in it. How nobody was talking about like, this is a serial philanderer who has the kind of problems that serial philanderers have.“The filing talked about how he had paid off this doorman, about the illegitimate child. I guess that may have been not true … but like, you don’t pay off somebody unless you have a sense that this could actually be true.”As Jong-Fast indicates, the New York indictment detailed two other “catch and kill” deals which prosecutors said also showed “illegal conduct” admitted by Pecker and Cohen but directed by Trump himself.In late 2015, American Media paid $30,000 to a former Trump World Tower doorman who was trying to sell a story about Trump fathering a child out of wedlock.In September 2016, Cohen taped Trump talking about a payment to Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model who claims an affair Trump also denies.“So what do we got to pay for this?” Trump asked. “One fifty?”American Media paid McDougal $150,000 to stay silent.After Trump won the presidency, the indictment says, American Media “released both the doorman and [McDougal] from their non-disclosure agreements”.That speaks to the central contention made by Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, in his charges over the Daniels payment: that Trump concealed it because he feared it could derail his campaign.According to Bragg’s indictment, in the McDougal case Trump “was concerned about the effect it could have on his candidacy”. In the case of the doorman, Cohen instructed Pecker “not to release [him] until after the presidential election”. Regarding Daniels, Trump is said to have directed Cohen “to delay making a payment … as long as possible … [because] if they could delay payment until after the election, they could avoid paying altogether, because at that point it would not matter if the story became public”.In short, prosecutors contend that Trump did not make and conceal hush-money deals because he wanted to avoid embarrassment or hurting his wife – the argument successfully pursued by John Edwards, the Democratic presidential candidate who made hush-money payments in 2008 but avoided conviction four years later. The case against Trump is built on the contention he broke state and federal campaign finance laws.Observers argue over whether Bragg has built a case he can win. Some expect Trump to wriggle off the hook. Others think the first prosecutor to indict a president has a good chance of securing a conviction. In either case, the indictment has brought Trump’s treatment of women back to the national spotlight.So has Trump himself. As Jong-Fast points out, as the former president this week attacked the judge in New York, who subsequently became subject to threats to his safety, so too Trump went after the judge’s wife and daughter.“If you see interviews with Stormy Daniels, she has had terrible experiences as a result of her brush with Trump. Even the judge in that case, the judge’s daughter, Trump went after them. You go after Trump, you get it. He’s like a mob boss. That’s just how he does it.” More

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    Donald Trump indicted over 2016 hush money payment – report

    Donald Trump has been indicted in New York, over a hush money payment made to the adult film star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 election, the New York Times reported on Thursday.The paper cited four people with knowledge of the matter.No former US president has ever been criminally indicted. The news is set to shake the race for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, in which Trump leads most polls.Trump also faces legal jeopardy over his election subversion and incitement of the January 6 attack on Congress; his attempts to overturn the 2020 result in Georgia; his retention of classified records; his business dealings; and a defamation suit arising from an allegation of rape by the writer E Jean Carroll, which Trump denies.Daniels claims an affair with Trump in 2006. Trump denies the affair but has admitted directing his then lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, to pay Daniels $130,000 for her silence.Cohen was also revealed to have arranged for $150,000 to be paid to Karen McDougal, a Playboy model who claimed to have an affair with Trump.That payment was made by David Pecker, the publisher of the National Enquirer tabloid newspaper, which squashed the story.Trump has admitted reimbursing Cohen with payments the Trump Organization logged as legal expenses.Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016 and was president from 2017 to 2021. News of the payment to Daniels broke in January 2018.Cohen pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance law, contributing to a three-year prison sentence handed down in December 2018.Investigations of the Daniels payment have dragged on. Earlier this year, Mark Pomerantz, an experienced New York prosecutor who resigned from Bragg’s team then wrote a book, called the payment a “zombie case” which would not die.Earlier this month, Cohen testified before the grand jury in the Manhattan hush money case. Hope Hicks and Kellyanne Conway, former White House aides, reportedly spoke to prosecutors, as did Daniels, Pecker and Jeffrey McConney, senior vice-president and controller of the Trump Organization.Trump did not testify. He denies wrongdoing, claiming the payments represented extortion.Earlier this week, a Trump lawyer, Joe Tacopina, told MSNBC Trump had simply taken advice from his lawyer, Cohen, which was “not a crime”. Tacopina also said the payments to Cohen were simply “legal fees”.Trump’s lawyers are expected to seek to delay the case.Andrew Weissmann, a former federal prosecutor in New York, said Trump would in all likelihood not head swiftly to court.Writing for MSNBC, Weissmann said: “Beyond Trump’s notorious abuse of the legal system by throwing sand in the gears to slow things down, a criminal case takes time.”He added: “There is no end of motions that can be filed to delay a trial, which could easily cause the litigation to be ongoing during the Republican primary season [in 2024] – something a court could also find is reason to delay any trial date.“Indeed, even in a more quotidian case, having a trial within a year of indictment would be quick.” More

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    Michael Cohen’s lawyer compares Trump to Clinton-Lewinsky case

    A lawyer representing a key witness in the investigation into Donald Trump over hush money payments has drawn comparisons between the case and the sex scandal that embroiled Bill Clinton, as it became clear there would be no indictment in the Trump investigation until next week at the earliest.Lanny Davis, who represents Michael Cohen, Trump’s former fixer, hypothesized about what might have happened if Clinton had handled his affair with Monica Lewinsky differently.Clinton was impeached in his second term after lying about his relationship with Lewinsky while he was president. Davis, who served as a special adviser to Clinton, speculated about how the Democrat might have been perceived if a representative had paid money to Lewinsky.Cohen, who was Trump’s lawyer and fixer for more than a decade before he turned on his former boss, paid $130,000 to Stormy Daniels to prevent her from going public with allegations that she and Trump slept together a decade before he won the White House.“I won’t mention the name of the former president I worked for,” Davis told Politico in an interview.“But can you imagine if … he had written personal checks as part of that controversy?“Can you imagine if I had personal checks out of a checking account of a sitting president that reimburses a hush money scheme, and then I used a legal argument to say why he should get off: because New York state law doesn’t apply to federal law? Good luck!”Cohen, who was sentenced to three years in prison for ​​tax evasion and campaign-finance violations related to the Daniels payment, has been a key witness in the investigation into Trump.The now-disbarred lawyer paid Daniels through a shell company, and was then reimbursed through Trump, whose company logged the reimbursements as legal expenses. The Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, is leading the investigation into potential wrongdoing by Trump.Davis, a lawyer and longtime political operative, claimed in the Politico interview that he himself had triggered that investigation by speaking to Cyrus Vance, Bragg’s predecessor.“Cyrus Vance Sr was the secretary of state under Jimmy Carter – I’m showing my age now […] I was in my 20s when President Carter was elected,” Davis told Politico.“And I got to know Mr Vance. So his son, being the DA of [Manhattan], I called after Michael was sent to prison.”Davis said he believed “the evidence of financial fraud was on the record in the [congressional] hearings and that Vance’s office should interview Michael”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“They came to Otisville [the prison where Cohen served some of his sentence] … They did manage to get a visit, and then two and then three separate visits at the beginning,” Davis said.“And that’s how it began.”Davis’s interview came as the investigation into Trump rolled on in New York. Reports had suggested Trump would be indicted this week – Trump himself claimed, wrongly, last weekend that he would be arrested on Tuesday – but the grand jury hearing the case is not due to meet again until Monday.In the meantime Trump, who is the subject of multiple other legal inquiries, warned on Friday of “potential death and destruction” should he be charged in the case.In a rambling, idiosyncratically punctuated message posted on Truth Social, a niche rightwing social media network that he owns, at 1am, Trump wrote:“What kind of person can charge another person, in this case a former President of the United States, who got more votes than any sitting President in history, and leading candidate (by far!) for the Republican Party nomination, with a Crime, when it is known by all that NO Crime has been committed, & also known that potential death & destruction in such a false charge could be catastrophic for our Country? Why & who would do such a thing? Only a degenerate psychopath that truely [sic] hates the USA!” More