New York State Criminal Case Against Trump (71543-23)

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      A Tongue-Lashing for a Defense Witness Isn’t Great News for Trump

      by

      Eight times a day during his felony trial, a former president of the United States must stand and honor 12 jurors and six alternates as they walk past, eyes straight ahead or down, casting no glances at him. It’s inspiring to watch these ordinary citizens as sovereign soldiers for justice.On Monday this calm processional was disrupted, as jurors were forced to hurry out after a witness for the defense mocked the authority of the court. Moments later, Justice Juan Merchan ordered the courtroom immediately cleared, and reporters fled in a frenzy.The reason for all of this was the testimony of Robert Costello, an astonishingly arrogant former federal prosecutor who has defended the likes of George Steinbrenner and Leona Helmsley, borrowing a little of his nasty affect from each.Michael Cohen testified earlier that Costello and Rudy Giuliani were assigned by Donald Trump to open a back channel to Cohen to keep him in the Trump fold.Costello testified before a friendly House subcommittee last week that Cohen was a liar. This apparently impressed Trump and — presto! — Costello was the first important witness the defense called after the prosecution rested.On direct examination, Costello did next to nothing for the defense beyond landing a few more mostly irrelevant blows on Cohen.On cross-examination by the prosecution, however, you could almost see steam coming out of Costello’s ears. The temerity of this lowly local female prosecutor asking him questions! Merchan ruled earlier that Costello could testify only on certain subjects. When Merchan sustained several objections from the prosecution and struck a couple of Costello’s answers from the record, Costello decided to play judge.He muttered “ridiculous” and “strike it” after disliking a question. An enraged Merchan excused the jury and said sharply, “I want to discuss proper decorum in my courtroom.” He continued, “You don’t say, ‘Geez,’ and you don’t say, ‘Strike it.’ And if you don’t like my ruling, you don’t give me side-eye and roll your eyes.”Merchan apparently didn’t want reporters to hear the rest of his tongue-lashing and cleared the courtroom.None of this was good for the defense, which struggled all day to build on Thursday’s success in making Cohen seem he was lying about the purpose of his calls to Trump in late October 2016. Cohen looked bad admitting he passed $20,000 in cash in a paper bag to Red Finch, a tech firm that uses algorithms to rig online polls. But Trump looked even worse by directing Red Finch to cheat his way onto CNBC’s list of the most famous business leaders of the 20th century. Classic Trump.Jurors may conclude that the whole bunch of ’em are liars and reasonably doubt every word out of all of their mouths. At this point, that may be Trump’s best hope of avoiding conviction. More

    • 113 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      How Trump’s Hush-Money Case Failed to Capture America’s Imagination

      by

      If I’d pictured Donald Trump’s first criminal trial a few years ago, I’d have imagined the biggest, splashiest story in the world. Instead, as we lurch toward a verdict that could brand the presumptive Republican nominee a felon and possibly even send him to prison, a strange sense of anticlimax hangs over the whole affair.In a recent Yahoo News/YouGov poll, only 16 percent of respondents said they were following the trial very closely, with an additional 32 percent following it “somewhat” closely. “Those numbers rank as some of the lowest for any recent news event,” wrote Yahoo News’s Andrew Romano. When people were asked how the trial made them feel, the most common response was “bored.” TV ratings tell a similar story. “Network coverage of Donald Trump’s hush money trial has failed to produce blockbuster viewership,” Deadline reported at the end of April. Cable news networks, Deadline said, saw a decline in ratings among those 25 to 54 since the same time last year. At the courthouse last week, I met news junkies who’d lined up at 3 a.m. to get a seat at the trial and maybe score selfies with their favorite MSNBC personalities, but it felt more like wandering into a subcultural fandom than the red-hot center of the zeitgeist. A block or so away, you wouldn’t know anything out of the ordinary was happening.Perhaps the trial would have captured more of the public’s attention had it been televised, but lack of visuals alone doesn’t explain America’s collective shrug. The special counsel Robert Mueller’s report didn’t have images, either, but when it was published, famous actors like Robert DeNiro, Rosie Perez and Laurence Fishburne starred in a video breaking it down. I’m aware of no similar effort to dramatize this trial’s testimony, and I almost never hear ordinary people talking about it. “Saturday Night Live” tried, last weekend, to satirize the scene at the courthouse with a cold open mocking Trump’s hallway press appearances, but it ended with an acknowledgment of public exhaustion: “Just remember, if you’re tired of hearing about all of my trials, all you’ve got to do is vote for me, and it will all go away.”It wasn’t a particularly funny line, but it gets at something true that helps explain why this historic trial doesn’t seem like that big a deal. When Trump was president, his opponents lionized lawyers and prosecutors — often in ways that feel retrospectively mortifying — because liberals had faith that the law could restrain him. That faith, however, has become increasingly impossible to sustain.Mueller punted on the question of whether Trump obstructed justice in trying to impede the Russia probe. The jury in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case found that he committed sexual abuse, but it had little discernible effect on his political prospects. A deeply partisan Supreme Court, still mulling its decision on his near-imperial claims of presidential immunity, has made it highly unlikely that he will face trial before the election for his attempted coup. A deeply partisan judge appointed by Trump has indefinitely postponed his trial for stealing classified documents. With the Georgia election interference case against Trump tied up in an appeal over whether District Attorney Fani Willis should be disqualified over an affair with a member of her team, few expect that trial to start before 2025 — or 2029, if Trump wins the election. And should he become president again, there’s little question that he’ll quash the federal cases against him once and for all.In theory, the delays in Trump’s other criminal cases should raise the stakes in the New York trial, since it’s the only chance that he will face justice for his colossal corruption before November. But in reality, his record of impunity has created a kind of fatalism in his opponents, as well as outsize confidence among his supporters. In a recent New York Times/Siena poll, 53 percent of voters in swing states said it was somewhat or very unlikely that Trump would be found guilty. That included 66 percent of Republicans but also 42 percent of Democrats.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 163 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      A Former Leader of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Gang Joins Trump in Court

      by

      An entourage of more than a dozen supporters who joined President Donald J. Trump in a Manhattan courthouse on Monday included a former president of an outlaw motorcycle gang in New York City who spent years in prison on drug charges.The man, Chuck Zito, helped found in the early 1980s the New York Nomads chapter of the Hells Angels, the infamous club that started in California. The Justice Department described the organization as a criminal enterprise and linked the New York chapter to the Gambino crime family. Mr. Zito later left the biker group to try become a movie star in Hollywood.Mr. Trump has long shown an affection for macho bikers, and addressed a rally of them in Washington in 2016 before the election. (“Do we love the bikers? Yes. We love the bikers,” he told the crowd.) A group called Bikers for Trump took part in several so-called Stop the Steal rallies after Mr. Trump lost the 2020 election.Mr. Zito was joined in the courtroom on Monday by several Trump allies who have been charged with crimes.They included Boris Epshteyn, a legal adviser indicted in an Arizona case related to attempts to keep Mr. Trump in power after the 2020 election, and Bernard Kerik, the former commissioner of the New York Police Department, who was imprisoned for tax-related charges and later pardoned by Mr. Trump. The entourage was so large that Mr. Epshteyn helped coordinate seating.Mr. Zito has experience with the criminal justice system, having served a prison term from 1985 to 1991 on drug conspiracy charges. In recent decades, he has created a new career as a stuntman and occasional actor, starring most prominently as Chucky “The Enforcer” Pancamo in the HBO prison drama “Oz.”Mr. Zito is also something of a professional tough-guy-about-town with many acquaintances in New York and Hollywood. He once served as a boxing trainer for the actor Mickey Rourke, and when the mob boss John Gotti died of cancer in 2002, Mr. Zito was one of the few non-Mafia members to attend the wake at a funeral home in Queens. More

    • 113 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      This Is What Worries Me About the Trump Trial

      by

      I can’t remember when I’ve been more disturbed by a criminal trial than I have been by the Manhattan trial of Donald Trump. The prosecutors are painting a vivid picture of Trump as a vile and dishonest person, and the daily pilgrimages of Republican politicians to the Manhattan courthouse, in spite of horrific testimony against Trump, demonstrates that the party has a broken soul.At the same time, the underlying legal theory supporting the prosecution’s case remains dubious. The facts may be clear, but the law is anything but — and that could very well mean that the jury convicts Trump before the election, an appeals court reverses the conviction after the election, and millions of Americans, many of them non-MAGA, face yet another crisis of confidence in American institutions.Let’s first discuss the dreadful facts. Stormy Daniels’s testimony crystallized, better than that of any other witness, the prosecution’s theory that Trump ordered Michael Cohen to pay off Daniels to save his campaign and then fraudulently disguised the reimbursements. It helped answer a key question: Why would a known playboy, a person who has boasted of his affairs with his friends’ wives, suddenly be so keen to suppress details of his encounter with a porn star?Consider the timeline. On Oct. 7, 2016, the “Access Hollywood” story broke. The Washington Post released the infamous recording in which Trump told Billy Bush, one of the show’s hosts, “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.” Trump went on, saying he could grab women by the genitals. “You can do anything.”The next day, a representative for Daniels told The National Enquirer that Daniels was willing to talk on the record about her encounter with Trump. We now know from Daniels’s sworn testimony that her story was going to essentially affirm the “Access Hollywood” tape. Trump used his star power to draw in Daniels and then exploited her.At trial, she did not testify to a frivolous or joyful encounter with Trump; she testified to something far more distressing. He invited her to his hotel room, and after she went to the bathroom, she walked out to find Trump on the bed in just his boxers and a T-shirt. She did not claim he forced himself on her, but she said she left “shaking” and testified that she was ashamed.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 100 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      Why the Manhattan Trial Is Probably Helping Trump

      by

      Throughout the Republican primary campaign (such as it was), it was perfectly clear that the multiple indictments of Donald Trump helped him consolidate support. This was a source of moral exasperation to liberals, but their bafflement coexisted with the hope that what played well with the MAGA faithful would have the opposite effect in the general election. Trump’s cries of persecution might rally conservatives in a primary, but the trials themselves would help Joe Biden cruise to re-election.The trial that we’re actually getting, the prosecution of Trump for falsified business records related to hush money payments related to his assignation with the porn star Stormy Daniels, could theoretically still have that effect; a guilty verdict could shake loose a couple of points from Trump’s modest but consistent polling lead.But watching the trial play out so far, it seems just as likely that as in the primaries, so now in the general election: Any political effect from being charged and tried is probably working marginally in Trump’s favor.First, consider how this trial plays if you are not paying close attention to the legal details. Follow the coverage casually, the headlines about Daniels’s testimony especially, and it appears that Trump is on trial for cheating on his wife in a distinctly sordid way and then trying to conceal it — for being a political figure, a candidate for high office, and lying about sex.As it happens, America spent a pretty important period of time litigating the question of whether it’s a serious offense for a lecherous politician (one whose campaign apparatus notoriously labored to prevent “bimbo eruptions”) to conceal an inappropriate sexual liaison. Indeed, we even litigated the question of whether committing brazen perjury while trying to conceal a sexual liaison is a serious offense. And the country answered this question by embracing the consensus position of American liberalism at the time and offering Bill Clinton tolerance, forgiveness, absolution.Admittedly some politically engaged Americans are too young to directly recall the Clinton presidency. But the Lewinsky affair still casts a meaningful cultural shadow, and many of the Trump trial’s headlines cast the prosecutors in a Kenneth Starr-like part. Nothing really new is being revealed about Trump’s conduct here; the country already knows that he’s a philanderer and scoundrel. Instead the revelations are about the seeming hypocrisy of his political enemies, and how easily the former Democratic indifference to lying-about-sex gave way to prurience when it offered a path to getting Trump.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      Ethics Panel Cautions Juan Merchan, Judge in Trump Trial, Over Political Donations

      by

      Justice Juan M. Merchan, the judge overseeing Donald J. Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan, donated modest amounts to Democratic groups in 2020.A state ethics panel quietly dismissed a complaint last summer against the New York judge presiding over the criminal trial of Donald J. Trump, issuing a warning over small donations the judge had made to groups supporting Democrats, including the campaign of Joseph R. Biden Jr.The judge, Juan M. Merchan, donated a total of $35 to the groups in 2020, including a $15 donation earmarked for the Biden campaign, and $10 to a group called “Stop Republicans.”Political contributions of any kind are prohibited under state judicial ethics rules.“Justice Merchan said the complaint, from more than a year ago, was dismissed in July with a caution,” the spokesman for the court system, Al Baker, said in a statement.A caution does not include any penalty, but it can be considered in any future cases reviewed by the state’s Commission on Judicial Conduct. A letter outlining the caution was not released because of the commission’s rules, and Justice Merchan did not make the letter available.“The Commission on Judicial Conduct is governed by a confidentiality statute and cannot comment on nonpublic dispositions,” said Robert Tembeckjian, the commission’s administrator.The commission’s decision was first reported by Reuters.In its 2024 annual report, the commission said it was made aware of dozens of New York judges who had violated the rules against political contributions in recent years. Most were modest amounts, the report said, and many appeared to stem from the misperception that the rules only apply to state campaigns. In fact, judges are prohibited from contributing to any campaigns, including for federal office.“Like so much of the misconduct the Commission encounters, making a prohibited political contribution is a self-inflicted mistake,” the commission wrote in the report.For Justice Merchan, the stakes of such a mistake are considerably higher than most: He is the first judge in American history to preside over the criminal trial of a former president.The donations in part fueled Mr. Trump’s efforts to have Justice Merchan removed from the case before the trial began. Mr. Trump’s lawyers also focused on Justice Merchan’s adult daughter and her work at a Democratic consulting firm.But Justice Merchan declined to recuse himself, appeals court judges declined to step in, and the trial is now nearing its conclusion.The case centers on a hush-money payment to a porn star, Stormy Daniels, in the last days of the 2016 presidential campaign. Ms. Daniels says she had a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump, but a $130,000 payment from Mr. Trump’s fixer bought her silence. Mr. Trump is accused of falsifying business records to cover up his reimbursement of the fixer, Michael D. Cohen, casting them as routine legal expenses.Mr. Trump has denied the accusations against him — and has lashed out at Justice Merchan and the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, who brought the case, noting that both are Democrats. More

    • 125 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Trump Plans a Campaign Event in the Deep Blue Bronx

      by

      Former President Donald J. Trump, who has been spending much of his time recently as a criminal defendant in a Manhattan courtroom, will be in a different New York borough next Thursday, when he will hold a campaign event in the Bronx.The gathering is scheduled to take place at Crotona Park, his campaign announced in a statement on Friday evening, declaring that Mr. Trump would “ease the financial pressures placed on households and re-establish law and order in New York!”It is an unusual location for a Republican presidential campaign event: The area went for President Biden by about 77 percentage points in the 2020 election. And despite a shift to the right in some of New York State’s congressional districts and neighborhoods, including in the Bronx, in recent years, the state as a whole is not considered a general-election battleground.But Mr. Trump’s aides have been discussing an event in the South Bronx for weeks. The gathering, they said, would not be a traditional rally.The idea has been to make appearances around New York City during Mr. Trump’s required attendance at his criminal trial in Manhattan, on charges he falsified business records to cover up a hush-money payment to a porn star during the 2016 presidential election.Last month, in his first campaign stop since the start of the trial, Mr. Trump visited a bodega in Harlem, attacking the district attorney prosecuting him and casting himself as tough on crime.The former president told donors at a Manhattan fund-raiser this week that he was planning something in the South Bronx, making a joke that he might get hurt in the neighborhood.“We’re going to have a tremendous rally. You may never see me again,” he said, prompting laughter, according to an attendee who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private event. “That could be a tricky one.”Representative Ritchie Torres, a New York Democrat who represents the South Bronx, wrote on social media that the area had “no greater enemy than Donald Trump,” casting him as a threat to the social safety net “on which Bronx families depend for their survival.”“The South Bronx — the most Democratic area in the nation — will not buy the snake oil that he is selling,” Mr. Torres wrote. More

    • 100 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      Transcript of Trump Manhattan Trial, May 16, 2024

      by

      M. Cohen
      –
      Cross/Blanche
      3839
      1
      2
      3
      4
      5
      6
      7
      And you had been hearing on television that they were
      dangling pardons. So, you directed your lawyer, hey, find out
      if I can get a pardon. I want this nightmare to end, right?
      A Not if I can get a pardon. If the President was going
      to be doing these pre-pardons.
      But you
      —
      you testified that you were 100 percent
      open to accepting it, anything to end this, right?
      8
      A
      Yes, sir.
      9
      And so
      —
      and you did that with a couple of your
      10
      11
      A
      12
      13
      14
      15
      16
      17
      18
      19
      A
      20
      21
      22
      23
      lawyers, Mr. Ryan and Mr. Costello, correct?
      Mr. Costello was never my lawyer.
      Well, you asked Mr. Costello, putting aside whether he
      was your lawyer, you asked Mr. Costello to reach out to people
      in the administration, including Mr. Giuliani, about the
      possibility of a pardon?
      A We spoke about it.
      And as part of your conversation with him, you asked
      him to reach out to Mr. Giuliani and explore it, correct?
      Yes, sir.
      And so, when you testified under oath less than one
      year later, February, on February 27th, 2019, that you never
      asked for, nor would you ever accept a pardon, that was a lie,
      wasn’t it?
      24
      A
      At the time it was accurate.
      25
      Well, the very next day so, again, February 27th,
      Susan Pearce-Bates, RPR, CCR, RSA
      Principal Court Reporter More