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      Trump asks to delay hush-money trial until supreme court weighs immunity claim

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      Donald Trump on Monday asked the New York judge overseeing his criminal case on charges stemming from hush money paid to a porn star to delay the trial until the US supreme court finishes reviewing his claim of presidential immunity in a separate case.The hush money trial is set to begin on 25 March in a New York state court in Manhattan.Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsification of business records.Prosecutors say he directed his former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, to pay porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet before the 2016 election about a sexual encounter she says they had a decade earlier, and then falsely recorded his reimbursement to Cohen as legal expenses.Trump denies the encounter with Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.Last month, prosecutors said they planned to introduce evidence of a “pressure campaign” by Trump in 2018 to ensure Cohen did not cooperate with a federal investigation into the payment to Daniels. Cohen pleaded guilty that year to violating campaign finance law.In their court filing on Monday, Trump’s lawyers called prosecutors’ claim of a pressure campaign “fictitious”. They said prosecutors should not be allowed to present evidence about Trump’s public statements about Cohen from that year because he made those statements in his official capacity as president.“Without immunity from criminal prosecution based on official acts, the President’s political opponents will seek to influence and control his or her decisions via de facto extortion,” Trump’s lawyers wrote.A spokesperson for the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which brought the charges, declined to comment.The case is one of four federal and state criminal indictments the presumptive Republican presidential nominee faces. Firm trial dates have not yet been set in the other three cases, which stem from his efforts to reverse his 2020 loss to Democratic president Joe Biden, and his handling of government documents.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe supreme court on 28 February agreed to decide Trump’s claim of immunity from prosecution in his federal case in Washington DC, over efforts to overturn the 2020 election, delaying a potential trial. The supreme court set the case for oral arguments during the week of 22 April.Trump has pleaded not guilty in all criminal cases, which he has termed “election interference”. More

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      New York prosecutors request Trump gag order ahead of hush-money trial

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      Manhattan prosecutors on Monday asked the judge presiding in Donald Trump’s criminal case on charges of falsifying business records to impose a gag order on the former president, seeking to bar him from attacking potential witnesses and revealing juror identities.The request, submitted by prosecutors in the office of the Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, repeatedly referenced the gag order imposed in Trump’s federal criminal trial in Washington to ask for similar limitations on what he can publicly say about the case.“[The] defendant has a long history of making public and inflammatory remarks,” the 30-page filing said. “Those remarks, as well as the inevitable reactions they incite from the defendant’s followers and allies, pose a significant threat to the orderly administration of this criminal proceeding.”The proposed gag order hewed closely to the contours of the order upheld in December by the US court of appeals for the DC circuit that decided Trump’s inflammatory statements in the federal election interference case could not remain unrestricted, despite his objections.Prosecutors asked the New York judge Juan Merchan to limit Trump from assailing people in three categories: known or foreseeable witnesses concerning their trial testimony; court staff and the district attorney’s staff as well as their families; and any prospective jurors.The filing made extensive use of Trump’s posts on his Truth Social platform decrying the criminal cases in their filing, notably including a post that Trump published in March last year when he erroneously predicted he would be arrested in connection with the business records case.“THE FAR & AWAY LEADING REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE & FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATE OF AMERICA, WILL BE ARRESTED ON TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK,” Trump had written in a post attached as an exhibit. “PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!”The filing also drew direct lines from Trump’s inflammatory statements about the case to actions taken by his followers, arguing that immediately after that post in particular, the district attorney’s office received its first threat – even before Trump was formally charged.Trump’s lawyers are likely to oppose the gag order and could appeal it should Merchan agree with prosecutors. Still, if Merchan were to impose a gag order, he would be the latest in a string of judges in federal and state courts restricting Trump’s most acerbic remarks.The gag order request comes weeks before Trump is scheduled for trial in the Manhattan criminal case on 25 March. Last year, the district attorney’s office charged Trump with 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up hush-money payments to the porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election.Prosecutors have cast the case as an attempt by Trump to manipulate the 2016 election, arguing Trump paid $130,000 to buy Daniels’ silence about the affair because he was supposedly concerned about damaging his presidential campaign.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe charges hinge on how the hush money was recorded on Trump’s business records. Trump falsified the records, prosecutors allege, by recording the reimbursements to his former lawyer Michael Cohen – who made the payment to Daniels – as “legal expenses” from a “retainer agreement”.To make their case, prosecutors asked the judge in a separate filing on Monday to allow them to introduce ancillary evidence at trial related to their 2016 election interference theory, including other hush-money payments Trump made in advance of the 2016 election.They also asked the judge to allow them to use the infamous Access Hollywood tape where Trump boasted about groping women, which came shortly before Trump made the hush-money payment to Daniels.Trump’s lawyers pushed back at prosecutors in their own filing, asking the judge to exclude evidence about the 2016 election because it was irrelevant to the actual business records allegations. They also asked Cohen to be barred from testifying because he had previously made misstatements. More

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      John Avlon targets New York Republicans in US House campaign: ‘They’re scared’

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      To John Avlon’s knowledge, “the National Republican Congressional Committee didn’t feel compelled to weigh in when any of the other candidates in the Democratic primary got in the race. But they did for me. And I think that’s because they’re scared.”The race is in New York’s first congressional district, a US House seat represented by a Republican, Nick LaLota, in an area that trended towards Joe Biden in 2020 and is thus one of many Democratic targets in the state this year. Avlon announced his run on Wednesday.“I think they thought they were going to have a relatively easy race, maybe facing the candidate who had been defeated before. But I think when they saw me getting in the race, they recognised that changes the calculus.”Avlon, 51, is no unknown quantity: he has written four books on politics and history, was for five years editor-in-chief of the Daily Beast and, until this month, was a contributor and anchor at CNN.The primary comes first. Nancy Goroff contested the seat on the eastern end of Long Island in 2020 and is in again. So is James Gaughran, a former state senator. There’s plenty of time for things to get testy but Gaughran welcomed Avlon to the race, telling Politico: “I’ve watched him a lot on CNN, and I’ve actually become a big fan. His advocacy – particularly pointing to the issues we have in this country of trying to save this country from Donald Trump, is spot on.”Avlon laughs. “That was very kind of Jimmy. And by the way … don’t we want to see more of that? Don’t we want to see more, ‘Let’s have a civil conversation, disagree where we disagree, find the areas where we agree, and be civil and constructive and not tear each other down in primaries, because it distracts the focus from the real work to be done, which is winning a general election.’”Republicans have not been quite so welcoming to Avlon. The NRCC said it looked forward “to litigating this smug, liberal hack’s past so voters can see just how left he and the rest of the modern Democrat [sic] party have become”.A LaLota spokesperson piled in, calling Avlon “a Manhattan elitist without any attachments to Long Island other than his summer home in the Hamptons” and claiming NY-1 “has a history of rejecting out-of-state and Manhattan elitists, from both sides of the aisle, who parachute into the district”.Avlon has homes in Sag Harbor and Manhattan. LaLota, a graduate of the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, lives in Amityville – outside his district.Avlon says: “I don’t think it’s remotely credible to attack me as radical far left. That’s the kind of cut-and-paste political attack that people realise is just fundamentally false. And I think the reality is that Nick LaLota has been a Donald Trump flunky, doing whatever he says rather than solving problems on behalf of people in Suffolk county. You know, he’s far too far right for this swing district.”Twice, Avlon mentions as a model the centrist Tom Suozzi’s Democratic win this month in NY-3, the seat formerly held by the notorious George Santos, the sixth House member ever expelled. Twice, Avlon cites as motivation farcical scenes in Washington DC in which Senate Republicans sank their own border and immigration deal, Trump having made clear he wants to campaign for president against the backdrop of a “border crisis”, real or confected.House Republicans have since refused to consider a foreign aid package without attendant border reform.Avlon says: “When LaLota attacked Senator James Lankford [of Oklahoma, the Republican negotiator] for trying to solve the border crisis with a bipartisan solution, he just revealed himself as part of the problem, not part of the solution of our politics. I want to be part of the solution.”To some Democrats, “centrist” has become a dirty word. Not to Avlon. He has distanced himself from No Labels, the group he co-founded in 2010, left a decade ago and now accuses of a “reckless gamble with democracy” in its flirtation with a presidential campaign. But the political centre is still where he wants to be, “particularly in swing districts [like NY-01] as a matter of practicality but I think also on principle.“If the larger goal is to win elections, we still need to find a way to reunite America. That’s a lofty goal. I’m not saying that’s why I’m running. But once we break this fever, we need to find a way to come together again. I do believe in the power of unifying leaders in divided times and the best American politics is that which focuses on what unites us, not what divides us.”Avlon’s third book, from 2017, was Washington’s Farewell: The Founding Father’s Warning to Future Generations. The historian Richard Norton Smith called it “a stake through the heart of political extremism”, a subject Avlon knows well, also having written Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America (2010) and presented Reality Check with John Avlon: Extremist Beat for CNN.“There’s a fundamental importance in building broader community and building a big tent,” he says. “The Democratic party is the last big tent party. The Democratic party, unfortunately, is the only functioning political party in America, because the other party is set to re-nominate a guy who tried to destroy our democracy, and is using election lies as a litmus test for loyalty. I don’t think you can underscore that enough.“But in the larger sense, democracy depends upon reasoning together. That requires common facts and identifying common ground and focusing on how you solve common problems. And that’s about putting country over party.”Avlon’s own marriage is bipartisan. His wife, Margaret Hoover, is a TV host and political commentator whose great-grandfather, Herbert Hoover, was the unlucky president hit by the Great Depression.Avlon is “proud of her and her family and the work she does to defend and extend his legacy. When Margaret and I are on air together or doing something onstage together, I hope it serves as a reminder that people can disagree agreeably – again, that partisan politics shouldn’t define every aspect of our lives, especially our personal lives. We can have honest disagreements, as long as it’s accompanied by an assumption of goodwill.”Avlon also started out working for a Republican: Rudy Giuliani, when he was mayor of New York City, long before he became Trump’s attack dog. As speechwriter and policy director, Avlon was there on 11 September 2001, when the towers fell.“September 11 is one of the defining moments in my life,” he says. “And I don’t think that’s unusual. I think New Yorkers understand how it defined our collective character. And I think some folks have slipped into a certain 9/11 amnesia. And I’ve warned against the wisdom of that, in a lot of segments, on air and written.“I’ll always be proud of the work we did in those days. My team and I were responsible for writing the eulogies for 343 firefighters, for police officers and Port Authority workers. And I think that memory, and the example they set by running into the fire, and the way we were briefly able to unite as a nation, in the aftermath, those are all core parts of my character and my experience.“And I think folks in Suffolk county will understand that, because they’ve experienced it themselves or they’ve been touched by it themselves. You don’t have to be retired police officer or firefighter to understand the importance of that day and its aftermath to our communities. It’s just part of who I am.” More

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      Ex-CNN anchor John Avlon announces Congress run to defeat ‘Maga minions’

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      The former Daily Beast editor and CNN anchor John Avlon announced his candidacy for US Congress in New York as a Democrat, seeking to flip a seat on Long Island, where Republicans saw surprising gains in the 2022 midterm elections.In a video announcement, Avlon said he was running to help Democrats win back the House from Donald Trump’s “Maga minions”.“Our democracy is in danger,” he said. “This election is not a drill. It’s up to all of us to step up and get off the sidelines.“We need to build the broadest possible coalition to defeat Donald Trump, defend our democracy and win back the House from his Maga minions who don’t even seem interested in solving problems.”Avlon included the incumbent congressman in the first district, the Republican Nick LaLota, among those “minions”, who he said were “doing whatever Trump wants, including blocking a bipartisan border security deal” – a reference to a successful move by Senate Republicans earlier this month, while their House counterparts refuse to pass a foreign aid bill that does not also include a border element.LaLota is one of a number of New York Republicans who won in 2022 in districts where Joe Biden beat Trump in 2020. Those districts are now targets for Democrats seeking to take back the closely divided House. One was flipped last week, when the third district, previously represented by George Santos – an indicted fabulist and only the sixth member ever expelled from the House – was won by a Democrat.LaLota’s spokesperson, Will Kiley, previewed Republican attack lines, calling Avlon “a Manhattan elitist without any attachments to Long Island other than his summer home in the Hamptons”, who knew “nothing about Suffolk county other than Sag Harbor croquet matches and summer cocktail parties in Bridgehampton”.Married to the commentator and PBS host Margaret Hoover, a great-granddaughter of the Republican president Herbert Hoover, Avlon lives in Sag Harbor, a whaling port turned desirable seaside retreat.Kiley added: “It may take burning millions of his friends’ money for Avlon to learn NY-1 has a history of rejecting out-of-state and Manhattan elitists, from both sides of the aisle, who parachute into the district attempting to buy a seat in Congress.”Savannah Viar, a spokesperson for the National Republican Congressional Committee, called Avlon a “smug liberal hack”.LaLota, 45, is a graduate of the US Naval Academy. Kiley called him “the commonsense conservative voice Long Island needs at this crucial time”.In his announcement, Avlon said: “This district needs real leadership, not more hyper-partisanship, and I am going to hit the ground running, talking to voters across Suffolk county about the issues we all care about.”He aimed, he said, to “rebuild the middle class, invest in infrastructure, protect women’s reproductive freedoms and combat climate change”.A former volunteer for Bill Clinton and chief speechwriter to the mayor of New York City, Avlon, 51, is also the author of books on George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and contemporary US politics, including, in 2010, Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America.On Wednesday, he said he wore “as a badge of honour” Trump’s decision in 2016 to “blacklist” outlets including the Daily Beast, the website Avlon edited for five years from 2013 before focusing on CNN, which he left this month.On social media, Avlon thanked David Axelrod, Barack Obama’s chief White House strategist, who called him “thoughtful, incisive and passionate about our country and its future” and said he would be “a great and impactful member of Congress”. More

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      New York lobbyists ‘aiding and abetting’ climate crisis, research reveals

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      New research reveals that dozens of New York universities, hospitals, museums and non-profits are employing lobbyists that also work for fossil fuel companies, which some say is blatantly “aiding and abetting” climate crisis.New York’s wealthiest lobbying firms work double-duty in the state capital, representing the political interests of both the victims and perpetrators of the climate crisis, according to a new report from F Minus, a database of state-level lobbying disclosures released last year, and LittleSis, a project created by the non-profit corporate and government accountability watchdog Public Accountability Initiative.The report analyzed the client rosters of six of the top lobbying firms in New York, revealing how the state’s cultural, business and educational leaders – many of whom tout their commitment to slowing climate crisis – are quietly linked to the fossil fuel industry.New York University, which proudly pledged to divest its $5bn endowment from coal, oil and gas companies last year, shares its lobbyists with six fossil fuel companies, including Valero and National Grid.Tobacco-Free Kids Action Fund, a non-profit that offers education on the deadly health effects of cigarette smoke inhalation, works with the same New York-based lobbying firm as Koch Industries, known for its prolific history of climate denial and pollution of American air and water.The New Museum, which currently exhibits a series of paintings featuring endangered plants and animals, employs the same lobbying firm as BP America and the Williams Companies, the largest operator of gas pipelines in the country.“You have schools like NYU scrutinizing the energy efficiency of every single lightbulb on campus, but then they turn around and hire the same firms that represent the people who are causing the climate crisis,” said James Browning, executive director of F Minus.Browning said the clients of fossil fuel lobbyists are “aiding and abetting” climate change, lending their cultural cache and credibility to these lobbying firms.“If lobbyists only worked with fossil fuel clients, it would be much easier for lawmakers in Albany to dismiss them, close the door and not return any of their calls,” Browning said. “But because they have all these prestigious clients, clients that are a huge part of New York’s economy, it lends these lobbyists a kind of shield from scrutiny.”Last year, Brown & Weinraub, one of the top-paid lobbying firms in New York, helped the American Petroleum Institute oppose the creation of a superfund that would generate $3bn annually for disaster recovery and climate resiliency projects. Brown & Weinraub also works with Google, which last year ramped up its public commitment to environmental causes.A spokesperson for Google told the Guardian that the company has a proven track record of sustainability, investing in renewable energy and working to cut emissions.But Browning warns that Brown & Weinraub can use Google’s name to advance lobbying efforts for other, less politically attractive clients, like fossil fuel companies.“We know that in the capitol building, it’s pretty hard to say no to a meeting with the people who represent Google,” Browning said. “That’s why it’s worth investigating who else your lobbyist does business with.”The problem extends far beyond New York: in 2022 alone, Google shared lobbying firms with fossil fuel clients in 17 states.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNationwide, a whopping 1,500 lobbyists are working on behalf of fossil-fuel companies while simultaneously representing hundreds of Democratic cities, universities and tech giants. These outwardly left-leaning clients offer a kind of environmentally-conscious visage for lobbyists, allowing them to adopt the language of the environmental movement while still enjoying the deep pockets of the fossil fuel industry.Pittsburgh, notably, has embraced fossil fuel lobbyists more than any other major US city, according to a 2023 report from F Minus and LittleSis.Part of the issue, climate advocates say, is that companies and non-profits overestimate the ethical guardrails that exist for political lobbyists.“Laws regulating the relationship of lobbyists and their clients are scarce and not especially transparent,” said Carroll Muffett, president and CEO of the Center for International Environmental Law. “The rules regarding conflicts of interest for lobbyists are not nearly as stringent as they are for attorneys, for example.”Last month, in an email correspondence with the state commission on ethics and lobbying in government, F Minus confirmed that there is no provision in the New York Lobbying Act that “prohibits a lobbyist from working for and against a bill at the same time”.Without robust oversight of political lobbyists, firms are left to self-regulate conflicts of interest. It is unclear how a lobbying firm handles situations where one client supports climate-related legislation while another client opposes it.“In cases where there is a conflict of interest, but maybe not a direct one, there is this big question: where does your lobbyist’s true allegiance lie,” Muffett said. “You need to remember that question whenever you are dealing with a lobbying firm that is heavily invested in and funded by the fossil fuel industry.” More

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      New York governor seeks to quell business owners’ fears after Trump ruling

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      The New York governor has told business owners in her state that there is “nothing to worry about” after Donald Trump was fined $355m and temporarily banned from engaging in commerce in the state when he lost his civil fraud trial Friday.In an interview on the New York radio show the Cats Roundtable with the supermarket billionaire John Catsimatidis, Kathy Hochul sought to quell fears in some quarters that the penalties handed to Trump for engaging in fraudulent business practices could chill the state’s commercial climate.Asked if businesspeople should be worried that if prosecutors could “do that to the former president, they can do that to anybody”, Hochul said: “Law-abiding and rule-following New Yorkers who are businesspeople have nothing to worry about because they’re very different than Donald Trump and his behavior.”She added that the fraud case against Trump resulted from “really an extraordinary, unusual circumstance”.Hochul’s comments were directed at some New York business leaders who said they were concerned that the attorney general Letitia James’s case against Trump could deter businesses and investment from coming to the state. Hochul noted James’s case demonstrated how Trump and some allies obtained favorable bank loans and insurance rates with inflated real estate values.The governor said most New York business owners were “honest people, and they’re not trying to hide their assets and they’re following the rules”.Hochul said most business owners would not merit state intervention.“This judge determined that Donald Trump did not follow the rules,” Hochul added. “He was prosecuted and truly, the governor of the state of New York does not have a say in the size of a fine, and we want to make sure that we don’t have that level of interference.”Trump, who denied wrongdoing in the case and maintained there were no victims, now has 30 days to come up with a non-recoverable $35m to secure a bond – a third-party guarantee – against his real estate holdings to show that he can pay the full fine if his appeals fail.Alternatively, he could put the $355m into an escrow account but would get the money back if he wins on appeal.Either way, the ruling is a blow to the developer-politician whose sense of self is tied to financial success. And James has said Trump is actually in line to pay more than $463m when interest is taken into account.In September, Trump’s former lawyer Christopher Kise argued in court that the decision against the ex-president would cause “irreparable impact on numerous companies”. It would also threaten 1,000 employees within the Trump empire, Kise maintained.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut the judge, Arthur Engoron, who found the former president liable for fraud and assessed the fine and three-year disqualification from doing business in New York, dropped an earlier ruling to dissolve all the companies that Trump owns in the state that could have led to a liquidation.“This is a venal sin, not a mortal sin,” Engoron wrote in a 92-page ruling that allowed the Trump businesses to keep operating and appointed two overseers to monitor “major activities that could lead to fraud”.Engoron said he could renew his call for “restructuring and potential dissolution” based on “substantial evidence”.Trump has lashed out at the ruling, vowing to appeal and calling James and Engoron “corrupt”.But James said on Friday: “This long-running fraud was intentional, egregious, illegal.” She added: “There cannot be different rules for different people in this country, and former presidents are no exception.” More

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      Trump’s legal woes have now set him back by more than $500m – how will he pay?

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      Donald Trump awoke on Saturday facing a stark new reality of legal obligations in excess of half a billion dollars after his stunning defeat in his civil fraud trial a day earlier, and questions swirled over his ability, or intention, to pay.Yet the former president remained defiant late on Friday, insisting in a vitriolic rant from his Mar-a-Lago mansion in Florida that he would win an appeal against a New York judge’s ruling that he must pay more than $350m plus pre-judgment interest for intentional financial fraud stretching more than a decade.Lashing out at the New York attorney general, Letitia James, who brought the case, and state judge Arthur Engoron, who issued the penalty, as “totally corrupt”, Trump slammed what he said was a “sham prosecution” driven by Joe Biden and the Democratic party to prevent him from returning to the White House.“We’ll appeal, we’ll be successful,” he said. “A crooked New York judge ruled that I have to pay $355m for having built the perfect company. Great cash, great buildings, great everything.”The precise amount Trump was ordered to pay is not entirely clear. At a press conference on Friday night, James put the figure at $463.9m. “That represents $363.9m in disgorgement, plus $100m in interest, which will continue to increase every single day until it is paid,” she said.But with the ruling adding to the $83.3m he must pay writer E Jean Carroll from a defamation hearing last month, plus another $5m from the original case last year that found he sexually abused her, Trump’s legal debts are mounting quickly – and are estimated now at about $542m, including interest.Nikki Haley, Trump’s sole remaining rival for the Republican presidential nomination, speculated he would siphon campaign cash from the Republican National Committee (RNC) to pay at least some of it.“I don’t want the RNC to become his piggy bank for his personal court cases,” she told CNN’s The Source.“We’ve already seen him spend $50m worth of campaign contributions … Now we see him trying to get control of the RNC so that he can continue not to have to pay his own legal fees.”Trump has moved to install his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, as co-chair of the RNC, with other loyalists in leadership positions.Analysts say it’s possible he can delay paying up by appealing Engoron’s ruling. That’s what he did in the first Carroll case by depositing the $5m into a court-controlled account, plus an additional $500,000 in interest required by New York law.But such a strategy would also be costly. One alternative is securing a bond paying only a portion upfront, which would come with interest and fees and the challenge of finding a financial institution willing to front him the money.In the civil fraud case, it will be up to the courts to decide how much Trump must put up as he mounts his appeal. And he may be required to pay the full sum immediately after the appellate court rules, which could come as soon as this summer, according to University of Michigan law professor Will Thomas.“New York’s judicial system has shown a willingness to move quickly on some of these Trump issues,” Thomas said.“When we hear from the first appellate court, that’s a point where money is almost certainly going to change hands.”Bloomberg estimates Trump’s net worth at $2.3bn. But it is unclear how much cash he has on hand. Much of his wealth is tied up in a global real estate portfolio, and James’s team determined in 2020 he had less than $100m in liquid assets.Under the ruling, Trump would still be liable even if the Trump Organization declared bankruptcy. Enforcement of the judgment would be paused with a personal declaration of bankruptcy, but that would further harm his credibility as he pursues a return to the presidency.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe ruling, meanwhile, also makes it hard for any family member to run the Trump Organization in the near future.Trump’s adult sons – Eric, the company’s chief executive, and Donald Jr – were each fined $4m and banned from serving as officers or directors of any corporation or entity in New York for two years. Donald Trump and two other executives were barred for three.For James, the ruling marks the successful culmination of a case years in the making. Her office has been investigating Trump’s business since 2019, finding that it consistently overvalued its properties and other assets to illegally obtain favorable terms on loans and insurance.One of the most striking examples concerned Trump’s triplex apartment in Manhattan’s Trump Tower, which records showed was reported to be 30,000 sq ft but is closer to 11,000 sq ft.Another was the worth of Mar-a-Lago, his Palm Beach resort. While Engoron valued it at a conservative $18m, Trump continues to insist it is worth “50 to 100 times” that figure.In determining the size of the fine, Engoron agreed with prosecutors that Trump saved about $168m in interest by inflating the value of assets. Another $126m profit came from selling the Old Post Office building in Washington DC that Engoron said Trump could not have bought without false financial statements.In her own press conference on Friday night in Manhattan, James mocked the title of Trump’s bestselling 1987 business advice book.“Donald Trump may have authored The Art of the Deal, but he perfected the art of the steal,” she said. “[He] falsely, knowingly inflated his net worth by billions of dollars to unjustly enrich himself, his family and to cheat the system. This long-running fraud was intentional, egregious, illegal, and he did it, all of this, with the help of the other defendants, his two adult sons, and senior executives at the Trump Organization.“The scale and the scope of Donald Trump’s fraud is staggering. And so is his ego, and his belief that the rules do not apply to him.“We are holding him accountable for lying, cheating and a lack of contrition, and for flouting the rules of all of us. There cannot be different rules for different people in this country, and former presidents are no exception.”The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      Trump’s hubris has brought about the downfall of his family’s business empire | Sidney Blumenthal

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      Judge Arthur Engoron’s ruling on Friday concludes the nearly century-long history of the Trump Organization in New York in disgrace and ruin. For his financial fraud, Donald Trump must pay $355m in fines. He is suspended for three years from doing business in New York. His sons – Donald Jr and Eric, executives of the company – are barred for two years. “New York means business in combating business fraud,” the judge stated in his decision. The Trump brand is now adjudicated to be synonymous with fraud and failure.“In order to borrow more and at lower rates, defendants submitted blatantly false financial data to the accountants, resulting in fraudulent financial statements,” the judge wrote in his decision. “When confronted at trial with the statements, defendants’ fact and expert witnesses simply denied reality, and defendants failed to accept responsibility or to impose internal controls to prevent future recurrences … Their complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological.”The hundreds of millions that Fred Trump bestowed on his son could not prevent him from steering the family legacy on to the rocks.The Trumps were Democrats. They had always been Democrats. Fred Trump had made his fortune through the Democrats. There was no Trump Organization apart from the Democratic organization of Brooklyn. Who Fred knew was what he was worth.In 1977, Fred Trump and Donald Trump reached a pinnacle of acceptance: they were listed as sponsors on the invitation for New York’s Salute to the President, a fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee held in the ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria. The political, corporate and social cream of the city were present to toast Jimmy Carter. The Trumps’ high-dollar donation got them an invitation to the exclusive party at the Upper East Side home of the dinner’s organizer, Arthur Krim, the chair of United Artists.The Trumps mingled there with Governor Hugh Carey, Mayor Abe Beame, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and John Glenn, Hubert Humphrey and Vice-President Walter Mondale. Donald posed for a photo with the president. Between them stood an unsmiling Louise Sunshine, Fred’s executive vice-president of the Trump Organization, his all-purpose lobbyist, and finance co-chair of the New York Democratic party. She was the granddaughter of Barney Pressman, who had founded the Barney’s department store.Donald Trump had been working out of his father’s nondescript office on Avenue Z in Brooklyn. But he was restless being sent as his father’s rent collector. He was intent on conquering the heights of Manhattan, making all the money in the world, basking in the glow of fame and being ushered past the rope line into the pulsating clubs with the celebrities and the models. He had the arrogance and complacency of a pampered heir who wouldn’t have to claw his way upward.Donald was uncontrollable and Fred was controlling. Fred was self-disciplined, meticulous down to his monogrammed shirts and cufflinks, and brutally demanding. He had dispatched the unruly Donald to a military academy in his early teens hoping he would learn to conform. Now he thought he might harness Donald to be useful to the family business.Fred bought a new Cadillac every two years and he wanted Donald to be more than the equivalent of a hood ornament. His older son, Fred Jr, his namesake, had sorely disappointed him. Resisting Fred’s pressure, Fred Jr had gone off to become an airline pilot, only to become an alcoholic, and was at the moment living in the top floor of the Trump home in Queens. Fred had ordered his sons to be “killers”. Fred and Donald derided Fred Jr as a loser. Fred’s hopes devolved on to his second son.View image in fullscreenFred was hardly an outlier among the powerful at Krim’s townhouse. He had helped make many of the New York politicians there. They were among his closest friends, some since the 1930s and 1940s. Donald trailed after Fred through the crowd until finally Fred located the DNC official with whom he had arranged his donation.The DNC official, a friend of mine, recalled that Fred had asked him: “Wouldn’t it be great if Donald got experience in Washington?” Clearly, he wanted to get Donald a gig so that he could make national connections. Donald’s expression was unhappy. He opened his mouth, getting out only a couple of words: “Well, I … ”Fred cut him off before he could say anything else. “Shut the fuck up,” he said sternly. “We didn’t fucking ask you. Who the fuck cares what you think?” And Donald shut up. The official told Fred he would look into it. But Donald wasn’t interested in Washington, at least not then.Donald Trump had crossed the East River into Manhattan with the ambition to be the king of the heap. Walking through Central Park in 1974 with the manager of the bankrupt Penn Central yards he sought to develop, he boasted: “I’ll be bigger than all of them. I’ll be bigger than Helmsley in five years.” To attain the stratospheric level of Helmsley was Donald’s ultimate aspiration.He was referring to Harry Helmsley, the billionaire real estate developer, owner of the Empire State Building and other trademark properties, married to the flamboyant Leona Helmsley, notorious tabloid grist as the Queen of Mean. (In 1988, Helmsley was charged with financial fraud for inflating the value of his buildings and tax evasion, but was judged too frail to stand trial, while Leona was convicted and sent to prison.)Then, Trump and the Penn Central manager walked down Lexington Avenue, where a tabloid headline shrieked about the arrest of a New Jersey mayor for taking an $800,000 bribe. “There is no goddamn mayor in America worth $800,000,” Trump said, according to his biographer, Wayne Barrett. “I can buy a US senator for $200,000.”But Donald had not bought any politicians. He stood on his father’s wealth and connections surveying the island he planned to capture as his own. Donald would catapult to the top by starting at the top.Fred Trump built his real estate empire favor by favor, brick by brick. From the 1930s onward, starting in Flatbush, relying on the New Deal program of the Federal Housing Authority to underwrite loans, he made millions, then tens of millions, then more. He was the biggest operator in Brooklyn. He built thousands of homes and owned tens of thousands of apartments. He didn’t want to edge into the Manhattan market, where the land prices were high and the competition fierce. He had Brooklyn wired.Fred was an indispensable player in the borough’s political machine. His rise in Brooklyn would explain Donald’s calculation about invading Manhattan. In the naked city, Fred’s story was inextricable from that of the Madison Democratic Club. He stood at the center of a dense network of patronage, influence and money. From his relationships and donations flowed land deals and tax abatements. The clubhouse was his cornucopia.Fred’s clout originated with his relationship with the Brooklyn political boss Irwin Steingut, a powerful member of the New York state assembly for 30 years and once the speaker. His chief fundraiser, Abe “Bunny” Lindenbaum, provided the insurance for Fred’s buildings. On Steingut’s recommendation, he became Fred’s attorney. Steingut’s accountant and Lindenbaum’s closest friend, Abe Beame, became the city comptroller.Fred Trump and Beame were friends for 30 years, with Trump financially backing his career for decades. After Steingut’s death in 1952, his son Stanley succeeded him in the assembly and as the Brooklyn boss. Fred’s biggest project, Trump Village, received approval from the city planning commission and the board of estimate in 1960 after Lindenbaum and Steingut lobbied its key members. Fred got a 72% tax write-off on a parcel, too. A week later, Lindenbaum became the city’s new planning commissioner.Beame was elected mayor in 1973 and Stanley Steingut became speaker of the state assembly two years later. Moreover, Hugh Carey had been elected governor in 1974; Bunny and the Trumps were the first donors to his campaign. The Trumps had co-signed a loan for $23,000 to open his headquarters. The influence of the Brooklyn machine – and Fred Trump – was at its peak.Donald not only had his eye on the Penn Central yards but also spotted the seedy Commodore hotel next to Grand Central Station. The part-owners of the Penn Central property were owners of the hotel. He thought he could get a two-for-one bargain. Donald got an agreement from the Hyatt hotels to manage it, but it was non-binding. He needed a huge tax abatement to finance the $80m renovation to pay the mortgage and property taxes. This is when the art of the deal kicked in. Its secret was the friends of Fred Trump.Beame and Steingut got behind a bill in the assembly crafted to provide exactly this unique type of tax abatement. Unfortunately, the assembly was overwhelmed with the city fiscal crisis and adjourned before passing it in the 1975 session. Beame’s administrator for the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, Michael Bailkin, devised a scheme for Trump to buy the Commodore from Penn Central and donate it to the city, which would pay the taxes to itself and lease it to Trump for 99 years, who would reap the benefits but pay no taxes.Donald hired a lawyer, Bunny Lindenbaum’s son, Samuel “Sandy” Lindenbaum, who would become renowned as the “dean of zoning”. The idea of the 99-year lease wouldn’t fly. If the city owned the hotel, it would have to put it up for sale to public bidding. So Bailkin proposed using the state’s Urban Development Corporation as a vehicle to give the tax exemptions and evade public bidding.Promising this to the brash young Donald was a problem. Mayor Beame had his deputy John Zuccotti check in with Fred, who promised he’d oversee it all. That satisfied Beame, who announced the project as the first of his brand-new business incentive program. But it still had to pass the board of estimate, where there was static from the Hotel Association, led by Helmsley, peeved because its operators would not get the tax abatement under the plan.Louise Sunshine, Fred’s right-hand person in the Trump Organization, also fundraising for Governor Carey’s re-election, happened to be hired just then as the lobbyist for the UDC. She arranged with Carey’s chief counsel, Charles Goldstein, for the city development chief, Richard Kahan, to be appointed the new UDC head, who wrote Donald a letter approving the terms of the Commodore deal. But it still had to pass the hurdles of the board of estimate and the bureau of franchises.Stanley Friedman, the deputy mayor and former secretary of the Bronx Democratic organization, took charge. He enlisted help in wrangling quid pro quos from Roy Cohn, mob lawyer extraordinaire, another heir to power, whose father had been an influential judge in the Bronx. Cohn happened to be the lawyer for the Commodore. The consent agreement was rewritten so that Donald would pay less in franchise fees for using public space than the hotel restaurant would earn in a day. The boards approved the deal.But there was one more requirement. There would be no mortgage unless it was financially guaranteed by a third party. Donald himself didn’t have the money. The banks lacked confidence in him and withheld financing. Fred stepped forward to sign the guarantee. Only then did the banks provide the money.“When it came to the financial bottom line of the deal, Donald was barely a factor,” wrote Wayne Barrett. An investigative reporter for the Village Voice, Barrett was the most dedicated pursuer of fact about Trump’s financial chicanery for decades.The day after Beame left office, with the deal signed, sealed and delivered, Stanley Friedman joined Cohn’s law firm. (He would be convicted of corruption in 1986 and sentenced to prison.)View image in fullscreenThe Commodore deal was the making of Donald Trump. All his father’s powers had been exerted invisibly to move the pieces. Donald entered into Cohn’s demimonde for the first time. While Cohn applied his dark arts to secure the Commodore, he convinced Donald to force his fiancé, Ivana Winklmayr, to sign a harsh pre-nuptial agreement. Donald owed him. Roy was a man for all seasons. Donald brought Roy as his guest to the Carter event. Roy hated Carter.Donald stomped through the city like he was King Kong. He built Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue with ready-mix cement from the mob, the “Concrete Club”, they called it, provided by Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno, boss of the Genovese crime family, the client of Roy Cohn, and under the supervision of teamster boss John Cody, under the control of Paul Castellano, boss of the Gambino crime family. Cody bought an apartment for his mistress in the completed building without filing a loan application to show his income.(Cody was convicted of labor racketeering in 1982 and sentenced to prison. Salerno was convicted in 1988 and sent to prison. His contract for concrete to build Trump Plaza was listed in his indictment as one of the charges of racketeering. Castellano was assassinated at Sparks Steak House in Manhattan in 1985 on the orders of John Gotti, who assumed control of the Gambino family.)“If people were like me, there would be no mob, because I don’t play that game,” Trump said when asked later about his ties to what he called “OC”, or organized crime. He called himself “the cleanest guy there is”.Fred’s Cadillac bore the vanity license plate “FCT”. (His middle name, from his mother’s family, was “Christ”.) Louise Sunshine arranged a little present for Donald to get his own vanity license plate reading “DJT”.He wanted to shake off the image of the outer borough. He raced in his limo from Fifth Avenue to a red banquette at 21 for lunch with Roy, to leering at the celebs and models frolicking at Studio 54.Donald tried to imitate Fred’s methods, but misunderstood them. Fred had slowly nurtured relationships with the Brooklyn clubhouse. The line between business and friendship was seamless. There were Brooklyn Democratic dinners where Fred brought his family. He hosted lavish parties at the country club, inviting everyone and their families. He knew how to become the godfather. But when Beame left office, Fred’s glory days of connections were fading.Donald was crass, belligerent and bullying. He believed that the conspicuous display of gold-plated wealth showed an irresistible Midas touch and that all publicity was good publicity. He threw $70,000 in campaign contributions at Ed Koch, who replaced Beame, and turned up at his election night victory party to celebrate like he had made Koch.Koch, a former reform Democrat, was voluble and insecure, with a penchant for turning political disagreements into personal battles. Trump yelled at him for easements and tax abatements. Koch detested him. “I wouldn’t believe Donald Trump if his tongue were notarized,” he said.Trump bloated his holdings, emblazoning his name in gold letters on everything he could get his hands on. He bought the Eastern airline shuttle and renamed it the Trump shuttle. He started the United States Football League. He built the Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City. He dumped Ivana for an actress, Marla Maples.And he floated his greatest scheme of all, a multibillion-dollar complex over the West Side railyards, “a new mini-city on the Hudson River … containing thousands of luxury apartments, the world’s tallest building, a huge shopping mall and a television studio complex that he said would be ‘the largest and most spectacular’ in the world,” according to the New York Times. He called it Television City. In his plan, NBC would relocate from Rockefeller Center. Then he changed its name to Trump City. He would rebrand New York in his own image.After seeming to approve the deal, Koch killed it in 1987. He wouldn’t become in effect Trump’s partner through tax abatements and zoning. The Television City debacle was the reverse of the Commodore bonanza. Trump called Koch “a moron”, and Koch called him “greedy, greedy, greedy”, and said that if he was “squealing like a stuck pig, I must have done something right”. The house of cards began to crumble.Trump tried to cover his financial crisis with stories about his sex life. He leaked to the New York Post a fake quote, supposedly Maples’ statement about his sexual prowess, timed for just after Valentine’s Day 1990, splashed on the front page: Best Sex I Ever Had.Spy magazine, edited by Kurt Andersen and Graydon Carter, had pegged Trump as “a short-fingered vulgarian” from the start. Along with the Village Voice, Spy pointed out Trump’s financial trickery for years. In April 1991, it published a compendium: How to Fool All of the People, All of the Time: How Donald Trump Fooled the Media, Used the Media to Fool the Banks, Used the Banks to Fool the Bondholders, and Used the Bondholders to Pay for the Yachts and Mansions and Mistresses.Trump’s Atlantic City properties were leveraged with debt to the hilt. In November 1991, he failed to meet the debt payment. Fred dispatched a lawyer to buy $3.35m in chips at the Trump Castle casino to give Donald cash to meet the bill. The New Jersey gaming authorities found him guilty of violating the Casino Control Act and fined him $33,000. In 1998, the US Treasury fined Donald’s casino $477,000.Trump filed six bankruptcies. He was forced to sell his airline, the Plaza Hotel on Fifth Avenue and his yacht, named Princess for his daughter Ivanka. The Taj Mahal and the Castle went belly up. Fortune dumped him from its list of billionaires. Forbes reported he had a negative net worth. The New York banks cut him off from future loans. They put him on an allowance to give him a chance to repay part of his debts. His casino company filed for bankruptcy protection in 2014 for the fifth time.Trump eventually found a new lender to guarantee loans in Deutsche Bank. Its records were subpoenaed in the New York state financial fraud case. “The bank did not trust all of Trump’s numbers, but it underestimated the depth of Trump’s lies,” Forbes reported in 2023.What If You Could Have It All? read the chyron to the throbbing beat of the O’Jays’ For the Love of Money, to open The Apprentice television series in 2004, featuring Trump striding as the master of the universe. His limo, his helicopter, his Trump Tower and even the bankrupt Taj Mahal flashed as fantasy images of his brilliant success. He was the top of the list, king of the hill, a No 1.During the 2016 campaign, Donald lied that he was a self-made man who started with a measly $1m loan from Fred. But the New York Times, after reviewing his tax records, determined in 2018 that he had “received the equivalent today of at least $413m from his father’s real estate empire”.Fred died in 1999. He is not here to buy the chips.
      Sidney Blumenthal is a Guardian US columnist. He is a former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton and has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth More