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      Manhattan DA who indicted Trump sues Republican Jim Jordan over interference in case

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      Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg on Tuesday sued Republican congressman Jim Jordan to stop what Bragg called an “unconstitutional attack” on the ongoing criminal prosecution of former US president Donald Trump in New York.The lawsuit aims to block a subpoena of Mark Pomerantz, a former prosecutor who had led the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation of Trump. The subpoena, issued last week by the House of Representatives judiciary committee, which Jordan chairs, seeks Pomerantz’s appearance before the committee for a deposition.Trump pleaded not guilty last week to charges brought by Bragg’s office of falsifying business records to conceal a hush money payment made ahead of the 2016 election. The funds allegedly were used to buy adult film star Stormy Daniels’s silence about an affair she said she had with Trump, which the former president denies.Bragg, a Democrat, accused congressional Republicans of an “incursion” into a state criminal case.“Members of Congress are not free to invade New York’s sovereign authority for their or Mr Trump’s political aims,” Bragg’s office wrote in the lawsuit, accusing Jordan of searching for a pretext for “hauling Mr Pomerantz to Washington for a retaliatory political circus”.Pomerantz left his job at the district attorney’s office shortly after Bragg took over in early 2022, when the new DA declined to pursue an indictment of Trump based on a sprawling probe of his business practices.Earlier this year, Pomerantz published a book criticizing Bragg’s decision not to pursue those charges. He also said prosecutors had previously examined potential charges against Trump over the hush money payments, but were concerned the case would rest on a novel legal theory that may not hold up in court.In announcing the subpoena of Pomerantz last week, Jordan said Pomerantz’s public statements showed that Bragg’s prosecution of Trump was politically motivated. Bragg has said Pomerantz’s case was not ready.“If he wishes to argue that his prosecution is ‘politically motivated,’ he is free to raise that concern to the New York state criminal court,” Bragg’s office wrote in the lawsuit.“Chairman Jordan is not, however, free to unconstitutionally deploy Congress’s limited subpoena power for raw political retaliation, intimidation, or obstruction,” it added.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe judiciary committee said on Monday it would hold a field hearing next week in New York about what it called “an increase in violent crime” caused by Bragg’s policies.Bragg said murder, shooting, burglary and robbery rates were all lower in Manhattan so far this year compared with last year.On Tuesday afternoon, Jordan, who represents Ohio, tweeted: “First, they indict a president for no crime. Then, they sue to block congressional oversight when we ask questions about the federal funds they say they used to do it.” More

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

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      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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      The case(s) against Trump: New York charges only beginning of legal woes

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      It was the day that Donald Trump got mugged by reality. After years of dodging legal accountability, the former US president found himself being driven towards a New York courtroom where he would be charged with a crime.“WOW, they are going to ARREST ME,” he wrote on his Truth Social media platform, the true scale of his predicament finally dawning on him. “Can’t believe this is happening in America.”But dramatic as the day was, as Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records relating to hush money payments, it represented only the first drop of rain in what could be a legal thunderstorm. Several more cases are fast approaching and some are potentially far more devastating.Whereas the ex-president has so far been able to spin the hush money indictment to his political advantage as he seeks to win back the White House in 2024, experts suggest that the quantity and gravity of the upcoming investigations could ultimately bury him and his electoral chances.Tuesday’s court appearance, in which Trump – the first former US president in history to be arrested and arraigned on criminal charges – had to answer meekly to a judge and found there was no one to hold doors open for him, was the humbling and sobering moment that he discovered his legal troubles are no longer theoretical.Michael D’Antonio, a political commentator and author of The Truth About Trump, said: “His attitude prior to this has always been obstinance and a chin-jutting pride and refusal to appear to be affected. But he sure appeared to be affected this time. There was a quality of a cow being led to the slaughter.”He added: “He must realise that he’s in trouble and that the situation is grave and that showed on his face. He doesn’t care as much about the proceedings politically as he cares about the story that he can tell about them. He is a storyteller above all and a fabulist. If he can tell a story that motivates his base and also manage to stay out of prison, he will argue that it’s a victory over a corrupt system.”Trump himself will not be in jeopardy when Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6bn defamation lawsuit against Fox News goes to trial, currently scheduled for 17 April. But the case, which could hear testimony from the Fox Corporation executives Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch and an array of Fox News hosts, could provide some deeply embarrassing details about how the ex-president is perceived by the network.Then, on 25 April, a civil trial in a New York lawsuit involving Trump is scheduled to begin. E Jean Carroll, a former Elle magazine columnist, accuses Trump of defaming her by denying he raped her in New York’s Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in late 1995 or early 1996. Carroll is seeking monetary damages and it is not known whether Trump will testify.Another important trial is set for 2 October. Letitia James, the New York attorney general, is suing Trump and his Trump Organization for fraud. James has said her office found more than 200 examples of misleading asset valuations between 2011 and 2021, and that Trump inflated his net worth by billions of dollars.James said the scheme was intended to help Trump obtain lower interest rates on loans and better insurance coverage. The civil lawsuit seeks to permanently bar Trump and three of his adult children from running companies in New York state, and recoup at least $250m obtained through fraud.Before then, there may have been developments in Georgia, where a prosecutor is investigating Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat in that state. Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney who will ultimately decide whether to pursue charges, told a judge in January that a special grand jury had completed its work and that decisions were “imminent”.If convicted, Trump would not be able to seek clemency from a future Republican president since such pardons do not apply to state offences. Barbara McQuade, a law professor at the University of Michigan, said: “The most perilous is probably the case out of Georgia because it relates to election interference and because there is no ability for Trump, if he becomes president again, to pardon himself.“We know the grand jury foreperson said that they were recommending indictments of more than a dozen people and she strongly hinted one of those people was Trump. That one might pose the most danger to him at the moment.”Meanwhile the justice department has investigations under way into both Trump’s actions in the 2020 election, including lies that led to the January 6 insurrection, and his retention of highly classified documents after leaving the White House in 2021. Both are overseen by Jack Smith, a war crimes prosecutor and political independent.When he returned to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on Tuesday night and hurled abuse at the investigators one by one, Trump devoted the lion’s share of his comments – and patent falsehoods – to the classified documents case, implying that he recognises it as posing the maximum danger.The FBI seized 13,000 documents from Mar-a-Lago last August; about 100 documents were marked classified and some were designated top secret. Earlier this week the Washington Post newspaper reported that investigators have fresh evidence pointing to possible obstruction of justice by the former president as he resisted a subpoena demanding the return of all classified documents.As for the charges over hush money payments during the 2016 election campaign, Trump is expected back in court in New York on 4 December – about two months before the official start of the 2024 Republican presidential primary calendar.Norman Eisen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington, said: “The moment he set foot into official custody in New York probably was a chilling realisation for him of the difficulties that lie ahead, and not just in this case, although it’s serious.“It’s that feeling of the walls closing in from every direction. He’s got a lot of serious problems on his hands. Even in a Republican primary, the compound of all of these challenges will be very deleterious because Republican primary voters are going to ask: can he win?”Asked if the 45th president could end up in prison, Eisen, author of Overcoming Trumpery: How to Restore Ethics, the Rule of Law, and Democracy, replied yes. “It won’t be easy, it may not be fast but it’s certainly possible,” he said.Beneath the cries of a witch-hunt by Democrats and the “deep state”, and despite a bounce in primary polls as Republicans rally in his defence, Trump, 76, may no longer be sleeping easy at Mar-a-Lago. Allan Lichtman, a history professor at American University in Washington, commented: “He looked like a man with pins sticking into his torso. He is scared stiff.“Sure, he’s going to bluster and express bravado and confidence, but he is terrified of being confined. No doubt about that. This is the beginning of the first day of the rest of his life. The issues are just going to pile on. It’s extraordinary. Outside of the mafia, it’s hard to find any American with such legal problems.” More

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      New York judge in Trump arraignment reportedly receives ‘dozens’ of threats

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      The New York judge who presided over the arraignment of Donald Trump and the judge’s family have reportedly received multiple threats following the historic arrest of the former president.In court in Manhattan on Tuesday, Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts related to his hush money payment to the adult film star Stormy Daniels.NBC was among outlets to report that the judge, Juan Merchan, and his family subsequently received “dozens” of threats.Citing two sources familiar with the matter, NBC said the threats, like those recently directed towards the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, and other officials, had come in the form of calls, emails and letters.In addition to increased security surrounding Merchan and the court, New York police were providing “extra security to all affected staff members”, NBC said. Biographies of employees at Bragg’s office had been removed from the district attorney’s website.The New York Daily News also reported threats to Merchan and his family, a source telling the paper “the content of the calls, emails and letters was … harassing and defamatory, with most of the trolls calling from out of state”.Lucian Chalfen, a spokesperson for the New York office of court administration, told the paper: “We continue to evaluate and re-evaluate security concerns and potential threats. We have maintained an increased security presence in and around courthouses and throughout the judiciary and will adjust protocols as necessary.”Elsewhere, J Michael Luttig, the retired conservative judge and adviser to the former vice-president Mike Pence who came to national prominence with testimony to the House January 6 committee, warned Trump he risked a gag order over his attacks on Judge Merchan.“There is no court that would want to impose a gag order on a president of the United States,” Luttig told Axios. But “if the former president forces the Manhattan criminal court, the court will have no choice”.Mike Scotto, a former rackets bureau chief for the Manhattan district attorney, told the same site: “A gag order is used to protect the defendant’s rights to a fair trial and also the government’s rights to a fair trial, so that the potential jurors don’t learn anything about the case that they’re not going to learn in court.”Luttig is an influential voice in conservative circles, widely deemed unlucky not to have reached the supreme court. He has predicted “the beginning of the end of Donald Trump”.But the former president enjoys comfortable leads in polling regarding the Republican nomination in 2024 and senior party figures have rallied round him in response to his historic indictment.Before his arraignment in the New York case, Trump stoked controversy with inflammatory social media posts about the case and Bragg and calls for protest.On Tuesday, the far-right Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene led a rally for Trump in a park outside the court in Manhattan.Inside the court, Merchan warned Trump to “refrain from making statements that are likely to incite violence and civil unrest”. He also told a Trump lawyer: “I don’t share your view that certain language is justified by frustration.”Hours later, in a speech at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida, Trump called Merchan “a Trump-hating judge”; attacked the judge’s family (“I have a Trump-hating judge with a Trump-hating wife and family whose daughter worked for Kamala Harris”); and went after Bragg (“a criminal”) and other prosecutors overseeing investigations of his behaviour in the White House and out of power.Fani Willis, the district attorney of Fulton county, Georgia, is investigating Trump’s election subversion attempts there, with an indictment believed likely.Trump called her “a local racist Democrat”.At the US justice department, the special counsel Jack Smith is overseeing investigations of Trump’s election subversion and incitement of the Capitol attack, and of Trump’s retention of classified records.Trump called him “a radical-left lunatic known as a bomb-thrower”.The Lincoln Project, a group formed by anti-Trump Republicans, condemned what it called “a paranoid and delusional speech cheered on by fanatical cult members who do not care about democracy and American values”.“Trump got the circus he wanted,” the group said. “The rest of the GOP has fallen in line.” More

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      Marjorie Taylor Greene calls New York City disgusting, filthy and repulsive

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      The far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene risked stoking the wrath of New Yorkers for a second time this week, calling their city “disgusting”, “filthy”, “repulsive” and a “terrible place”.“I compared it to what I called Gotham City,” the Georgia Republican told Fox News. “The streets are filthy, they’re covered with people basically lying, on drugs. They can’t even stand up. They’re falling over. There’s so much crime in the city. I can’t comprehend how people live there.”The blogger Aaron Rupar responded: “Imagine if [the New York progressive] Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez went on MSNBC and said this about a town in Marjorie Taylor Greene‘s district. Republicans would try to expel her from Congress.”Mehdi Hasan, the MSNBC host, said: “No Democratic politician from the coasts could ever go visit a Republican-led city in the south and then go on a liberal media outlet and call it repulsive, smelly and disgusting. No way.”Greene’s comments, Hasan said, were “a reminder of the double standards, and asymmetry, in our politics and our media”.Greene is a conspiracy theorist and controversialist who has made antisemitic and racist claims and was barred from committees by Democrats after threatening fellow members of Congress. She was restored to key assignments by Kevin McCarthy when the Republican became House speaker in January, dependent on far-right support.Greene visited New York on Tuesday, to protest in support of Donald Trump as the former president – and former New Yorker – pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts related to his hush money payment to the adult film star Stormy Daniels.Greene attempted to speak in a park outside the courthouse in downtown Manhattan. She was jostled and drowned out by whistles blown by counter-protesters.“It was absolute chaos,” she told Tucker Carlson on Wednesday. “And that’s what the mayor of New York City wanted to happen to me.”Eric Adams had warned Greene to “be on your best behavior”.“He threatened me and basically put on a dog whistle for violence against me,” Greene claimed, also claiming the protest against her was “against the law, by the way, Tucker.“You see, they didn’t want me to be able to protest and use my first amendment right. And they wanted violence. I think they wanted that to happen, because they want to repeat January 6 all over again, want all of us Trump supporters, Maga, basically Republicans and just good Americans to look like criminals, and that’s what they do in communist countries.”On 6 January 2021, supporters Trump told to “fight like hell” to overturn his election defeat stormed the US Capitol. Nine deaths are now linked to the riot, including law enforcement suicides. More than a thousand arrests have been made and hundreds of convictions won, some for seditious conspiracy. With other Republicans, Greene has visited January 6 rioters in jail.On Fox News, Greene called Democrats “fascists … in hysterics” over Trump. But she wasn’t finished with New York.Carlson, whose network is based in midtown Manhattan but who built a home studio in Maine, said: “Mayor Adams describe New York as quote his ‘home’. How did his home look? Pretty neat and tidy?”Greene made her comparison to Gotham City – where Batman lives – and added: “It was repulsive, it smells bad. And I just, I think it’s a terrible place.”Perhaps thinking of his bosses in midtown, at 1211 Avenue of the Americas, Carlson said: “Yeah, with some nice people. I will say that.” More

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      in Elections

      How the day of Trump's indictment unfolded – video report

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      In what was seen by many as a sombre day for the US and its judicial system, Donald Trump became the first US president to be indicted on criminal charges on Tuesday. He was briefly arrested as he surrendered and attended his arraignment in a Manhattan court, where he pleaded not guilty to 34 felony charges of falsifying business records.
      The Guardian summarises a historic day of media frenzy as news crews followed Trump’s every step – from Trump Tower back to his Mar-a-Lago residence More

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      Trump’s indictment is about more than hush money – it’s a question of democracy

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      Former president Donald Trump pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to hush money payments he made through his allies to hide extramarital affairs in the weeks before the 2016 election.As prosecutors in the New York courtroom reiterated, the issue wasn’t just that Trump directed these payments that put him at fault, but that the timing of them probably changed the course of his campaign and paved the way for Trump to interfere with election results for two cycles. And the criminal charges were only part of the picture when it comes to Trump’s election meddling, and the threats he has posed to US democracy.“[These are] very serious criminal allegations that matter to our democracy because of the effect that paying this hush money could have had suppressing a scandal, saving the Trump campaign, altering the outcome of the 2016 election and setting up the election interference that we investigated in the first impeachment,” longtime election lawyer Norm Eisen said in a recent interview.“And that culminated in the attempted coup following the 2020 election and the violence of January 6.”This week’s indictment could be the first time that Trump – or any president in the country’s history – is held accountable for a criminal act. But this may not be the only time Trump faces courtroom allegations this year.Though the first indictment of a former president comes in a trial about falsifying business records, there is also the Fulton county litigation over Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia and the multiple cases involving his role in instigating a riot at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021.“People have to be held accountable for their actions and when a former president of the United States has allegedly committed a criminal act and is found guilty, he has to be held accountable,” said Fred Wertheimer, the president of Democracy 21, a non-partisan organization that works to protect democracy.And while some have lamented that the first case to reach an indictment is not the most significant one pending against Trump’s election denial tactics, Wertheimer said it was still a strong case.“Even though this case does not appear as directly related to our democracy as the Mar-a-Lago documents case, the Georgia case about attempting to steal a presidential election, or the largest case about the alleged attempt by former president Trump to overturn the presidential election and the role he allegedly played in inciting the January 6 insurrection, if you look at the fundamentals of our democracy, this case is similar in importance to those other cases,” he said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionA guilty verdict against Trump could also show that nobody in the US, including a former president, is above the law, a fundamental component of a functioning democracy. In many other countries – including many ranked among the most democratic – ex-heads of government or state have been prosecuted, but never before has it happened in the US.In the past 15 years alone, Nicolas Sarkozy and Jacques Chirac of France, Park Geun-hye and Lee Myung-bak of South Korea, and Silvio Berlusconi of Italy have all been prosecuted for corruption and found guilty, according to the New York Times.A majority of Americans – 60% – approve of the indictment against Donald Trump according to a recent CNN poll, although respondents were split on whether they believe it benefits democracy. A majority also believe that politics played a role in the indictment, a fact that could threaten democracy by making people believe that the legal system can be influenced by partisan actions.“At the heart of our democracy is the fact that nobody is above the law,” Wertheimer said. “Everyone in our society has to comply with the rules. That’s just the fundamental principle of the rule of law.” More