Trump, Donald J

Subterms

    More stories

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Judge’s Instructions Will Be a Road Map for Jury Weighing Trump’s Fate

      by

      Within about an hour, a Manhattan jury will begin a discussion of historic import: determining whether Donald J. Trump is guilty of 34 felonies.But before the jurors begin to deliberate, the judge, Juan M. Merchan, will deliver legal instructions that will help guide the 12 New Yorkers who will hash out Mr. Trump’s fate.Justice Merchan will describe the legal meaning of the word “intent” and the concept of the presumption of innocence. He will remind the jurors that they pledged to set any biases aside against the former president before they were sworn in, and that Mr. Trump’s decision not to testify cannot be held against him.Then, according to a person with knowledge of the instructions that Justice Merchan plans to deliver, he will explain the 34 charges of falsifying business records that Mr. Trump faces. It will likely be the most important guidance that the judge offers during the trial. And it is no simple task.In New York, falsifying records is a misdemeanor, unless the documents were faked to hide another crime. The other crime, prosecutors say, was Mr. Trump’s 2016 violation of state election law that prohibited conspiring to aid a political campaign using “unlawful means.”Those means, prosecutors argue, could include any of a menu of other crimes. And so each individual false-records charge that Mr. Trump faces contains within it multiple possible crimes that jurors must strive to understand.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

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Trump’s Hush-Money Case Heads to the Jury: Takeaways From Closing Arguments

      by

      As the criminal trial of Donald J. Trump began its seventh week, the prosecution and the defense made their final pitches to jurors, sending the landmark case into deliberations on Wednesday.A defense lawyer, Todd Blanche, spent three hours Tuesday hammering Michael D. Cohen, the prosecution’s star witness, including accusing him of perjury. He attacked Stormy Daniels, the porn star whose account of a tryst with Mr. Trump in 2006 set in motion the charges the former president faces.The prosecution countered with an even longer, more detailed summation, pushing into the evening. A prosecutor, Joshua Steinglass, guided jurors through reams of evidence they had introduced and elicited, including testimony, emails, text messages and recordings.Mr. Trump, 77, is charged with falsifying 34 business records to hide Mr. Cohen’s reimbursement for a $130,000 hush-money payment he made to Ms. Daniels. Mr. Trump has denied the charges and the sexual encounter.Once deliberations begin Wednesday, no one knows how long they will take. If convicted, Mr. Trump — the presumptive Republican presidential nominee — could face prison or probation.Here are five takeaways from closing arguments and Mr. Trump’s 21st day on trial.‘Michael Cohen is a liar’ was a refrain. It may be the defense’s best bet.“The human embodiment of reasonable doubt.”The Links Between Trump and 3 Hush-Money DealsHere’s how key figures involved in making hush-money payoffs on behalf of Donald J. Trump are connected.The Donald Trump Indictment, AnnotatedThe indictment unveiled in April 2023 centers on a hush-money deal with a porn star, but a related document alleges a broader scheme to protect Donald J. Trump’s 2016 campaign.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 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Here’s What the Prosecution in Trump’s Trial Said in Its Closing Argument

      by

      Over more than five hours on Tuesday, a Manhattan prosecutor made his final case to the jury in Donald J. Trump’s criminal hush-money trial that the former president had orchestrated “a conspiracy and a coverup” to help him win the 2016 presidential election.The prosecutor, Joshua Steinglass, argued that 20 witnesses called to the stand and evidence presented during six weeks of testimony had shown that Mr. Trump was guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. The charges stem from his repayment, made on the eve of the 2016 election, of hush money that silenced a porn star’s account of a sexual encounter a decade earlier.Mr. Steinglass wove a sweeping story of how Mr. Trump, with help from The National Enquirer and his former fixer, Michael D. Cohen, among others, sought to bury negative news stories about Mr. Trump in the days and months before the election. One effort included the catch-and-kill operation to buy the silence of Stormy Daniels, the porn star, which Mr. Steinglass said kept the American public from knowing about her account when they voted.“This scheme, cooked up by these men, at this time, could very well be what got President Trump elected,” Mr. Steinglass said. “This was overt election fraud, an act in furtherance of the conspiracy to promote Mr. Trump’s election by unlawful means.”A deal with Ms. Daniels took on extra urgency, he said, following the leak in October 2016 of an “Access Hollywood” tape that captured Mr. Trump bragging about grabbing women’s genitals.Mr. Steinglass started his closing argument by countering the statements by Mr. Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche earlier in the day. He said that the Trump team’s closing argument — which claimed that Mr. Trump was a victim of extortion — did not change the underlying facts of the case. And, Mr. Steinglass noted, extortion is not a defense for falsifying business records.Mr. Steinglass acknowledged to the jurors that some of the witnesses had biases. Both Mr. Cohen and Ms. Daniels have talked publicly about wanting to see Mr. Trump convicted, and Mr. Cohen admitted on the stand that he stole money from the Trump Organization. But he said their testimony was credible and often corroborated by others who took the stand.“I’m not asking you to feel bad for Michael Cohen,” Mr. Steinglass told the jury. “He made his bed.”At the end of the marathon day, just before 8 p.m., Mr. Steinglass said that while the former president is a former president, the law applies to him the same as it does to everyone else. More

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Robert De Niro and the Biden Campaign Trolls Trump Outside Courthouse

      by

      After first ignoring former President Donald J. Trump’s criminal trial, then beginning to make sly insinuations about how he was “free on Wednesdays,” the court’s day off, President Biden’s campaign has jumped in with a stunt designed to emphasize the unprecedented situation of a major party’s presidential candidate awaiting a felony verdict.The Biden campaign on Tuesday dispatched Robert De Niro, the actor whose voice narrates the campaign’s latest ad, along with Harry Dunn and Michael Fanone, two former U.S. Capitol Police officers who have since become spokesmen for the Democratic effort to attack Mr. Trump over his role in the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, to hold a news conference outside the courthouse in Manhattan where Mr. Trump’s trial was concluding.“This is not a threat,” Mr. De Niro said of the prospect that Mr. Trump could return to the White House. “This is a reality.” The news conference was the sort of thing the Trump campaign would have done from the beginning if the political situation were reversed.The Biden campaign has for weeks kept to the letter of the president’s directive to not address the criminal charges Mr. Trump faces or offer commentary on the trial, but its decision to dispatch surrogates to the Manhattan courthouse while the former president’s lawyer was delivering his closing argument was hardly subtle.Though Mr. De Niro and the two former police officers did not address Mr. Trump’s Manhattan trial — he is charged with falsifying business records related to a hush-money payment to a porn star before the 2016 election — they sought to draw attention to his actions that led to the events of Jan. 6, which are the subject of another federal criminal case pending against Mr. Trump.Mr. Trump has sought to tie together all four of his criminal cases and has argued baselessly that Mr. Biden is behind them all. In addition to the Manhattan trial, he is charged in separate federal cases over his handling of classified documents and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, along with a Georgia case related to his push to reverse that year’s results.Mr. Trump’s loudest supporters quickly jumped on the Biden news conference as evidence that the four cases against Mr. Trump are connected and that Mr. Biden is the hidden hand behind them all.“In case you needed more evidence that all of these BS cases were quarterbacked by Team Biden to interfere in the 2024 election, the Biden campaign is now showing up in NYC to explicitly cheerlead the political prosecution of my father,” Donald Trump Jr. wrote on social media. More

    • 125 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Trump Lawyers Assail Limited Gag Order Request in Documents Case

      by

      The latest battle over what the former president can say about a continuing legal case came after he falsely suggested that F.B.I. agents were authorized to shoot him when they searched Mar-a-Lago.Former President Donald J. Trump’s lawyers on Monday assailed a request by federal prosecutors to limit what he could say about a new flare-up in a case accusing him of illegally retaining classified documents after leaving office.In an angry court filing, the lawyers pushed back hard against the request by the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, to revise Mr. Trump’s conditions of release by forbidding him to make any public comments that might endanger federal agents working on the prosecution.On Friday evening, Mr. Smith’s team requested what amounted to a limited gag order on Mr. Trump, prompted by what it called “grossly misleading” social media posts the former president made last week falsely claiming that the F.B.I. had been authorized to kill him when agents searched Mar-a-Lago, his Florida club and residence, in August 2022.The former president’s statements were based on a recently unsealed operational order for the search that contained boilerplate language spelling out that the use of deadly force could be used only in case of emergency, a standard provision applied to all searches conducted by the bureau.In their motion to Judge Aileen M. Cannon in Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, Fla., Mr. Trump’s lawyers said that Mr. Smith’s request was “an extraordinary, unprecedented and unconstitutional censorship application” that “unjustly targets President Trump’s campaign speech while he is the leading candidate for the presidency.”Mr. Trump’s legal team said that Mr. Smith’s request should be stricken from the docket and that he and his prosecutors should face contempt sanctions for filing it in the first place.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

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Can Trump Really Slam the Brakes on Electric Vehicles?

      by

      He has vowed to shred President Biden’s E.V. policies and has threatened that “You won’t be able to sell those cars.”Donald J. Trump is crystal clear about his disdain for electric vehicles. The former president has falsely claimed electric cars don’t work, promised to shred President Biden’s policies that encourage E.V. manufacturing and sales, and has said he would slap a “100 percent tariff” on electric cars imported from Mexico if he retakes the White House.“You’re not going to be able to sell those cars,” he has said.But analysts say that even if Mr. Trump is elected and ends federal policies that support electric vehicles, by the time that happens, the market may have reached a level where it would keep growing without government help.A record 1.2 million Americans bought electric vehicles last year, making up 7.6 percent of new car sales and moving the cars and trucks from the margin to the mainstream of the American auto market. Analysts project that will climb to 10 percent this year, which researchers say could signal a tipping point for rapid, widespread E.V. adoption.While a Trump presidency couldn’t slam the brakes on the E.V. transition, it could throw enough sand in the gears to slow it down. And that might have significant consequences for the fight to stop global warming.President Biden placed electric vehicles at the heart of his climate agenda because scientists say that a rapid switch from gasoline-powered cars to electric versions is one of the most effective ways to slow the carbon dioxide emissions that are dangerously heating the planet. Last year was the hottest in recorded history and scientists say the world is on track to heat up even more, to the point where parts of the planet will be unlivable.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 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Trump Tells Libertarians to Nominate Him, and Mocks Them When They Boo

      by

      Former President Donald J. Trump’s appearance before the Libertarian Party on Saturday was without modern precedent: the presumptive nominee of one party addressing the convention of another.Early in his speech at the Libertarian Party’s national convention on Saturday, Donald J. Trump told the party’s delegates bluntly that they should nominate him as its candidate for president. He was vigorously booed.When the jeers died down, Mr. Trump, visibly frustrated with the rowdy reception he had received ever since taking the stage, dug in and went a step further, seeming to insult the very group that had invited him.“Only do that if you want to win,” he said of nominating him. “If you want to lose, don’t do that. Keep getting your three percent every four years.”The boos began anew, only louder.Mr. Trump’s speech was without modern precedent: the presumptive nominee of a major political party giving a prime-time address at another party’s convention.But as Mr. Trump tried to urge Libertarians to unite behind him in a shared effort to defeat President Biden, he was greeted with a hostility absent from the friendly crowds at his rallies, which overshadowed his appeals to their common cause.Mr. Trump’s speech was delivered to an audience that included supporters wearing red MAGA hats, as well as Libertarians who were resentful of his presence at the convention where they will select their own presidential nominee.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 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Biden Admin Struggles to Address Sharp Rise in Deaths From Extreme Heat

      by

      For more than two years, a group of health experts, economists and lawyers in the U.S. government has worked to address a growing public health crisis: people dying on the job from extreme heat.In the coming months, this team of roughly 30 people at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration is expected to propose a new rule that would require employers to protect an estimated 50 million people exposed to high temperatures while they work. They include farm laborers and construction workers, but also people who sort packages in warehouses, clean airplane cabins and cook in commercial kitchens.The measure would be the first major federal government regulation to protect Americans from heat on the job. And it is expected to meet stiff resistance from some business and industry groups, which oppose regulations that would, in some cases, require more breaks and access to water, shade and air-conditioning.But even if the rule takes effect, experts say, the government’s emergency response system is poorly suited to meet the urgency of the moment.Last year was the hottest in recorded history, and researchers are expecting another record-breaking summer, with temperatures already rising sharply across the Sun Belt. The heat index in Miami reached 112 degrees Fahrenheit last weekend, shattering daily records by 11 degrees.The surge in deaths from heat is now the greatest threat to human health posed by climate change, said Dr. John M. Balbus, the deputy assistant secretary for climate change and health equity in the Health and Human Services Department.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