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      The Guardian view on political turmoil in Paris and Berlin: an ominous end to the year | Editorial

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      After a brief weekend hiatus, action has resumed in the real-life political boxsets playing out in the EU’s two most important capitals. In the Bundestag on Monday, a vote of no confidence in Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s battered coalition government duly paved the way for a snap election in February. Over in Paris – where the same manoeuvre collapsed Michel Barnier’s short-lived government a fortnight ago – his prime ministerial replacement was putting his feet under the desk after being appointed on Friday by an increasingly desperate Emmanuel Macron.As Europe faces big decisions and dilemmas over Ukraine, how to deal with Donald Trump, and the challenge of China, this is no time for the continent’s fabled Franco-German engine to temporarily conk out. But there are no easy fixes in view on either side of the Rhine. In both France and Germany, the rise of the far right and a concomitant crisis of trust in mainstream politics have pointed to a deep political malaise for some time.Mr Scholz effectively decided to put his troubled coalition government out of its misery in November by firing his fiscally hawkish finance minister, Christian Lindner. As Germany seeks to reboot an economic model that can no longer rely on cheap Russian energy and export-led growth, the SPD leader has deliberately forced an election to seek a mandate for greater borrowing and investment.Unfortunately, he looks unlikely to get it. The most likely next chancellor is Friedrich Merz, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) leader and a former BlackRock executive. Mr Merz has pledged to maintain the cordon sanitaire excluding the far‑right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) from power. But the CDU’s plans to cut corporate taxes and rein in public expenditure would only deepen the social tensions that have fuelled the AfD’s rise.France’s problems began in earnest with Mr Macron’s disastrous decision to call his own snap election last summer. Conceived as a means of confronting Marine Le Pen’s far-right party, which had won the European elections in June, the strategy succeeded only in delivering an ungovernable parliament divided into three blocs, none boasting a majority. Mr Macron then compounded his error by refusing to allow the election’s narrow winner, the leftwing New Popular Front coalition, to provide the next prime minister.A damaging democratic fiasco has ensued. Mr Macron spectacularly lost his electoral gamble, but is stubbornly attempting to protect his unpopular pension reforms and push through an austerity budget to appease the markets and satisfy Brussels’ deficit criteria. With the rightwing Mr Barnier ousted in record time, he has now turned to François Bayrou, a veteran centrist from the rural south-west of France and longstanding ally. Mr Bayrou is the fourth prime minister to be recruited by the president this year, each lasting a shorter period of time than their predecessor. He has drily pronounced his task to be of “Himalayan” proportions.Political dysfunction in the EU’s two most powerful member states feels like a somewhat ominous way to close the year. From January, Mr Trump will doubtless be seeking to browbeat western allies on matters of economic and foreign policy. Right now, with Paris and Berlin plunged into introspection, it would be fair to say that Europe does not look fully ready for the challenge. More

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      Trump says he would consider pardoning New York mayor Eric Adams

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      President-elect Donald Trump on Monday said in a far-ranging news conference that he would consider pardoning the embattled New York City mayor, Eric Adams. Separately he called on the Biden administration to stop selling off unused portions of border wall that were purchased but not installed during his first administration.“Yeah, I would” consider pardoning Adams, Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, before saying that he was not familiar with the specifics of the charges Adams is facing.Adams is facing federal fraud and corruption charges, accused of accepting flight upgrades and other luxury travel perks valued at $100,000 along with illegal campaign contributions from a Turkish official and other foreign nationals looking to buy his influence. Multiple members of his administration have also come under investigation.Speaking at his first press conference since winning the election, Trump also threatened legal action against the Biden administration over sales of portions of border wall, saying he has spoken to the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, and other Texas officials about a potential restraining order.“We’re going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars more on building the same wall we already have,” Trump said. “It’s almost a criminal act.”Congress last year required the Biden administration to dispose of the unused border wall pieces. The measure, included in the massive National Defense Authorization Act, allows for the sale or donation of the items to states on the southern border, providing they are used to refurbish existing barriers, not install new ones. Congress also directed the Pentagon to account for storage costs for the border wall material while it has gone unused.“I’m asking today, Joe Biden, to please stop selling the wall,” Trump said.While Trump described the handover between Biden and his incoming team as “a friendly transition”, he also took issue with efforts to allow some members of the federal workforce to continue working from home. Trump said that if government workers did not come back into the office under him, they would be dismissed.Trump was joined at the appearance by the SoftBank Group CEO, Masayoshi Son, who announced that the Japanese company was planning to invest $100bn in US projects over the next four years.It was a win for Trump, who has used the weeks since the election to promote his policies, negotiate with foreign leaders and try to strike deals.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn a post on his Truth Social site last week, Trump had said that anyone making a $1bn investment in the United States “will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals”.“GET READY TO ROCK!!!” he wrote.Deals announced with much fanfare have sometimes failed to deliver on promised investments. But the announcement nonetheless represents a major win for Trump, who has boasted that he has done more in his short transition period than his predecessor did in all four years.“There’s a whole light over the entire world,” he said Monday. “There’s a light shining over the world.” More

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      Trump will destroy the government agencies that most help working people | Katrina vanden Heuvel

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      The Republican party has shellacked its clean-cut corporatism, in recent years, with a veneer of economic populism. See JD Vance’s pseudo-criticisms of Wall Street, so gestural they could be mistaken for an interpretive dance routine, or Donald Trump’s stint as a McDonald’s “employee”, which seemed more inspired by his contempt for Kamala Harris than his affection for fry cooks.But when it comes to how the second Trump administration actually intends to govern, there have already been plenty of signals that they intend to target and weaken – if not outright destroy – the parts of government most beneficial to working people. And right now, the agency most clearly in their crosshairs is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).While there’s new fervor behind rightwing efforts to undermine the CFPB – or, indeed, “delete” it, as Elon Musk recently tweeted – these attacks have been ongoing since the agency’s inception. In his first term, in fact, Trump slashed the CFPB’s budget, appointed a vocal critic to run it and rolled back regulations protecting consumers from predatory practices.Trump and his nearly-half-trillionaire “first buddy” feel threatened for good reason: the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is one of the few federal agencies created explicitly to help average Americans, and actually given authority to do so. Its efforts have represented some of the Biden administration’s most impactful advances for working people – and gutting it would be among the most devastating anti-consumer moves the Trump administration could make.The CFPB was born out of the 2008 financial crisis, which saw almost 400 banks fold and American households lose about $17tn in wealth (that’s 42 Elon Musks). The popular narrative rightfully blames predatory lending and securities fraud, but those lapses were only possible because of decades-long bipartisan deregulation. In response, the then Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren proposed a federal agency to centralize regulation of the consumer financial sector, work which had been spread thin across seven different agencies. Rather than being “duplicative”, as Musk has claimed, the CFPB began as a novel effort to make government more responsive, effective and – indeed – efficient.But not until the current directorship of Rohit Chopra did the CFPB begin fulfilling its true potential. Since his appointment in 2021, Chopra has cracked down on exploitative consumer practices with a fervor not seen since Upton Sinclair stepped into a meatpacking plant.In the last year, the agency has banned excessive credit card late fees, saving consumers $10bn annually. It has started regulating “buy now, pay later” lenders, which often leave buyers on the hook for expensive purchases they return. It has created a registry of businesses who have repeatedly engaged in illegal practices, finally bringing a tough-on-crime approach to “corporate recidivism”. And just last week, the CFPB announced a rule capping overdraft fees that will return another $5bn to consumers every year.Chopra has notched these wins while burnishing a dynamic persona that might best be described as swashbuckler meets bureaucrat. He has embraced public engagement in a way most regulators don’t; see his PSAs on medical debt with Rashida Tlaib, the Michigan representative. He has also embraced conflict, prompting some opponents to accuse him of antagonism, as when he sued not just a credit reporting firm but one of its executives for misleading consumers. Still, one populist’s antagonism is most Americans’ vindication, and Chopra has even drawn reluctant praise from Republicans such as the onetime speaker pro tempore Patrick McHenry.Other than consumers, arguably the biggest beneficiary of Chopra’s ferocity has been Joe Biden. The CFPB has accomplished many of his administration’s most unambiguously progressive (and practical) victories. Chopra joins a class of hugely productive Biden appointees – Lina Khan at the FTC, Marty Walsh and Julie Su at the Department of Labor, and a slate of pro-worker appointees at the National Labor Relations Board – who reaffirm the adage that “personnel is policy”.Even in the administration’s waning days, Khan’s FTC has helped unravel a merger between Kroger and Albertsons that would probably have spiked food prices, and raised alarms about “task scams” that have cheated targets out of millions. In this respect at least, Biden has taken a page from Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who gleefully stocked his cabinet with unabashed crusaders such as Frances Perkins, the mother of the New Deal.While many Democrats continue post-election recriminations, many will no doubt feel tempted to disavow anything and everything associated with the first one-term Democratic president since Carter. But a prevailing lesson of 2024 has been that voters respond to brash anti-corporate messaging, even when it comes from the mouths of an erstwhile venture capitalist and a real estate tycoon who stiffs workers.So even if the legacies of Chopra, Khan, Walsh and Su aren’t reflected in the next four years of governance, progressives can at least embrace them in their campaign rhetoric – especially in response to Trump’s imminent efforts to deter or even dismantle agencies such as the CFPB in favor of corporate interests.Three years ago, immediately after his swearing-in ceremony, Chopra wrote a memo describing the CFPB’s most important mission as this: “We must anticipate emerging risks so we can act before a crisis, rather than acting after it is too late.”It may be too late to avert the crisis of the last election. But it’s also the best time to act in anticipation of the next one.

      Katrina vanden Heuvel is the editorial director and publisher of the Nation. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and has contributed to the Washington Post, New York Times and Los Angeles Times More

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      Mitch McConnell warns Trump to avoid ‘isolationist’ foreign policy in second term

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      Mitch McConnell, the Republicans’ outgoing leader in the US Senate, has called on Donald Trump to avoid an “isolationist” foreign policy during his looming second presidency – and urged him to back up a surge in American “hard power” by continuing to support Ukraine in its war against Russia.In a 5,000-word essay in Foreign Affairs magazine, McConnell, 82 – who retires as the GOP Senate leader at the end of this term in 2027 – takes issue with a strand of foreign policy thinking in the party’s pro-Trump “Make America great again” (Maga) movement, which casts China as the US’s biggest threat and advocates turning away from the war in Ukraine to tackle challenges in Asia.He also urges continued robust support for Nato, the military alliance which Trump has often criticised and has threatened to withdraw US backing from unless European members increase their share of defence spending.Warning Trump that he would confront a more dangerous world when he returns to the White House in January – and pinning much of the blame on Joe Biden’s outgoing administration – McConnell writes: “The response to four years of weakness must not be four years of isolation.”In a coded rebuke to senior pro-Trump figures such as JD Vance, the incoming vice-president, McConnell dismisses the idea that Ukraine should be abandoned in favour of an all-out confrontational approach towards China.“Even though the competition with China and Russia is a global challenge, Trump will no doubt hear from some that he should prioritize a single theater and downgrade US interests and commitments elsewhere,” he writes.“Such thinking is commonplace among both isolationist conservatives who indulge the fantasy of ‘Fortress America’ and progressive liberals who mistake internationalism for an end in itself.”He accuses some members of his own party of “retrench[ing] in the face of Russian aggression in Europe”, although he does not spare the left, which he says is reluctant to confront Iran and support Israel.But it is the swipe at Republican “isolationism” that is certain to attract more attention. McConnell, who has a tense relationship with Trump – calling him “stupid” and “despicable” after his 2020 presidential election defeat – will have a platform to push his foreign policy agenda in the Senate term, when he will become chair of the subcommittee on defence appropriations.Trump has frequently voiced misgivings about US military aid for Ukraine and has claimed he would end its war with Russia in 24 hours.For his part, Vance is on record as saying he does not “really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another”.Taking aim at those views directly, McConnell writes: “Republicans who consider Ukraine a distraction from the Indo-Pacific should recall what happened the last time a president sought to reprioritize one region by withdrawing from another. In the Middle East, [Barack] Obama’s premature withdrawal from Iraq left a vacuum for Iran and the Islamic State (also known as Isis) to fill.”Trump can only effectively confront China and the adversaries, he adds, by continuing to back Ukraine: “A Russian victory would not only damage the United States’ interest in European security and increase US military requirements in Europe; it would also compound the threats from China, Iran, and North Korea.”McConnell, who has said he will feel “liberated” by no longer holding the Repbulican leadership in the Senate, is also supportive of the US’s European allies – saying many of them have boosted their defence spending commitments – while taking a swipe at Hungary, whose far-right prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has been feted by Trump and his Maga acolytes.“After major surges in their defense budgets, US allies on the continent now spend 18% more than they did a year ago, a far greater increase than the United States,” he writes.But there are – inconveniently, for Orbán’s Republican admirers – exceptions to this trend, he continues. “One of the West’s most glaring vulnerabilities to the influence of Russia – and China and Iran – is Hungary’s self-abnegating obeisance to those countries,” McConnell writes. More

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      Pete Hegseth will lift NDA related to sexual misconduct allegations, Lindsey Graham says

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      Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of defense, is offering to release a woman from a non-disclosure agreement related to sexual misconduct allegations from 2017, Lindsey Graham revealed on Sunday.Speaking on NBC’s Meet the Press, the South Carolina senator said Hegseth assured him in a private meeting that he would lift the NDA, giving the accuser an opportunity to speak publicly about her allegations.“He told me he would release her from that agreement,” Graham said. “Just think about what we’re talking about; I’d want to know if anybody nominated for a high-level job in Washington legitimately assaulted somebody.”Hegseth has continued to deny the allegations. A statement from his lawyer, obtained by the Washington Post, confirmed a settlement was made while maintaining Hegseth’s innocence. According to police reports stemming from 2017, Hegseth took the unidentified woman’s phone before keeping her from leaving his hotel room, when he would then allegedly assault her.While the nomination has been picking up some steam again on the Hill, it still faces significant public skepticism. A recent AP-NORC poll found only 17% of respondents approve of Hegseth, with 36% disapproving and 37% lacking sufficient information to form an opinion.Graham drew parallels to the 2018 Brett Kavanaugh supreme court confirmation, dismissing what he characterized as unsubstantiated claims.“Five people accused Justice Kavanaugh of misconduct. Three were outright lies, the other two, I think, were not credible,” Graham said, a reference to the witness Christine Blasey Ford. “We’re not going to destroy [Hegseth’s] nomination based on anonymous sources.”Despite the ongoing controversy, Graham indicated he is prepared to support Hegseth’s confirmation, contingent on no new information emerging.He challenged the accuser to come forward publicly, saying: “If people have an allegation to make, come forward and make it.”Hegseth’s lawyer, Timothy Parlatore, previously told CNN that the settlement was made to prevent potential professional repercussions, characterizing the original agreement as a form of protection against potential career damage. More

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      Mayorkas says no known foreign involvement in mass drone sightings

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      Alejandro Mayorkas, the US homeland security secretary, has said federal authorities “know of no foreign involvement” in the apparent mass drone sightings across the nation’s north-east region, though social and political anxieties nonetheless continued surging over the weekend amid a lack of official information.“I want to assure the American public that we are on it,” Mayorkas said.He called for “extended and expanded” authority to shoot down drones, beyond only those that pass over restricted military airspace. And the New York governor, Kathy Hochul, announced on Sunday that the federal government was prepared to deploy a high-tech drone detection system in response to the spate of sighting there, in New Jersey and Connecticut, where state and local officials are demanding more assertive federal action – with one calling the drones a “very considerable danger”.The Democrat US Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, later added his name to the request for drone detection technology. And congressman Mike Waltz of Florida, who has been chosen as the incoming White House national security adviser, said the drone issue points to gaps in security between federal agencies, and with local law enforcement.“Americans are finding it hard to believe we can’t figure out where these are coming from,” he told CBS’s Face the Nation. “From the defense department standpoint, they’re focused on bombers and cruise missiles. It’s pointing to gaps in our capabilities and in our ability to clamp down on what’s going on here.”Meanwhile, reports that an Iranian drone ship is patrolling off the US east coast were discarded as unfounded.The US domestic security chief told ABC News that there are “thousands of drones flown every day in the United States, recreational drones, commercial drones”. He also pointed out that – in September 2023 – aviation regulators enacted rules allowing drones to be flown at night, leading to more such activity.US authorities are anxious to avoid vigilantes’ responding to New Jersey’s drone invasion, fearing that innocent bystanders could be hit by falling debris or that legitimate commercial aviation could be mistaken for unexplained drones.“We want state and local authorities to also have the ability to counter drone activity under federal supervision,” Mayorkas said.Hoping to counter the relative impotence of officials to quell the public anxiety stemming from the drone sightings, Mayorkas said some were drones and others manned aircraft mistaken for drones.“There’s no question … people are seeing drones,” Mayorkas remarked. “And I want to assure the American public that we, in the federal government, have deployed additional resources, personnel, technology, to assist … in addressing the drone sightings.”A Chinese national was arrested on 9 December in California, allegedly for flying a drone over Vandenberg air force base, used for space launches and missile testing. Other military bases have also reported drone over-flights.“If we identify any foreign involvement or criminal activity, we will communicate with the American public accordingly,” Mayorkas added.Meanwhile, as Donald Trump prepares to begin his second presidency, he has demanded greater official transparency around what he has called “mystery drone sightings all over the country”.“Can this really be happening without our government’s knowledge? I don’t think so,” Trump added. “Let the public know, and now. Otherwise, shoot them down.”On Sunday, the former New Jersey governor Chris Christie was asked if the state’s residents were experiencing an outbreak of mass hysteria.“To say that this is not unusual activity is just wrong,” Christie said. “I’ve lived in New Jersey my whole life and this is the first time I’ve noticed drones over my house.”Christie said that a lack of official information had allowed conspiracy theories to overwhelm authorities’ officialese.“If you don’t fill that vacuum then all the conspiracy theories get filled in there,” Christie added. “So you get congressman Jeff Van Drew saying there’s an Iranian mothership off the coast which is provably not true.”Joe Biden’s outgoing presidential administration and state authorities have to be more vocal and let people know what they’re doing, he added.Pointing to a newish technology used in conflict zones as weapons, Christie said it was understandable that people were concerned.Hochul on Saturday joined a chorus of other elected US officials pressuring the White House for a federal response after runways at Stewart international airport were temporarily closed due to what was described as “drone activity in the airspace”.Phil Murphy, the New Jersey governor, has also contacted Biden to voice “growing concern about reports of unmanned aircraft systems”. In Connecticut, another state with elevated drone sightings since mid-November, US senator Richard Blumenthal said the aircraft should be shot down “if necessary”.But the lack of a coherent response by officials has set residents off on their own search for answers.The director of the Rebovich institute at Rider university,Micah Rasmussen, told NJ.com that the Biden administrations’ response was “a textbook case of exactly how misinformation happens and disinformation happens.“When people don’t know what to believe, they don’t believe anything,” Rasmussen said, “and that’s a dangerous position for us to be in”.The federal response had achieved the near impossible by bring Republicans and Democrats in the state together over the issue, said the New Jersey Republican assemblywoman Dawn Fantasia.“I don’t know who’s running crisis communication from the White House, but it’s embarrassing,” Fantasia told the outlet. “You know, we’re at the point now where I feel like I’m watching Star Search from the ‘80s, and they’re just auditioning spokesmodels to say stupid things.”Another New Jersey political figure, Democratic congressman Josh Gottheimer, said that hundreds of reports of drones flying overhead in federally-controlled airspace “leaves a large vacuum of information”.Since 13 November, when an unauthorized drone was spotted flying near Picatinny Arsenal, a US army research facility in New Jersey, hundreds more sightings of unidentified flying objects have been reported.Some have been described as “SUV-sized”. Some were reportedly flying in coordinated clusters. Domestic security agencies have consistently maintained they do not pose any national security or public safety threat.But military officials have confirmed 11 sightings over Picatinny base and multiple sightings over a naval weapons station, fueling anxiety.The done sightings come after the Biden administration sought to downplay a Chinese spy balloon crossing the US in early 2023 before it was ultimately shot down off the east coast.The White House national security spokesperson John Kirby has said that “it appears that many of the reported sightings are actually manned aircraft that are being operated lawfully”.But that hasn’t satisfied New Jerseyans, Rasmussen told NJ.com.He said: “You only get so many chances to explain something before people say, ‘I’ve heard enough from you. I don’t believe what you have to say. I’m done listening to you now, because clearly you’re going to insult my intelligence.’” More

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      The forgotten faces of Christmas in China | Letter

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      Reading “made in China” on his toys for the first time, my young Chinese nephew asked me innocently whether Santa was Chinese. Oddly, like Santa’s elves, toy assembly workers in China remain remote and faceless to most of us in the west. In Britain, most Asian migrants work backstage, too, kept in kitchens or workshops, taking the first and last train, earning low wages and hidden from our eyes. In many countries this Christmas, instead of being acknowledged for alleviating our cost of living crisis, those foreign workers will be vilified for stealing our jobs and threatened with tariffs whose consequences economists are still not certain about.It is always easier to blame people who remain invisible and voiceless. Although our world has never been so interconnected, and hence our nations so reliant on each other’s labour, Chinese society remains poorly understood. In the west, Chinese people remain enigmatic, the ever-silent and under-represented minority. When scrutinised, it is often with a political lens as well, maybe showing some cognitive bias.The question today should be how much value the free movement of products and people has brought to our nations and how to ensure that it keeps doing so in the future. As evidenced by world history, curiosity and interest towards foreign societies has often been an engine of progress. Christmas is a time to reach out and be thankful to one another: it is hoped that this spirit will continue to animate our politicians and societies in this coming year.Hugo WongAuthor of America’s Lost Chinese; London More

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      Lindsey Graham contradicts Trump by saying January 6 investigators should not go to jail

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      US senator Lindsey Graham has said officials who investigated Donald Trump supporters’ deadly attack on the US Capitol in 2021 should not be imprisoned – despite what his fellow Republican has argued in advance of his second presidency.During an interview Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press, show host Kristen Welker asked Graham whether he agreed with Trump’s assertion on the program seven days earlier that those involved in the investigation of the January 6 Capitol attack “should go to jail”.“No,” said Graham, South Carolina’s senior senator as well as a ranking member of the chamber’s judiciary and budget committees.Welker directed the question at Graham during a segment meant to elicit quick answers, which she acknowledged by replying: “OK – that was very clear and concise.”The exchange offered an example of Graham’s occasional willingness to publicly disagree with Trump while still generally serving as a staunch ally – and it came amid a broader political dialogue about who should receive pardons in connection with an attack on Congress that was linked to multiple deaths, including the suicides of traumatized law enforcement officers.Trump has promised to begin his second presidency in January 2025 by issuing pardons to those who carried out the attack, though there may be some exceptions. He spoke to Welker on 8 December about how supporters of his were pressured into accepting guilty pleas in connection with the violent, desperate attempt to keep him in the White House after losing the presidency to Joe Biden in 2020.Having won the Oval Office back in November in his race against Vice-President Kamala Harris, Trump denied he would direct his second administration to arrest elected officials who investigated the Capitol attack, leading to federal criminal charges against him that have been dismissed. Nonetheless, he made it a point to tell Welker: “Honestly, they should go to jail.”Bernie Sanders, the liberal US senator, made a separate appearance on Sunday on Meet the Press and said Biden in turn should “very seriously consider” issuing pre-emptive pardons to those who investigated the Capitol attack, as others have suggested. Sanders didn’t provide any names, but a week earlier Trump mentioned the names of Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney, once the chairperson and vice-chairperson respectively of the US House committee convened for that investigation.“You do not arrest elected officials … who undertake an investigation,” Sanders said, adding that doing so “is what authoritarianism [and] dictatorship is all about”.Sanders also said: “You just heard Lindsey Graham make that statement – I think that idea of Trump is not going to very far.”More than 1,250 people have pleaded guilty or otherwise been convicted in the January 6 attack. And at least 645 people have been sentenced to serve some time in prison, ranging from a few days to 22 years.During his 8 December interview with Welker, Trump blamed those convictions on “a very corrupt system” that he would hold in check with pardons, despite criticizing Biden’s recent pardon of his son, Hunter, on convictions of lying on gun ownership application forms as well as tax evasion.“I know the system,” said Trump, himself convicted in May in New York state court on charges of criminally falsifying business records to conceal hush-money payments to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels. More