Many of us have expressed alarm at the politicization of the criminal justice system in New York by figures such as Attorney General Letitia James and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. It now appears that New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin is angling to get into the lawfare frenzy.
The conviction of Trump on 34 felonies has either thrilled or repelled citizens. For many of us, it is a sign of the degradation of our legal system. Even the chief CNN legal analyst has acknowledged that Bragg contorted the law to bring the recent case against former President Donald Trump in an unprecedented prosecution.
Yet, the use of the legal system for political purposes is clearly popular in New York where people were literally dancing in the street outside of the courthouse after the recent verdict against Trump. Now Platkin’s office has announced that it is “reviewing” whether to pull the liquor licenses for Trump golf clubs since he is now convicted of felonies in New York. It appears that lawfare is nothing if not intoxicating for Democratic politicians.
According to an article in the Hill, the New Jersey Attorney General’s Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control is “reviewing the impact of President Trump’s conviction” on his liquor licenses for the Trump National Golf Club in Colts Neck, Lamington Farm Club, and Trump National Golf Club Philadelphia in Pine Hill.
The latest effort is based on a vague standard governing crimes of “moral turpitude” under New Jersey law:
No license of any class shall be issued to any person under the age of 18 years or to any person who has been convicted of a crime involving moral turpitude. A beneficiary of a trust who is not otherwise disqualified to hold an interest in a license may qualify regardless of age so long as the trustee of the trust qualifies, and the trustee shall hold the beneficiary’s interest in trust until the beneficiary is at least the age of majority.
A “crime of moral turpitude” is a familiar, though dated, standard in American law. I teach the standard in torts as one of the traditional “per se” categories for slander under the common law. It was generally used to denote conduct of immorality or serious offenses to norms of society. New Jersey defines it as including “any offense that carries the possibility of one year in jail and involves acts of baseness, vileness, or depravity in the private and social duties which a man owes to his fellowmen, or to society in general.”
Even the New Jersey Alcoholic Beverage Control handbook notes that in “some instances, it may be unclear whether a conviction involves an element of moral turpitude.” Yet, Trump has a way to bringing clarity for his critics whenever they must choose between politics and principle.
For most of us, it is hard to see how falsifying business records would constitute “acts of baseness, vileness, or depravity in the private and social duties which a man owes to his fellowmen, or to society in general.” However, for Democrats, it seems that any act by Trump is by definition base, vile, and depraved.
The piling on of investigations and charges by Democratic officials has reinforced Trump’s long narrative of a weaponization of the legal system against him and his supporters. Polling shows that most citizens view some of these cases as political prosecutions and that they are having diminishing impact on voter preferences. Yet, they remain thrilling for Democratic voters who lionize prosecutors who come up with novel or unprecedented avenues to hammer Trump or hit his businesses. It does not seem to matter that removing the liquor licenses of these clubs can endanger thousands of jobs of citizens or chill other businesses in considering investments in New York or New Jersey.
In the end, the effort is hardly surprising. Lawfare is like binge drinking: the excess is the very measure of its success.
Former President Donald Trump waves to supporters May 30 as he exits the courtroom for a break during his since-ended criminal trial in New York City. The trial, with the deck stacked against Trump, is widely seen as an example of Democratic “lawfare” against their chief opponent. (Photo: Justin Lane/AFP/Getty Images)
Nearly 14 months after the first of four unprecedented criminal prosecutions against former President Donald Trump commenced in earnest, the Democrat-lawfare complex got its man: The Soviet show trial in “Justice” Juan Merchan’s dingy New York City courtroom produced its preordained “guilty” verdict.
It is perhaps hackneyed to observe that, in convicting and seeking to incarcerate a former president and current leading presidential candidate, we have “crossed the Rubicon.” Well …
Did we not cross a Rubicon when the demonic Obama administration sued the nuns—yes, literal nuns—of the Little Sisters of the Poor to try to force them to subsidize abortifacients?
Did we not cross a Rubicon when Democrats threw out 4,000 to 5,000 years of “innocent until proven guilty” civilizational norms to try to derail the U.S. Supreme Court confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh?
Did we not cross a Rubicon when then-vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris solicited funds to bail out anarchic Antifa-Black Lives Matter street hooligans?
Did we not cross a Rubicon when the American Stasi—sorry, the FBI—raided Mar-a-Lago over a document dispute?
Did we not cross a Rubicon when myriad Trump attorneys, including the renowned scholar John Eastman, were prosecuted for practicing the legal profession?
Did we not cross a Rubicon when Peter Navarro or Steve Bannon (just now) were ordered to jail?
The Rubicon, truthfully, is a shallow, inconsequential river in Italy. That it is so shallow helps explain why Julius Caesar was able to cross it so easily. At this juncture in American history, it no longer suffices to speak of crossing a Rubicon. We are now rapidly crossing great seas—perhaps even circumnavigating the globe. You might call President Joe Biden and the rest of the Democrat-lawfare complex our modern-day Magellans.
Ruinous or not, however, their precedent has now been set. And that raises the obvious question: For Democrats, will all of this, and especially their multifront anti-Trump lawfare, prove to be worth it?
That obvious question, in turn, has an equally obvious answer: absolutely, positively not.
First, Democrats do not seem to be getting much of a bump in the early polls after last week’s verdict. In each of the two major national polls that have been conducted exclusively after the verdict, from pollsters Emerson College and Morning Consult, Trump leads by 1 point. As even the liberal Washington Post conceded on Thursday, “Other polls conducted before and after the verdict suggest between no change and a two-point shift toward Biden. The shifts are quite a bit smaller than pretrial polls suggested they could be.”
Considering that Trump was already leading in most national horse race polling and that the Republican Party currently has a built-in Electoral College advantage wherein its presidential candidate can slightly lose the popular vote while still prevailing in the electoral vote, the Biden-Harris campaign ought to be worried.
Democrats’ lawfare isn’t winning over many swing voters.
Former President Donald Trump sits in the courtroom May 30 during his since-ended “hush money” trial in New York City. Democrats got their preordained “guilty” verdict, but there’s no evidence it gave them the polling bump they hoped for. (Photo: Michael Santiago/Getty Images)
Second, the damage the Democrat-lawfare complex has caused to the American public’s faith and trust in the justice system is simply astronomical—and likely irreparable. Even prior to the onslaught of Trump indictments filed last year, many of us “deplorables” were already convinced we have a two-tier system of justice in this country: Consider the wholly disparate prosecutorial treatment of the BLM-Antifa rioters and the “J6-ers” present during the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol jamboree, for instance.
But the Democrat-lawfare complex’s serial overreaches have now removed any doubt as to the blatant impartiality and patent unfairness of our regnant legal order. It is impossible not to be jaded or cynical. Leviticus 19:15 commands: “You shall commit no injustice in judgment; you shall not favor a poor person or respect a great man; you shall judge your fellow with righteousness.”
Does anyone think this describes America today?
Third, the Right finally seems to be snapping out of its long lull and beginning to gear itself for pitched battle against a domestic foe that wants to punish us, prosecute us, subjugate us, and remove us from the entirety of American public life. That portends poorly for leftists.
My friend John Yoo, the Bush-era Justice Department official and law professor normally a bit less pugnacious than yours truly, opined: “Repairing this breach of constitutional norms will require Republicans to follow the age-old maxim: Do unto others as they have done unto you.”
Megyn Kelly, the influential broadcaster who has had a complex relationship with Trump going back to the 2016 GOP presidential primary, said after the verdict: “I’m going to utter words I never thought I would utter in my life: We need Steve Bannon.” The famously combative Bannon appears headed for an unjust four-month prison sentence in a few weeks, but her point stands.
Democrats have no idea what they have unleashed. Perhaps worse, they don’t even care.
Ever since Donald Trump came down the escalator of Trump Tower in 2015 to launch his first campaign for president, there has been a widespread perception on the Right that the scales of justice have been tipped against them and in favor of the Left and that Lady Justice is anything but blind. (Photo: Vladimir Cetinski/ iStock/Getty Images)
Many things human come in pairs. Eyes, ears, hands, feet, and lungs appear in twos. Even a single nose features two nostrils.
In this context, America’s new, two-track justice system might be perfectly natural: One for the Left—in which they suffer few consequences, if any, for their misdeeds—and one for the Right, in which arrests, trials, and prison sentences are routine.
After the Supreme Court’s current term ends later this month, masons should spend this summer re-chiseling the marble above its columns. Out with “Equal Justice Under Law.” In with “Bipolar Justice for All!”
Black Lives Matter and Antifa thugs on the Left spent the summer of 2020 yanking statues from pedestals, torching police precincts, and otherwise unleashing total mayhem. Then-Sen. Kamala Harris promoted a legal-defense fund to free arrestees. Few paid any price for the “fiery but mostly peaceful” George Floyd riots.
A peaceful demonstrator shares his opinion at a Black Lives Matter march on June 14, 2020, in Los Angeles. Few, if any, of his more violent BLM compatriots suffered any legal consequences for their anything but “mostly peaceful” actions after the killing of George Floyd less than three weeks earlier. (Photo: Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images)
The Jan. 6 hoodlums on the Right who shattered windows and smashed doors to breach the U.S. Capitol deserve serious prison time. But other protesters naively entered after Capitol Police waved them in.
“Hey, look. It’s open house!” some might have thought.
Many of these accidental tourists are in huge trouble. Arkansas’ Daniel Hatcher entered the Capitol, snapped some photos for two minutes, and walked out. The FBI arrested Hatcher in Little Rock last Feb. 13. He now faces federal charges.
Left-wing Deep State functionaries John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, Peter Strzok, and Andrew Weissmann advanced the Russia Hoax, which bedeviled the Trump administration and divided America for three years. Each of these men scored a book contract and a TV deal. Literally.
On the Right, Russiagate ensnared Trump aides Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, George Papadopoulos, Gen. Michael Flynn, and Roger Stone. All were sentenced to prison. Trump pardoned Flynn and Stone. Gates served house arrest. Manafort and Papadopoulos went to the slammer.
The quintessence of these two systems involves 2016’s presidential nominees and how they separately tried to influence that election.
On the Left, Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign paid $175,000 to Democratic law firm Perkins Coie, which engaged opposition-research shop Fusion GPS. It hired former British spy Christopher Steele. He wrote a baseless “Dirty Dossier” that hallucinated ties between Trump and the Kremlin. Team Clinton leaked this fraudulent report, which BuzzFeed published. And the Russia Hoax was off to the races.
On the Right, Trump was accused of reimbursing his then-attorney, Michael Cohen, for paying porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 to clam up about an alleged affair with Trump that both of them have denied.
As former Justice Department official John B. Daukas wrote in the American Spectator: “So, Hillary Clinton is found to be liable for mislabeling payments for the Steele Dossier as legal fees and gets an $8,000 civil fine; Trump has been found guilty of mislabeling nondisclosure payments as legal fees and is a convicted felon.”
As Yogi Berra might have said: “Only in America.”
Clinton went on to write books, deliver lectures, and whine loudly about why she lost to a real-estate magnate and TV personality on his first political campaign. Notwithstanding emotional scars, she is out a whopping eight grand.
Trump, meanwhile, endured a six-week trial that kept him off the campaign trail for four days each week, cost him undisclosed millions in—not to coin a phrase—legal expenses, and added abundant stress to his already high-pressure life. He awaits sentencing on July 11 and could receive four years for each of the 34 counts on which he was convicted. Total: 136 years in the big house.
But is this really so wrong?
If good things come in pairs, perhaps this applies to justice.
Rather than complain about two paths to justice, one Left and one Right, maybe conservatives should celebrate this development. After all, the truth about pectoral muscles also might apply to justice systems: “One is not enough, and three are too many.”
Below is my column in The Hill on the start of the Hunter Biden trial and the elements of a classic jury nullification strategy by the defense. It is not clear that it will work in an otherwise open-and-shut case, but it might. What is clear is that it may be all that Biden has short of the Rapture.
Here is the column:
There was an interesting development this week in the Hunter Biden gun trial: the fact that there will indeed be a Hunter Biden gun trial. That development is surprising only because there do not appear to be any facts in dispute in this case. And the primary witness against Hunter Biden will be Hunter Biden himself.
The sole issue in this case is whether Biden filed a false gun form (ATF Form 4473) in which, as a condition for his purchase of a .38-caliber Colt Cobra revolver from the StarQuest Shooters and Survival Supply in Wilmington, Del., he stated that he was not a user of drugs.
Biden’s counsel, Abbe Lowell, previously suggested that his client may have had a window of sobriety when he signed the form, but then returned to his addiction afterward. But then Hunter himself blew that theory away with his public comments and books. Lowell then suggested in court that someone else may have checked the box on the form.
In the interim, Lowell has brought a litany of challenges. At one point, he claimed that the government must fulfill a prior dead plea agreement. At another, he adopted an argument of the National Rifle Association challenging the underlying statute.
The defense also failed this week to call a last-minute witness who would testify that Hunter may not have known that he was an addict. The defense was accused of essentially hiding the ball with the expert’s expected testimony so Judge Maryellen Noreika barred the appearance of the Columbia professor.
Yet, again, Hunter Biden himself would have destroyed the defense. The form asks if Hunter was a user of drugs, not just an addict: “Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?”
Hunter wrote how he was a user of a wide array of drugs for years. It is hard to imagine he thought himself as clean as a clergyman in Wilmington in 2018.
So why wouldn’t Hunter just plead guilty? Even without his earlier plea deal, a guilty plea could significantly reinforce a request to avoid jail time in the case. It would also avoid an embarrassing trial for himself and his father during a presidential election.
While Hunter could always throw in the towel before the start of testimony, there is currently no discernible strategy beyond hoping that a pending case in the Supreme Court might undermine the indictment.
There may also be another possible strategy in play: jury nullification.
Unlike Donald Trump in Manhattan, Delaware is Biden country. The chance that he will get strong supporters of his father on the jury is an almost statistical certainty. In 2020, Joe Biden received roughly 60 percent of the vote over Donald Trump in the state. Having first lady Jill Biden, who is extremely popular, at the trial will only reinforce the connection.
In addition to a favorable jury pool, Biden may be hoping that testimony on his travails with drugs will prompt one or more jurors to ignore the law and vote to acquit. Notably, virtually all of the selected jurors have said that they know of someone who has struggled with drugs.
Indeed, Judge Noreika already appears to suspect such a strategy. Noreika rejected the effort of the defense to introduce an altered version of the federal firearms form created by the gun store employees. They argue that the alteration showed a political bias on the part of the prosecutors. The court found the document “irrelevant” and chastised the defense team for pursuing “conspiratorial” theories and an effort to confuse or mislead the jury.
She noted that the use of the altered form would be “unduly prejudicial and invites (jury) nullification.”
Jury nullification arguments have long been banned or discouraged in many courtrooms. Nevertheless, jury nullification has its advocates. For example, Georgetown Law Professor Paul Butler has called for Black jurors to refuse to convict Black defendants of drug crimes. Butler has said that “my goal is the subversion of the present criminal justice system.”
Hunter Biden is obviously not the primary concern of Professor Butler in the impact of drug prosecutions on the Black community. However, he has also argued that “jury nullification is just part of an arsenal of tools to end the failed “war on drugs.”
Biden’s case has all of the characteristics of a nullification defense. Even if he cannot secure acquittal, the combination of political and social elements at play in Delaware could produce a hung jury.
Trying a Biden in Delaware is a challenge for any prosecutor, even without the potential sympathies for a reformed drug addict. With the first lady sitting behind him, the family ties will be on full display. There is an understandable parental desire to show emotional support for Hunter, but prosecutors cannot be thrilled by the potential effect on jurors in the pro-Biden state.
Wilmington is President Biden’s hometown, where he still maintains a family residence. In Wilmington itself in 2020, Biden received 26,698 votes to Trump’s 3,580.
The hope is that, as President Biden once said, “Delaware is about getting everyone in the room, no matter how tough the problem, no matter how big the disagreement, and staying in the room until we figure it out.” Most everyone is in the courtroom and the hope is that at least some of these jurors will “figure it out” in their favor.
Perhaps Hunter put it best: “The single best thing is, family comes first. Over everything. I can’t think of anything that has been more pervasive and played a larger part in my life than that simple lesson.”
The defense may be hoping that, for some jurors, “family [will] come first … over everything,” particularly over the evidence.
Jonathan Turley is the J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at the George Washington University Law School.
Jury selection for Hunter Biden’s first federal criminal trial began Monday in Delaware. The Biden son is facing trial on three charges: two counts of false statements and one count of unlawful firearm possession, all related to a Colt Cobra 38SPL revolver he allegedly purchased and possessed in Delaware in October 2018. Biden faces up to 25 years imprisonment if convicted of these offenses.
The case the prosecution intends to prove is relatively straightforward. Biden has struggled with addiction to various narcotics for years and was even discharged from the U.S. Navy Reserve after failing a mandatory drug test in June 2013. In his 2021 book, Beautiful Things, he openly discussed the fact that during the period that is relevant in this case, “[a]ll my energy revolved around smoking drugs and making arrangements to buy drugs — feeding the beast.” Then, amid this addiction, Hunter Biden purchased a handgun.
Every gun owner will be familiar with ATF Form 4473, a document that asks all prospective firearms purchasers a series of questions to ensure they are legally authorized to own a firearm before completing a sale. One of these questions asks whether the purchaser is “an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?”
The prosecution will attempt to prove that Biden answered “no” to this question on his Form 4473 when the truthful answer should have been “yes,” and he therefore obtained a gun that he was not legally authorized to possess. In other words, Hunter Biden is not being prosecuted for being an addict; he is being prosecuted for lying about his addiction to unlawfully obtain a firearm and then possessing that firearm as an unlawful user of illegal drugs.
For years, it appeared as if Hunter Biden would avoid accountability for his conduct entirely. After significant public pressure, however, a plea agreement was reached between Biden and the government that would allow him to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax offenses — despite allegedly failing to pay over $1.4 million in taxes by understating his income and inflating his expenses, offenses that themselves carry a maximum of 17 years in prison — and avoid responsibility almost entirely for his gun offenses by entering into a deferred prosecution agreement. Such agreements are almost entirely unheard of for firearms offenses.
To make the deal even sweeter for Biden, the agreement did not even require him to cooperate with the government, which is often a requirement with plea agreements, particularly in cases where extreme leniency is being offered.
But then something happened in the spring of 2023 that threw a wrench into the deal being worked out between Biden and the government and changed the landscape. Two IRS whistleblowers came forward alleging political interference in their investigation of Hunter Biden’s taxes by officials in the Department of Justice who repeatedly limited the scope of the investigation. A New York Times investigation revealed that the U.S. attorney’s posture on whether to require Hunter Biden to plead guilty to misdemeanor tax offenses as a condition of any deal changed shortly after the IRS whistleblowers came forward.
Then Biden’s team demanded that the plea deal include immunity for “any other federal crimes” he may have committed, even beyond the gun and tax-related matters that were the subject of this investigation. Because this broad immunity request went farther than the prosecution was willing to go, the plea deal fell apart and was ultimately rejected by the federal judge.
The case has also raised interesting questions about the scope of the Second Amendment after Hunter Biden’s lawyers argued that the federal law under which he was charged infringes upon his constitutional right to own a firearm. Relying on the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, Biden’s attorneys argued that the charges should be dismissed because there is no “historical tradition” in the United States of prohibiting users of illicit substances from obtaining firearms simply upon the basis of their addiction (as opposed to a prior criminal conviction for drug charges, for example).
Federal courts are divided on the constitutionality of this law, and while the argument was not successful in preventing Biden’s case from moving forward to trial, it could still be relevant in an appeal. If Biden’s argument succeeds, that would effectively expand Second Amendment rights to a class of people whose right to own a firearm is not currently protected under federal law.
Hunter Biden’s legal troubles will not end with the conclusion of his Delaware trial. His indictment for failure to pay taxes from 2016 through 2019 is pending. And a congressional investigation into Hunter Biden’s foreign business deals and lobbying is also ongoing. Of course, his legal troubles may all go away after the November election, when, if reelected, President Biden would have the ability to pardon him, likely without serious political ramifications.
Steve Roberts and Jonathan Fahey are partners at Holtzman Vogel, and Andrew Pardue is a Holtzman Vogel associate.
It’s no accident that The Wall Street Journal ran an “exclusive” hagiographic piece on Merrick Garland’s “by-the-book, play-no-favorites approach” the day the attorney general is set to be grilled by Congress. The administration wants to paint the AG as a fair-minded dispenser of justice.
In truth, while Garland might occasionally — only when faced with no real options — put the Biden administration in an uncomfortable political position, he has regularly weaponized the agency to target the president’s political enemies, from pro-life protesters to concerned parents to presidential candidates.
Even as I write this, Garland is refusing to hand over audio recordings of Joe Biden’s interviews with former Special Counsel Robert Hur, despite a congressional subpoena. Even as the DOJ stonewalls Congress, it is prosecuting the Republican Party’s presidential candidate for crimes for which the Hur tape supposedly “exonerates” Biden.
Garland’s claims of executive privilege are risible. If Biden’s audio can be withheld from the public simply because someone somewhere might manipulate the tape using AI, then any audio of any president can be denied the public.
Also, why is this DOJ’s concern? Considering the Hur transcript has already been released — and we know that Biden lied about it — there is even less justification for withholding the audio. And considering the DOJ has apparently cleaned up all the “uhs” and “ohs” and garbled words in the transcript, the tape would likely further cement the president as an “elderly man with a poor memory.”
So, the real problem here isn’t the deep fake; it’s the unedited tape. Withholding the audio is obviously politically motivated. Which is unsurprising, since Garland has been one of the most partisan AGs in memory.
While Garland was raiding the home of the former president over a classified document dispute, he was letting the statute of limitations on the foreign influence-peddling by the president’s family run out.
While left-wing pro-Hamas protesters were rioting and targeting Jews, Garland was still fearmongering over the coming MAGA extremist revolution, inflating the threat with bogus statistics.
While Garland did nothing about those (likely) illegally picketing the homes of federal judges and attempting to intimidate them and influence cases — even after an assassin tried to kill Brett Kavanaugh — the DOJ was deploying armed teams to raid the homes of pro-life families and prosecuting elderly anti-abortion protesters for praying in front of “clinics.”
Even as Democrats are yammering about saving democracy, the DOJ has been working to undermine the electoral choices of voters in red states like Texas. Abortion is not a (pretend) constitutional right anymore. The DOJ does not care.
The DOJ is restarting censorship efforts under the guise of stopping foreign interference, and also targeting X owner Elon Musk, who has opened his platform to more neutral speech. It’s quite the happenstance, right?
Not only did Garland form a “task force” to investigate local parents who were protesting authoritarian Covid restrictions and racist curriculums, but he refused to dissolve the effort even after the National School Boards Association apologized for the letter that sparked it.
Of course, it was the Biden administration that prompted the organization to use the term “domestic terrorism” to give the DOJ justification to get involved in the first place. Even The New York Times acknowledged that “Garland did not detail any specific threats of violence or offer reasons for the increase in harassment and threats.” The only reason to get involved was to chill speech and intimidate parents.
No matter.
Even the case against Hunter Biden, used most often by the left to brandish Garland’s alleged Solomonic credentials, is a farce.
Let’s not forget if the Justice Department had its way, the case would have disappeared. To begin with, Garland ignored the law and appointed a counsel from within the government. David Weiss, whose office was filled with Biden allies, was prepared to give Hunter an astonishing immunity deal, not only on felony gun and tax charges, but for a slew of unrelated serious potential offenses, including failure to register as a foreign agent, bribery, and corruption.
It was only because of the whistleblower testimony of Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler that Weiss was forced to ask Hunter to plead guilty to two piddling misdemeanor counts. And the immunity deal was only quashed because Judge Maryellen Noreika, who pointed out there was not a single precedent in which immunity was offered for “crimes in a different case,” rejected it.
In his remarks to Congress today, Garland promised that he “will not back down from defending our democracy,” despite the “repeated attacks” and “conspiracy theor[ies]” regarding the DOJ. Some conspiracy theories exist, no doubt, but most criticisms of Garland’s work are legitimate. Treating criticism of his corrupt tenure as an attack on the “judicial process itself” has it backward. Demanding no one question the actions of state institutions is authoritarian. If the system were working properly, Garland would be impeached.
But in their efforts to save “democracy” — a concept that’s been stripped of any meaning — Democrats have justified deploying the state to punish and destroy political enemies. For many progressives, the legal system isn’t merely a tool for criminal justice but a way to exact political justice.
Garland is one of the leaders in this fight. Whether it’s because he is a weak man willing to do what’s expected of him or because he is corrupt makes little difference.
In response to Americans’ outcry over the political prosecutions of Donald Trump and a Manhattan jury convicting the former president on 34 felony counts, President Joe Biden declared, “It’s irresponsible for anyone to say this was rigged, just because they don’t like the verdict.” Coming from the Commander-in-Rigging, this proclamation means nothing.
Biden and those seeking to ensure his re-election have their hands all over Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s prosecution of the former president. A lead prosecutor for Bragg during the trial was Matthew Colangelo. In December 2022, Colangelo left the Biden Department of Justice to “jump start” the criminal case against Trump. Biden had previously named Colangelo his acting associate attorney general—the third highest-ranking official in the DOJ.
There’s Plenty More Where That Came From
Colangelo’s role in prosecuting his former boss’s political opponent provides the most obvious evidence of the Biden administration’s involvement in the Manhattan D.A.’s criminal targeting of Trump, but the rigging started much earlier. As I previously reported, the incestuous relationship between the Manhattan D.A.’s office and Team Biden began as early as mid-February 2021. Then, “Bragg’s predecessor, District Attorney Cyrus Vance, arranged for private criminal defense attorney and former federal prosecutor Mark Pomerantz to be a special assistant district attorney for the Manhattan D.A.’s office.”
As The New York Times reported at the time, Pomerantz was to work “solely on the Trump investigation” during a temporary leave of absence from his law firm, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton, and Garrison. “But even before being sworn in as a special assistant to the Manhattan D.A., Pomerantz had reportedly ‘been helping with the case informally for months.’” Even Democrats’ most reliable Old Grey Lady (of the evening) acknowledged, “the hiring of an outsider is a highly unusual move for a prosecutor’s office.”
Soon after the Manhattan D.A. hired Pomerantz, two of his colleagues, Elyssa Abuhoff and Caroline Williamson, also took leaves of absence from Paul, Weiss to serve as special assistant district attorneys on the Trump investigation. “For a law firm to lend not one but three lawyers to the Manhattan D.A.’s office seems rather magnanimous, until you consider Paul, Weiss’s previous generosity to Joe Biden.”
As I previously reported, during Biden’s first run for the White House, “the law firm hosted a $2,800-per-plate fundraiser for about 100 guests.” Brad Karp, the chair of Paul, Weiss, also topped the list of Biden fundraisers, bundling at least $100,000 for the then-candidate. At the time, Karp wrote in an email: “As someone who cares passionately about preserving the rule of law, safeguarding our democracy and protecting fundamental liberties, I’ve been delighted to do everything I possibly can to support the Joe Biden/Kamala Harris ticket.”
Biden’s relationship with Karp continued after his election, with the president including Karp and his wife at a state dinner with the Australian prime minister. Karp and his fellow Paul, Weiss lawyers continue to fund Biden’s re-election campaign. In fact, Biden’s connection to the firm is so strong Bloomberg branded Paul, Weiss the “Biden-Era N.Y. Power Center.”
But for Paul, Weiss lending Pomerantz to the Manhattan D.A.’s office to control the Trump investigation, the former president likely never would have been charged. According to Pomerantz, Bragg had decided “not to go forward with the grand jury presentation and not to seek criminal charges,” indefinitely suspending the investigation.
Pomerantz made those claims in the resignation letter he tendered to Bragg in early 2022, which was deliberately leaked to The New York Times. “Pomerantz’s letter and his claims that Bragg had suspended the Trump probe triggered a political firestorm, which the Manhattan D.A. sought to quell by telling the public the investigation was ongoing.” Soon after, Bragg capitulated, hiring Biden’s high-ranking DOJ lawyer, Colangelo, who proceeded to indict and convict Trump.
In contrast to the Biden-connected attorneys who secured Trump’s indictment and conviction, in late 2021, at least three career prosecutors in the Manhattan D.A.’s office asked to be removed from the investigation of Trump, reportedly“concerned that the investigation was moving too quickly, without clear evidence to support possible charges.”
Not Just Manhattan
The Biden connection to the political targeting of Trump is not limited to the Manhattan D.A.’s office. In August 2023, Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis charged Trump and 18 other Republicans in a sprawling 98-page criminal indictment.
Earlier this year, court filings and testimony in the case related to motions to disqualify Willis and her former lover, Nathan Wade, revealed the Fulton County D.A.’s office had met with White House counsel in May 2022. Then, just three days after Trump announced his 2024 candidacy for president, Wade traveled to D.C. for an interview with the “White House,” according to Fulton County records. The Biden administration’s White House counsel’s office also dispatched two letters to Willis, according to one of her prosecutors.
Biden and his Democrat-run administration also have their fingers all over the remaining two criminal cases targeting Trump, both brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith. President Biden, according to an April 2, 2022, New York Times report, “As recently as late last year… confided to his inner circle that he believed former President Donald J. Trump was a threat to democracy and should be prosecuted.”
The Times claimed Biden had expressed frustration with Garland’s “deliberative approach” and that the president believed Trump should be prosecuted. The president “has said privately that he wanted Mr. Garland to act less like a ponderous judge and more like a prosecutor who is willing to take decisive action over the events of Jan. 6.,” the legacy outlet reported.
Biden’s attorney general would eventually appoint Smith special counsel. Smith would later charge Trump in two separate indictments—one in Florida concerning documents the former president retained, and one in D.C. with various conspiracy to defraud and obstruction charges related to Trump’s challenging the outcome of the 2020 election.
Stretching the Law Past Its Breaking Point
With the D.C. indictment, the special counsel delivered to Biden just what he wanted—a prosecution of Trump “for his role in the events of Jan. 6.” To deliver for Biden, though, required Smith to stretch the federal criminal code to the point of breaking. In the case of two of the crimes charged, in the context of Jan. 6, 2021, defendants, the Supreme Court seems poised to limit the reach of the relevant statutes—a holding that could mean that Smith charged Trump with two non-crimes.
The final criminal case pending against Trump, Smith’s documents case, also connects back to the Biden administration. That case began when the DOJ launched an investigation prompted by a referral from the national archivist related to a dispute over presidential records—even though the same archivist declined to refer Hillary Clinton to the DOJ for mishandling classified documents. Later, a top aide to Smith, Jay Bratt, would meet with “White House officials multiple times, just weeks before Mr. Smith indicted former President Donald Trump.”
That case has been delayed after it was revealed the FBI agents who executed a search warrant obtained by the Biden administration had failed to keep the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago in the same condition they were found, with the order of the materials mixed up. At the same time, it was revealed that the “classified cover sheets” depicted in the photographs of the evidence seized during the August 2022 search of Trump had been placed there by federal agents. The leak of those photographs falsely portrayed the former president as in possession of documents bearing classified cover sheets.
Biden can continue to deny his responsibility for the criminal targeting of his political opponent all he wants, but the facts tell a different story. So did the president’s malevolent smile on Friday when he was asked to respond to Trump calling himself a political prisoner and blaming the president directly.
Margot Cleveland is an investigative journalist and legal analyst and serves as The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. Margot’s work has been published at The Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, the New Criterion, National Review Online, Townhall.com, the Daily Signal, USA Today, and the Detroit Free Press. She is also a regular guest on nationally syndicated radio programs and on Fox News, Fox Business, and Newsmax. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. Cleveland is also of counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland where you can read more about her greatest accomplishments—her dear husband and dear son. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.
Jon Dawson Is A TikTok Influencer With 920k Followers. He Says He Doesn’t Care About His Brand Partnerships, He Doesn’t Care About Losing All His Income, He Is Speaking Out For Donald Trump
“I'm for sure voting Trump 2024. Ain't no question in the world, dude. I am voting Trump… pic.twitter.com/UceNgp7m16
— I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 (@ImMeme0) May 31, 2024
Democrats Just Woke Up The Entire Country
“People, it doesn't matter how or what you feel about Donald Trump. But if you're a true student of the constitution, if you're a student of law, even if you have a moral standard of justice, all of America ought to be afraid right now.… pic.twitter.com/FNz9cz3q2M
This morning, many of us are emerging from the late coverage last night after the conviction of former President Donald Trump on 34 felonies. I was in the courtroom for the verdict, which hit like a thunderclap (particularly after a strange snafu with the judge). The question that everyone is asking: what happens next?
The scene in the court was a madhouse. Judge Juan Merchan told the court that the jury had not reached a verdict and would be dismissed for the day. Many reporters in the overflow courtroom were leaving when Merchan suddenly said that there was a verdict. People came running back into the courtroom. That was followed by 34 guilty verdicts.
I am obviously saddened by the verdict, but not surprised. Until the very end, I was hopeful that there would be a hung jury, a result that could restore some integrity to the New York criminal justice system. However, I previously noted that the jury instructions made conviction much more likely. I referred to the deliberations as a legal “canned hunt” due to instructions that made conviction a near certainty.
You could feel the weight of history in the courtroom, though we still have to see what history was made. For some, it was the conviction of the first president of a felony. For others, it was the key moment where the weaponization of the criminal system became clear and inescapable. It was both, obviously. Yet, the trial fulfilled narratives on both sides.
I ran outside to join the coverage. (One humorous moment was an officer screaming at reporters piling out of the courtroom to “walk not run.” It did not work.) It looked like the final judgment with everyone panicking to find an exit.
The scene outside the courtroom was surreal. The Trump supporters were outraged. The anti-Trump protesters were ecstatic, dancing and celebrating in the street.
While I have written a book about what I have called “the age of rage,” I am always shocked by such scenes. There is a dehumanizing element of these moments as people celebrate not just the first conviction of a president but a person. Rage is addictive and contagious. That was vividly evident outside the courtroom.
So, what happens next?
Obviously, appeals will be taken. As I said last night, we must keep the faith. Indeed, moments like this require us to take a leap of faith in a nation that remains committed to the rule of law. Manhattan is neither the entirety of the country nor the legal system. I believe that these convictions will be overturned, but it will take time. Judge Merchan committed, in my view, layers of reversible error. Eventually, this case may reach the United States Supreme Court.
It has been suggested that an appeal could be taken directly to the Supreme Court. I find that doubtful after the Supreme Court rejected an expedited process for Special Counsel Jack Smith in his federal prosecutions. It will work first through the New York appellate system.
As for the criminal process, Trump will have to meet with a probation officer for an interview. That officer will make recommendations to the court.
There is a possibility of a jail sentence for felonies that come with up to four years for each offense. Any jail sentences would almost certainly run concurrently. However, any jail sentence would be ridiculous in Manhattan for an elderly first-offender in a non-violent offense.
Consistent with his past commentary, MSNBC legal analyst and former Mueller aide Andrew Weissmann predicted that Merchan will give Trump jail time. He is not alone as legal analysts seemed to get caught up in a thrill-kill conviction.
It is much more likely that Merchan will impose a sentence without a jail sentence, though with fines. The most appropriate, in my view, would be a conditional discharge that requires Trump not to commit a new crime or face potential imprisonment.
Merchan could also tailor a sentence to require home confinement or even weekend jailing. Those options would raise serious conflicts with his campaigning and obviously, if elected, serving as president. Even the probation process will be awkward since a convicted defendant ordinarily has to get approval for any travel outside of the state from his probation officer.
Sentences can also include community service, counseling and other requirements.
After his ruling in this trial, it is impossible to rule anything out. However, any jail sentence would add even more outrage to an abuse of the criminal law system.
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Judge Merchan has managed to slaughter the rule of law and the Justice system all in one highly politicized lawfare campaign against Trump. Everyone knows it’s a sham and will only help Trump’s poll numbers.
Republican Lawmakers Release Statement Following Verdict in President Trump’s Manhattan Sham Trial
By Jim Hoft – May 30, 2024
The political temperature in America has reached a boiling point following the controversial guilty verdict in the sham trial of President Donald Trump.
President Trump has been found guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection to a hush-money payment made to adult porn star Stormy Daniels. This verdict makes Trump the first former U.S. president to be convicted of a crime. The jury reached their decision after a five-week trial and two days of deliberation. Donald Trump denounced the trial as a “disgrace” and “rigged,” claiming that a “conflicted” and “corrupt” judge presided over the proceedings. He has consistently maintained his innocence, declaring himself a “very innocent man,” and has announced plans to appeal the verdict. READ MORE…
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump. READ MORE…
Alan Dershowitz, Harvard Law professor emeritus, told Newsmax Wednesday that the prosecutors in former President Donald Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan misled the jury in closing arguments.
Trump is charged with falsifying business records on a $130,000 payment to Michael Cohen. Trump’s former attorney to reimburse him for paying adult film star Stormy Daniels to stop saying she had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006. Trump has denied all charges and said the encounter never occurred.
The prosecutors told the jury they could find all the elements of a crime committed without believing Michael Cohen, their star witness.
“That’s just not true,” Dershowitz told “The National Report.” “The only evidence that Donald Trump knew of this at all comes from an uncorroborated conversation with Michael Cohen that could have been corroborated by Alan Weisselberg.”
But prosecutors never called Weisselberg, Dershowitz said.
“There is a lack of corroboration for a crucial conversation that might criminalize what was otherwise innocent behavior,” Dershowitz said.
Dershowitz also attacked a New York State law that allows the prosecution to go last when presenting closing arguments, calling it unconstitutional.
“How does a defense go first when it doesn’t even know what the crimes are that turned a misdemeanor into a felony?” Dershowitz said. “They had to wait until they heard it from the prosecutor’s closing argument and then had no chance to rebut.”
Dershowitz said if he was on the defense team, he would’ve said he had nothing to say and that he would wait for the prosecutors to present their case and then respond to it.
“You can’t make me respond to a case I haven’t heard yet,” Dershowitz said. “The defense was forced to go first, which imposed a burden on them which the jury will take into the room.”
In closing arguments, Dershowitz said the defense should’ve focused on prosecutors not calling Weisselberg as a witness.
“I would’ve put up a life-size blown-up picture of Allen Weisselberg on the witness stand,” Dershowitz said. “What did the prosecution hide from you?”
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“Democracy is on the ballot.” That mantra of President Joe Biden and other Democrats has suggested that “this may be our last election” if the Republicans win in 2024. A few of us have noted that the Democrats seem keener on claiming the mantle of the defenders of democracy than actually practicing it. Democrats have sought to disqualify Donald Trump and dozens of Republicans from ballots; block third party candidates, censor and blacklist of those with opposing views; and weaponize the legal system against their opponents. Most recently, in California, democracy is truly on the ballot and the Democrats are on the wrong side.
California has always prided itself on the ability of citizens to vote on changes in the law directly through referenda and ballot measures. That is precisely what citizens are attempting to do with a measure that would require voter approval of any tax increase, including a two-thirds vote for some local taxes. It is called the Taxpayer Protection Act and it is a duly qualified statewide ballot measure slated for the November 2024 ballot.
The state Democrats are apoplectic over the prospect of citizen control over revenue and taxes. What was a quaint element of democratic empowerment is now challenging a core vehicle of Democratic power. So, Gov. Gavin Newsom and other Democratic leaders have taken the issue to the state Supreme Court to demand that citizens be denied the right to decide the issue.
In oral arguments, the attorney supporting the challenge explained to the justices that citizens are simply not equipped to deal with the complexities of taxation and should not be allowed to render such a decision.
In a prior decision, Associate Justice Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar wrote that “Whether the context involves taxation or not, all of these cases underscore how courts preserve and liberally construe the public’s statewide and local initiative power. Indeed, we resolve doubts about the scope of the initiative power in its favor whenever possible and we narrowly construe provisions that would burden or limit the exercise of that power.”
Half of the Court seemed to be inclined to deny the public the right to decide the question.
The Court, however, may wait until after the election to render a decision on the limits of democracy in California.
In the movie A Bronx Tale, the character played by Robert De Niro tells his son that “the saddest thing in life is wasted talent.” Yesterday, the actor appeared to have forgotten his own cinematic advice in a bizarre press conference organized by the Biden campaign in front of the Manhattan courthouse during the trial of former President Donald Trump. In a raving, disconnected press conference, De Niro predicted the end of democracy and then the world if Trump is not stopped in New York. De Niro offered a rambling monologue and exposed the danger of an actor speaking without a script:
It’s a good time to reflect on how Americans fought and died so that we may enjoy the freedoms guaranteed to us by a democratic government, a government that as President Lincoln said of the people by the people for the people shall not perish from the earth.
Under Trump this kind of government will perish from the earth.
I don’t mean to scare you.
No, no, wait, maybe I do mean to scare you.
If Trump returns to the White House, you can kiss these freedoms goodbye that we all take for granted.
And elections, forget about it.
That’s over. That’s done if he gets in, I can tell you right now, he will never leave, he will never leave. You know that he will never leave.
De Niro has gone full Travis Bickle. However, now 80, it came across as De Niro screaming at the courthouse for Trump to get off his lawn.
The diatribe is consistent with the messaging of Democrats, including President Biden, that “democracy is on the ballot” and that this may be our last election. De Niro was not satisfied with that alarmist message and decided to take it to an apocalyptic level in predicting a global meltdown.
As I have previously written, it is a narrative that ignores our history and our values. To suggest that this may be our last democratic election is to suggest that both branches (and the population at large) would stand idly by as a president assumed tyrannical powers. That did not occur, even when this country was united by wars and national emergencies. With the nation now divided right down the middle, it is even less likely.
That is why the “democracy is on the ballot” claims border on defamation against our Constitution. We have the most successful and stable democratic system in history. The success of that system is not measured by those who would riot or challenge our values. It is measured by how the system responds. Our system works because it was not only written for times of relative unity and calm, it also was written for times like these.
What was particularly weird is that the Biden campaign succeeded in reinforcing the view of this case as lawfare, an effort to stop Trump at any cost. That message was also reaffirmed by President Biden stating that he will hold a press conference on the verdict. After the third highest ranking official in the Biden Justice Department joined the prosecution to bring the case, the announcement only magnified the view of a case that is being used for political purposes.
De Niro walked away pursued by hecklers and proceeded to exchange profanities.
The question for the Biden campaign lingered as to what was achieved by the chaotic scene outside of the courthouse. I am a great fan of De Niro’s artistic work, a legacy of great movies that are now an indelible part of our culture. That is precisely why, as I watched from the Fox camera location near his presser, I was more sad than surprised by the spectacle. As another De Niro character said in the movie Stardust, “reputations, you know, a lifetime to build, seconds to destroy.”
Below is my column in the New York Post on the closing arguments scheduled for today in the trial of former President Donald Trump. The column explores the key elements for a closing to bring clarity to the chaos of Judge Juan Merchan’s courtroom.
Here is the column:
With the closing arguments set for Tuesday in the trial of former president Donald Trump, defense counsel is in a rather curious position. There is still debate among legal experts as to the specific crime that District Attorney Alvin Bragg is alleging.
Trump’s lawyers are defending a former president who is charged under a state misdemeanor which died years ago under the statute of limitations. It was then zapped back into life in the form of roughly three dozen felonies by claiming that bookkeeping violations — allegedly hiding payments to Stormy Daniels to ensure her silence about a supposed affair with Trump — were committed to hide another crime. But what is that second crime? Even liberal legal analysts admitted that they could not figure out what was being alleged in Bragg’s indictment. Now, after weeks of trial, the situation has changed little.
Originally, Bragg referenced four possible crimes, though he is now claiming three: a tax violation or either a state or federal campaign financing violation. The last crime is particularly controversial because Bragg has no authority to enforce federal law and the Justice Department declined any criminal charge. The Federal Election Commission (FEC) did not even find grounds for a civil fine.
Judge Merchan has ruled that the jury does not have to agree on what that crime is. The jury could split into three groups of four on which of the three crimes were being concealed and Merchan will still treat it as a unanimous verdict.
The jury has been given little substantive information on these crimes, and Merchan has denied a legal expert who could have shown that there was no federal election violation.
This case should have been dismissed for lack of evidence or a cognizable crime. The jury will be reminded that the burden is on the government, not the defense. However, the presumption of innocence is often hard to discern in criminal cases. Most jurors believe that clients are sitting behind the defense table for a reason. That is why many prosecution offices have conviction rates in the 80%-90% range. That presumption is even more difficult to discern when the defendant is named Trump, and the jury sits in Manhattan.
Three-legged Stool
A classic closing pitch by lawyers is to use a physical object like a three-legged stool. If any leg is missing, the stool collapses.
In this case, the government needs to show that there was a falsification of business records, that the records were falsified to conceal another crime and that Donald Trump had the specific intent to use such “unlawful means” to influence the election.
Even a cursory review of the evidence shows this case does not have a leg to stand on.
The First Leg: Falsification of Records
The dead misdemeanor that is the foundation for this entire prosecution requires the falsification of business records. It is not clear that there was such falsification or that Trump has any knowledge or role in any falsification.
Witnesses testified that Trump would sign checks prepared by others and that the specific checks in this case were signed while Trump was serving as president. Some of these checks, labeled “legal expenses,” were allegedly for attorney Michael Cohen to pay off Stormy Daniels.
Most importantly, Jeffrey McConney, the Trump Organization’s retired controller and senior vice-president, testified that it was not Trump who designated these payments as “legal expenses.” Rather, the corporation used an “antiquated” drop-down menu where any payments to lawyers were designated “legal expenses.” There is a plausible reason why payments to an attorney were listed as legal expenses.
The government also cites the designation of payments to Cohen as part of his “retainer,” which included reimbursement for the payment of the Daniels non-disclosure agreement. However, that designation was the result of discussions between Cohen and former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg, who is sitting in a jail cell in New York City. The government could have called Weisselberg, but did not.
The government has made a big deal over the fact that retainer agreements are supposed to have written contracts. However, that was the failure of Cohen, who was later disbarred as an attorney.
For a businessman like Weisselberg, monthly payments to an attorney could have seemed perfectly logical. Once again, there was no evidence that Trump knew of how the payments were denoted.
The Second Leg: The Secondary Crime
The government must also show that any falsification was done to further or conceal another crime. This is where the defense needs to bring greater clarity to its own narrative. Trump’s team needs to drive home that a non-disclosure agreement is common in political, business and entertainment circles. The payment of money to quash a story before an election is neither unlawful nor unusual.
Indeed, Keith Davidson, Stormy Daniels’ attorney, described the NDA as routine and said that it was not hush money but a simple contractual transaction: “It wasn’t a payoff. It wasn’t hush money. It was consideration.”
This is where the testimony of David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Inquirer, was particularly damaging to the government.
Pecker detailed how killing such stories was a common practice at the National Inquirer and that he had done so for Trump for over a decade before he ran for president. He also killed stories for an impressive list of other celebrities, including Tiger Woods, Mark Wahlberg, Rahm Emanuel and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Merchan has allowed the jury to repeatedly hear of “election violations,” while blocking a legal expert to explain that there is no federal election law violation. The payment of hush money is not a campaign contribution and, again, the federal government not only declined to bring any criminal charge but found no basis for even a civil fine.
Had he been allowed to testify, Bradley Smith, the former Federal Election Commission (FEC) chairman, would have explained that, even if it were a campaign contribution, it would not have been needed to be filed until after the election — demolishing the notion that this was an effort to influence an election that would have run before any filing had to be made.
The defense has to hammer away on the fact that no one has testified that it was a federal campaign violation.
Various witnesses, including former Trump aide Hope Hicks, testified that Trump was motivated to protect his family from embarrassment. She recounted how Trump even “wanted me to make sure the newspapers weren’t delivered to their residence that morning.”
Pecker testified that he previously killed stories about Trump going back over a decade. That included stories that were demonstrably untrue, such as a claim of a doorman that he fathered a child out of wedlock.
In addition to being a married man, Trump was the host of a major television program subject to a scandal clause. He was also an international businessman. Given all of those interests, it is impossible to claim absolutely that the campaign was the reason for the NDA, which was chump change for a billionaire.
The Third Leg: Criminal intent
The government spent considerable time proving facts not in dispute. There is no dispute that there was a NDA or that Trump signed checks on these payments. It is like repeatedly telling a court that a driver drove 55 miles an hour down a highway and elected to change lanes with a signal. The intent is to convince the jury that somehow proving that an NDA was paid and that an affair occurred is proof of an offense. It is not.
The supervisor in charge of processing payments said that permission to cut Cohen’s checks came not from Trump, but from Weisselberg and McConney. Trump’s White House secretary, Madeleine Westerhout, testified that it was common for Trump to sign checks in the White House without reviewing them.
The entire basis for the alleged criminal intent is Michael Cohen, a disbarred lawyer and serial perjurer. Yet even Cohen did not offer a clear basis for showing a criminal intent to use unlawful means to influence the election. Everything Cohen described could be true and only show a desire to kill an embarrassing story before an election — again, not a crime.
Cohen described the mechanics on the payments, but the only person who discussed these payments in detail with Cohen was Weisselberg.
Even liberal experts on CNN admitted that Cohen was trashed on the stand. The only crime that was clearly established in this trial was the grand larceny that Cohen admitted to under oath (after the statute of limitations had run out). Cohen said that he stole tens of thousands from the Trump corporation, a crime far more serious than the dead misdemeanor or even the felonies alleged against Trump.
However, the most significant testimony by Cohen may be his latest alleged perjury in front of the jury.
Many of us guffawed when Cohen claimed that he secretly taped Trump to protect him and keep Pecker honest. No one can explain how that could possibly be true. If it were, he would have told Trump. There is nothing in the call that would have any impact on Pecker, and Cohen admitted to regularly taping others without telling them.
Another alleged perjury came with the key telephone call in which Cohen claimed Trump was informed that the Daniels deal was concluded. The defense showed that that 96-second-long call was to Trump’s bodyguard, Keith Schiller, in late October 2016. It was preceded and followed by text messages that clearly shows that the conversation was about a teenager harassing Cohen, not the NDA.
Other witnesses trashed Cohen as unprofessional, prone to exaggeration, bitter against Trump, at times suicidal over being denied positions like attorney general and simply “a jerk.” Hope Hicks, a former aide to Trump, said that Cohen “used to like to call himself Mister Fix It, but it was only because he first broke it.”
Those were the government’s witnesses.
Cohen’s lack of credibility and his admitted financial interest in attacking Trump only highlight again the absence of Weisselberg, whom Cohen references repeatedly as the key person making decisions on how these payments were made and described.
If what Cohen said was true, corroboration was sitting a car ride away in Rikers Island. Traffic may be bad but it is not that bad. The only reason not to call Weisselberg was that he would contradict Cohen.
The prosecution preferred to use a serial perjurer who roughly half of the country views as dishonest as almost the entirety of their case. Even beyond Weisselberg, there is no corroboration for Cohen’s vague allegations on the record.
In the end, this three-legged stool is the very thing that all of us must stand on when accused. Who on the jury would want to stand on this stool with their own liberty at stake?
In the end, the defense needs to be honest with these jurors. The question is whether hatred for this man is enough to ignore the obvious injustice in this case. They may have come to this case with little doubt about Donald Trump, but the question is whether there is not any reasonable doubt about the crimes alleged against him.
In the end, we are all standing on that wobbly stool when the government seeks to convict people without evidence or even a clear crime. If we allow a conviction, it is more than a stool that will collapse in this Manhattan courtroom.
Jonathan Turley is an attorney and professor at George Washington University Law School.
Recently, it became public that Kevin Morris, the entertainment lawyer who has subsidized the expenses and bought the art of Hunter Biden, had stopped his funding of Biden. Morris has paid off Hunter’s IRS debts and reportedly lent him a total of $4.9 million for housing, car payments, legal fees, and other possible costs.
The so-called “sugar bro” is “tapped out” according to media reports. (For full disclosure, Morris previously threatened me with a defamation lawsuit over my writing about his representation of Hunter). Now the House has confirmed prior stories that whistleblower records indicate that the CIA prevented the Justice Department from questioning Kevin Morris as a witness in its probe of Hunter Biden.
Morris has maintained that he lent Hunter millions for “no ulterior motive” and continued to support him out of friendship. Yet, when investigators started to look into the payments and the relationship, they were told that Morris had some relationship with the CIA in August 2021. According to previously unreleased information, IRS special agent and current whistleblower Gary Shapley documented the bizarre intervention of the spy agency.
During a recurring prosecution team conference call, in or around late August 2021, Assistant United States Attorney (AUSA) Lesley Wolf told the team that she and DOJ Tax Attorney Jack Morgan had recently returned from the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia, where they had been summoned to discuss Kevin Morris.
AUSA Wolf stated that they were provided a classified briefing in relation to Mr. Morris and as a result we could no longer pursue him as a witness. Investigators probed AUSA Wolf, but since her briefing was classified and she was apparently sanitizing it to an unclassified form to share over an open phone line, she did not elaborate with more information. She reiterated more than once that they were summoned to the CIA in Langley concerning Mr. Morris, and that because of the information provided there, he could not be a witness for the investigation. AUSA Wolf proudly referenced a CIA mug and stated that she purchased some CIA “swag” at the gift shop while she was there.
It is unclear how the CIA became aware that Mr. Morris was a potential witness in the Hunter Biden investigation and why agents were not told about the meeting in advance or invited to participate. It is a deviation of normal investigative processes for prosecutors to exclude investigators from substantive meetings such as this.
It is a testament to the level of bias in the mainstream media that this story is not the sole focus of every media outlet in America. Imagine if the CIA intervened to stop an investigation into a donor maintaining one of the Trump children and supporting his effort to blunt any investigation into corruption. MSNBC would make it ongoing special programming with its own time slot.
This is an agency that is supposed to avoid domestic interventions into politics as well as other areas. It is accused of pulling in a prosecutor to tell her to close part of a criminal investigation involving the financial supporter of the president’s son. Even if Morris was an asset, the question is why shut down the inquiry into his payments to Hunter Biden. The work of Morris with the CIA could be protected or redacted. Instead, the line of inquiry was shut off and Wolf reportedly left Langley with CIA swag and an empty bag of evidence.
Below is my column on Fox.com on the closure of the government and defense cases in the Trump trial. It is clear that the government is going to achieve its objective in avoiding a direct verdict and giving this matter to the jury, which it hopes that the paucity of direct evidence of a crime will be overcome with an abundance of hostility to Donald Trump. As I previously have written, I am still hopeful that these jurors will vindicate the New York legal system with at least a hung jury. In the end, we will see if a Manhattan jury will exercise blind justice or willful blindness.
Here is the column:
With closing arguments scheduled for Tuesday, May 28, the prosecution of former President Donald Trump will finally head to a jury. Judge Juan Merchan has refused every opportunity to bring an end to this politically manufactured prosecution. Now it will be up to 12 New Yorkers to do what neither the court nor the prosecutors were willing to do: adhere to the rule of law regardless of the identity of the defendant.
Merchan has allowed the government to bring back into life a dead misdemeanor and convert it into 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first degree. To accomplish this legal regeneration, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has vaguely referenced a variety of crimes that Trump allegedly was trying to conceal through the business record violations.
The problem is that he has left the secondary crime mired in uncertainty to the point that experts on various networks are still debating what the underlying theory is in the case.
Indeed, Bragg is expected to finally state with clarity what he is alleging… at the closing arguments of the case.
In the meantime, the prosecution is pushing to make it easier for the jury to convict. First, they have vaguely referenced a variety of possible offenses from tax to election violations. Bragg initially laid out four possible predicate crimes. It is down to three – a tax crime and violations of state or federal election law.
Merchan has ruled that the jury does not have to agree on what crimes were being covered up so the jury could literally have three different views of what happened in the case and still convict Trump.
Prosecutors are also seeking to effectively shorten the playing field by allowing the jurors to convict on a lower standard of proof for the key term in using “unlawful means.” The defense wants the jury instructed that it must find that such use of “unlawful means” was done with willful intent.
The prosecutors do not want to use that higher standard. For the defense, it is effectively reducing the field to the end zone to make it easier for the prosecution to score.
In the last few days, the Bragg strategy has come into sharper focus in one respect. Bragg is not counting on the evidence or the law. He is counting on the jury. Call it the Lawrence O’Donnell factor.
After Michael Cohen imploded on the stand in the trial, even experts and hosts on MSNBC and CNN stated that his admissions and contradictions were devastating. Cohen is not only accused of committing perjury in his testimony, but he matter-of-factly detailed how he stole tens of thousands of dollars from the Trump organization.
After being disbarred and convicted as a serial perjurer, Cohen waited for the statute of limitations to run on larceny to admit that he stole as much as $50,000 by pocketing money intended for a contractor.
Liberal commentators acknowledged the fact that Cohen had committed a far more serious offense than the converted misdemeanor against Trump (but was never charged). Yet, one figure stepped forward to assure the public that all was well.
MSNBC host O’Donnell said that he watched the testimony, and that Cohen did wonderfully. Keep in mind that Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche asked Cohen point blank: “So you stole from the Trump organization, right?” Cohen answered unequivocally: “Yes, sir.”
O’Donnell, however, rushed outside to declare that Cohen was merely acquiring a bonus that he thought that he deserved as a type of “self-help”:
“Cohen [was trying] to rebalance the bonus he thought he deserved. And it still came out as less than the bonus he thought he deserved and the bonus he had gotten the year before.”
In other words, he first determined that his employer should pay him more and then elected to lie to his employer and steal the money. It is akin to New Jersey Democrat Sen. Bob Menendez claiming, in his nearby trial, that the gold bars and cash found in his home were just his effort to secure a well-deserved bonus for his public service.
O’Donnell was widely mocked for his galactic spin. However, he reflects the greatest danger for the Trump team. O’Donnell was showing a type of willful blindness; a refusal to acknowledge even the most shocking disclosures in the trial.
Some of the jurors admitted that MSNBC is one on their news sources and they exhibit the same all-consuming O’Donnell obsession with Trump. If so, they could listen to contradiction to contradiction and simply not recognize them like the MSNBC host. For some, Cohen could burst into flames on the stand, but their eyes will not move from the person behind the defense table.
Many viewers have been raised in an echo chamber of news coverage where they avoid opposing facts on both the left and the right. They actively tailor their news to fulfill a narrative or viewpoint. A jury of O’Donnell’s peers would convict Trump even if the Angel Gabriel appeared at trial as a defense character witness.
It is the ultimate jury instruction not from the court but from the community. With jurors “back in the world” for six days and going to holiday cookouts and events, they will likely hear much of that social judgment and the need to “rebalance” the political ledger through this case.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and a practicing criminal defense attorney. He is a Fox News contributor.
Attorney General Merrick Garland has long maintained that he is a completely apolitical figure who only follows the law. Critics have challenged that claim on key cases, including those related to Hunter Biden. However, Garland may now face one of the clearest tests of his claim in his tenure. The House committees have issued a public report alleging three different instances where Hunter Biden allegedly committed perjury. The question is now what Garland is prepared to do about it.
When Hunter testified, I wrote columns suggesting that he might take the Fifth Amendment to remain silent because the risk was too great that he might lie or mislead investigators in his answers. With months of preparation, he decided to run the gauntlet and now appears to have exposed himself to the possibility of additional criminal charges.
Hunter Biden has still not responded to the specific allegations, but on their face they appear strong. Notably, the Justice Department spent considerable time and money to pursue false statements against figures like Michael Flynn over just one statement describing a meeting with Russian diplomats. These are instances where Hunter was under oath, prepared for months, and had counsel present.
One of the instances concerns the controversial WhatsApp message where Hunter not only threatened a Chinese businessman to send him massive amounts of money but said that his father was sitting next to him at the time. Millions were later sent to the Bidens. The infamous WhatsApp message stated in part:
“I am sitting here with my father, and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled. Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight. And, Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.”
The response of Hunter to questions about the message was curious and evasive. Hunter said that he had only two things to say about that message. He denied that his father was sitting next to him despite saying that he had no memory of sending the message. Second, and most importantly, he stated “the Zhao that this is sent to is not the Zhao connected to CEFC” who “had no understanding or even remotely knew what the hell I was even Goddamn talking about.”
The Committee staff maintains that Biden’s WhatsApp account shows that he only ever communicated with one Zhao – Raymond Zhao – and that he most certainly did not know what he was “talking about.”
Another alleged lie was Hunter’s denial that he ever helped people associated with Burisma secure visas. He told Congress that he was unwilling to provide “any work as it related to visas that they needed” and that he would “never pick up the phone and call anybody for a visa.” The Committee has produced an email in which Hunter’s associate Devon Archer references the revoking of Burisma CEO Nikolay Zlochevsky’s visa. It states that “Hunter is checking with Miguel Aleman to see if he can provide cover to Kola on the visa…Please send Hunter an email with all Kola’s passport and visa documents and evidence and copy me. We’ll take it from there.”
Hunter also swore that he had no part in shell companies that received foreign payments. Yet, Archer testified that he and Hunter had an equal stake in Rosemont Seneca Bohai and the Committee has evidence from the IRS whistleblowers showing that Hunter received benefits as owner of the entity’s associated bank account.
The most damning evidence may be a document reading “I, Robert Hunter Biden, hereby certify that I am the duly elected, qualified and acting Secretary of Rosemont Seneca Bohai, LLC.” He used that document as part of his contract with Porsche Financial Services for a sports car.
Those would seem pretty clear and well-founded allegations for a referral to the Justice Department. After fast-tracking false statement claims against Trump officials, the question is whether Garland will even submit the matter to a grand jury. He could also give the matter to the Special Counsel prosecuting Hunter.
Ordinarily, a prosecutor pursuing a defendant in two different felony cases would jump at any alleged illegality. You would not want to stand between him and a grand jury. However, Special Counsel David Weiss has been accused of minimizing charges against the President’s son and attempting to push through a notorious sweetheart deal that collapsed in court.
Now Garland faces an unavoidable choice in treating this referral as he did Trump cases (in sending this to a grand jury) or scuttling alleged perjury made by the son of the President before Congress. It is far less challenging legally than it is politically for Merrick Garland.
If the rule of law still governs at the Justice Department, Hunter Biden could be facing a third front in his ongoing legal struggles.
Today I will have the pleasure of participating in a debate titled Civil Disagreements: Presidential Self Pardons. I will be debating Professor Brian Kalt, who believes that the presidents do not have the authority to pardon themselves. I will be taking the opposing position. The debate will be held entirely online. The debate is sponsored by Reform for Illinois, the American Bar Association, the Chicago Chapter of the American Constitution Society, and the Chicago Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society
I have long maintained that presidents do have the authority to grant self-pardons. That does not mean that I approve of the practice as a policy matter, but the question, in my view, rests with a president in using the authority granted under Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution, which defines the pardon power as allowing a president to “grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.”
I value the effort of these two legal groups to foster civil and substantive dialogue on these questions and look forward to the debate with Professor Kalt.
The debate will begin at 1pm (ET) and participants can register here.
In a growing environment of left-wing activism in schools, especially related to LGBT ideology, parents who have not been able to influence curriculum have had the option of opting their kids out of classes. Not any longer, at least according to a federal appeals court in a Maryland case of three families suing for the right to religious freedom for their elementary school-aged children in public schools.
In August of 2023, three families — one Muslim, one Christian, and one Jewish — brought a case against the Montgomery County Board of Education for a recent policy change removing the opt-out option for curriculum. Previously, parents received advanced notice of materials that would be read to their children and could opt out. The school board announced that parents would no longer receive advanced notice of materials, and they could no longer opt out of readings or lessons.
A year prior, according to the case, “In the spring of 2022, the School Board had determined that the books in its English language arts curriculum were not sufficiently representative because they did not include LGBTQ characters.” Maryland law requires schools to give parents the opportunity “to view instructional materials to be used in the teaching of family life and human sexuality objectives.” The school board also has an opt-out policy for religious exemptions in place.
However, there is a clause that states that “if such requests become too frequent or too burdensome, the school may refuse to accommodate the requests. Schools are not required to alter fundamentally the educational program or create a separate educational program or a separate course to accommodate a student’s religious practice or belief.” Deciding that LGBT inclusion in the curriculum was fundamental to the educational program and the requests were too burdensome, the school board simply declared parents could not opt out of LGBT content any longer.
Judge’s Ruling
Last week, U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman dismissed the parents’ concerns and noted that every court that has reviewed similar mandatory public-school curricula has found that “mere exposure in public school to ideas that contradict religious beliefs does not burden the religious exercise of students or parents.”
She insisted, “The parents still may instruct their children on their religious beliefs regarding sexuality, marriage, and gender, and each family may place contrary views in its religious context.”
“No government action prevents the parents from freely discussing the topics raised in the storybooks with their children or teaching their children as they wish,” Boardman wrote in Thursday’s order.
The decision was upheld by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. Their reasoning was that the parents could not demonstrate how the LGBT-themed books would be used in the classroom and therefore could not determine if they would infringe on their beliefs.
Contrary to the First Amendment
Eric Baxter, vice president and senior counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, argued, “That runs contrary to the First Amendment, Maryland law, the School Board’s own policies, and basic human decency.”
“Parents should have the right to receive notice and opt their children out of classroom material that violates their faith,” he added.
In contrast to the Fourth Circuit’s reasoning, reviewing the Montgomery County Public Schools website makes it clear why these books are in the classroom. The website has a dedicated LGBT section stating, “We have welcoming, affirming schools, classrooms, teams, and clubs. We value all of our children, youth, teachers, staff, and parents.” The section provides an extensive list of LGBT content, resources, and “How to” guides for students, staff, and parents.
Students are provided a Coming Out as YOU! guide that instructs them on how to come out, including a “safety plan,” which tells the students to make sure they have a safe place outside their home to stay; someone, seemingly besides their parents, that they can trust; and to “Consider letting a friend know that you’re planning on coming out and if you don’t text them by a certain time you might need help because your safety might be in danger.” The guide tells students they should decide what they identify as daily, which can change day by day.
The school’s Culturally Responsive Supplemental Elementary ELA Collection is the biggest concern point for parents, as it details the content students will be provided. Students grades kindergarten to second grade are provided more than eight separate LGBT titles, half of which are trans-focused. One book, titled Born Ready: The True Story of a Boy Named Penelope, states in its description, “Penelope knows that he’s a boy. (And a ninja.) The problem is getting everyone else to realize it.”
Three books focus on a character named Max, a transgender-identifying elementary school-aged student who dedicates time to educating friends, teachers, and parents about what being transgender means. Several books are focused on same-sex relationships: one about a prince and a knight who fall in love, one about a child’s gay uncle getting married, and a book for 4- to 8-year-olds titled Love, Violet, about an elementary-aged girl who falls in love with another girl.
Not being subtle, another title for this age group is IntersectionAllies: We Make Room for All, a book on intersectional feminism that teaches kids how to be activists, and a book titled Let’s Eat Bugs! for fifth graders provides recipes on eating insects. The school also offers an LGBT club for elementary school students.
The Obvious Purpose
The school system’s agenda is pretty obvious.
Is it any wonder that religious parents would be concerned about their children — again, kindergarten to fifth grade — being exposed to extreme LGBT ideology? Critics pretend kids are just being told stories that include LGBT characters and that only bigots would oppose kids learning about different types of people. The first judge dismissed the parents saying they “failed to show that the lack of an opt-out policy would result in the ‘indoctrination of their children’ or ‘coerce their children to violate or change their religious beliefs.’”
However, these are books designed to teach kids about being LGBT themselves, not simply about LGBT experiences, history, or health education. This is an environment where kids are heavily encouraged to explore sexuality and gender ideology, with expansive resources, instruction guides, and clubs. Of course, religious parents would consider this to be an invasive level of activism and indoctrination.
It should be obvious to anyone that forcing parents to accept this instruction for their children violates their religious freedom, and the obnoxious dismissal from a judge that parents can simply undo whatever their kids learn in school further mocks these sacred rights. Left-wing, LGBT activists simply want full control over children’s education and have constructed a system that not only excludes parents but intentionally isolates their children from them in school.
LGBT activists believe they know best for all students, and that all students need to learn about LGBT ideology in an open, proactive, and affirming way, and if parents oppose this instruction, they don’t need to know about it, or worse, have no power to stop it. Unfortunately, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals just strengthened this abuse of power by school systems, degrading parental rights and religious freedom even further.
Chad Felix Greene is a senior contributor to The Federalist. He is the author of “Surviving Gender: My Journey Through Gender Dysphoria,” and is a social writer focusing on truth in media, conservative ideas and goals, and true equality under the law. You can follow him on Twitter @chadfelixg.
Former President Trump’s legal team was slated to call on a former commissioner of the Federal Election Commission to testify in the NY v. Trump case, but the expert’s testimony was not heard after the presiding judge curbed the scope of what he could discuss before the jury.
“Judge Merchan has so restricted my testimony that defense has decided not to call me. Now, it’s elementary that the judge instructs the jury on the law, so I understand his reluctance,” former FEC Commissioner Bradley Smith posted on X on Monday.
“But the Federal Election Campaign Act is very complex. Even Antonin Scalia – a pretty smart guy, even you hate him – once said ‘this [campaign finance] law is so intricate that I can’t figure it out.’ Picture a jury in a product liability case trying to figure out if a complex machine was negligently designed, based only on a boilerplate recitation of the general definition of ‘negligence.’ They’d be lost without knowing technology & industry norms,” he continued.
Smith is an election law expert who Trump has called the “Rolls-Royce” of experts in his field, but he will not testify after Judge Juan Merchan ruled that Smith could speak before the court on the basic definitions surrounding election law but not expand beyond that scope.
Former President Trump sits in the courtroom during his trial at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York City on May 21, 2024. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
Trump was charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree in the case. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg must prove to the jury that not only did Trump falsify the business records related to payments to former porn actress Stormy Daniels but that he did so in furtherance of another crime: conspiracy to promote or prevent election.
Smith served as an FEC commissioner and chair between 2000 and 2005. The FEC is the U.S. agency dedicated to enforcing campaign finance laws. His testimony was slated to shed light on prosecutors’ allegations that Trump falsified business records, which is a misdemeanor that has already passed the statute of limitations, in order to cover up an election violation.
Smith wrote on social media that while the prosecution’s star witness, Michael Cohen, was allowed to go “on at length about whether and how his activity violated” the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA), he was barred from broadening the scope of his previously anticipated testimony, which “effectively” led to the jury getting “its instructions on FECA from Michael Cohen!”
Bradley Smith was supposed to be a defense witness in the NY v. Trump case. (Douglas Graham/Roll Call/Getty Images/File)
Smith spoke with the Washington Examiner on Monday and discussed what he would have said in court if he testified.
“Judges instruct the juries on the law,” Smith told the outlet. “And they don’t want a battle of competing experts saying here’s what the law is. They feel it’s their province to make that determination. The problem, of course, is that campaign finance law is extremely complex and just reading the statute to people isn’t really going to help them very much.”
Smith said he anticipated “to lay out the ways the law has been interpreted in ways that might not be obvious” while noting election laws are very complicated matters.
Michael Cohen is questioned by prosecutor Susan Hoffinger on redirect during former President Trump’s criminal trial in New York City on May 20, 2024. (Reuters/Jane Rosenberg)
“You read the law, and it says that anything intended for the purpose of influencing an election is a contribution or an expenditure,” Smith said. “But that’s not in fact the entirety of the law. There is the obscure, and separate from the definitional part, idea of personal use, which is a separate part of the law that says you can’t divert campaign funds to personal use. That has a number of specific prohibitions, like you can’t buy a country club membership, you can’t normally pay yourself a salary or living expenses, you can’t go on vacation, all these kinds of things. And then it includes a broader, general prohibition that says you can’t divert [campaign funds] to any obligation that would exist even if you were not running for office.”
“We would have liked to flag that exception for the jury and talk a little bit about what it means,” Smith said. “And also, we would have talked about ‘for the purpose of influencing an election’ is not a subjective test, like, ‘What was my intention?’ It’s an objective test.”
Michael Cohen and former President Trump (Getty Images)
The case surrounding Trump’s payments is one that both the Justice Department and FEC rejected to prosecute in recent years. The Justice Department in 2019 “effectively concluded” its investigation into Trump’s payments. While in 2021, the Federal Elections Commission announced that it had dropped a case looking into whether Trump had violated election laws for the payment to Daniels.
Smith has previously joined Fox News, where he also noted that the “Federal Election Commission chose not to act on this.”
Bradley Smith testifies during a House subcommittee hearing on lobbying reform on March 1, 2007. (Bill Clark/Roll Call/Getty Images)
“DA Bragg in this case waited, I think it was almost a year, before even bringing the charges. And I think that’s because the charges were flimsy. And as you point out, they’ve been, you know, the prior DA had said, ‘No, we’re not going to bring this.’ The DOJ said no. The Federal Election Commission said no. And when he got increased political pressure, he brought the case,” Smith told Fox News host Mark Levin earlier this year before the trial kicked off.
Smith also wrote an opinion piece published by The Federalist last month, when the trial kicked off, arguing that Bragg’s office had “one big problem” with the case.
Former President Trump sits in the courtroom in New York City on May 21, 2024. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
“The [prosecution’s] theory is that Trump’s payments to Daniels were campaign expenditures and thus needed to be publicly reported as such. By not reporting the expenditure, the theory goes, Trump prevented the public from knowing information that might have influenced their votes,” he wrote in the opinion piece.
“There is one big problem with this theory: The payments to Daniels were not campaign payments.”
He said political candidates frequently act in ways that could be interpreted as serving a “purpose of influencing an election,” that politicians could get their teeth whitened or buy a new suit with campaign funds to look snappy on the campaign trail.
Rhona Graff testifies as former President Trump watches during his criminal trial in New York City on April 26, 2024. (Reuters/Jane Rosenberg)
“That’s because, in campaign finance law, these types of expenditures are known as ‘personal use.’ FECA specifically prohibits the conversion of campaign funds to personal use, defined as any expenditure ‘used to fulfill any commitment, obligation, or expense that would exist irrespective of the candidate’s election campaign,’” he wrote.
Smith continued on X on Tuesday that Bragg’s case hinges on prosecutors proving that Trump tried to influence an election through “unlawful means,” but the office has to rely on their own evidence as the DOJ and FEC both denied pursuing the case.
Judge Juan Merchan (AP Photos/File)
“If that’s the case, isn’t it entirely relevant (not dispositive, but relevant) to the jury’s fact-finding on that question that neither DOJ nor FEC chose to prosecute? But Judge Merchan won’t allow that in,” he wrote. “He will, though, allow in numerous references to Cohen’s guilty plea, and allow Cohen to testify as to how he thinks he and Trump violated FECA – though it appears that Cohen is a dunce about campaign finance laws.”
The defense team rested Tuesday, with Merchan dismissing the jury until after Memorial Day. Closing arguments are anticipated to kick off next Tuesday following the holiday.
The prosecution in Donald Trump’s legal expenses trial “has not proven a crime,” but Judge Juan Merchan is going to force the trial to the jury, Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Newsmax.
“I don’t think the judge is going to do the right thing,” Leavitt told Tuesday’s “National Report.” “If he had done the right thing, he would have recused himself from this case from the very beginning because he is a highly conflicted, partisan judge.
“He’s a Democrat who voted for Joe Biden. He should have never been overseeing this case in the first place, but our defense team is 100% right to file this motion to dismiss the charges.”
“They’ve spent 20 days on the stand, and they never proved a crime,” she continued. “They didn’t even come close to proving the 34 felony counts that they are charging President Trump with, and it’s because President Trump never committed the crimes that they are alleging. The prosecution has known this all along.”
Leavitt, who has been in the courtroom with Trump several times during the course of his trial, said that Tuesday is “just another sad day to watch President Trump back in that courtroom, talking to the media and not really able to fully speak about the case because he has an unconstitutional gag order that is hampering his ability to really talk about what’s going on in that courtroom.”
“I can’t even get into that with you guys either because of the unconstitutional gag order, which is just, it’s a travesty of justice,” she said. “As you mentioned, legal experts on both sides of the aisle, even on CNN and MSNBC, which I’m sure kills them to admit it, but it’s the truth: The prosecution has not proven a crime and we expect this case to rest very soon, and it will ultimately be in the hands of the jury, and we hope that they do the right thing based on the evidence, based on the law, and also for this country.
“This is a witch hunt, and our country has never seen anything like it.”
Trump’s lawyers rested their defense Tuesday without the former president taking the stand to testify. Members of the jury were sent home until May 28, when closing arguments are expected.
The jury could begin deliberating as early as next week to decide whether Trump is guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to conceal legal payments to Michael Cohen to allegedly silence Stormy Daniels’ allegations of an extramarital affair.
The former president has pleaded not guilty and denied any wrongdoing in the case.
Nicole Wells, a Newsmax general assignment reporter covers news, politics, and culture. She is a National Newspaper Association award-winning journalist.
Below is my column in the New York Post on the meltdown of Michael Cohen on the stand in the Manhattan trial of former President Donald Trump. In a trial careening out of control, Judge Juan Merchan seemed to be furiously working to just get the matter to the jury as fast as possible. Judge Merchan seems in open denial of the legal farce playing out in his courtroom. He is only the latest person pulled into the vortex of the swirling corruption around Michael Cohen.
Here is the column:
The completion of the testimony of Michael Cohen left the prosecution of Donald Trump, like its star witness, in tatters. In the final day of cross-examination, Cohen admitted to committing larceny in stealing tens of thousands of dollars from his client. Even more notably, he admitted to the larceny on the stand — after the statute of limitations had passed. There will be no dead felony zapped back into life against Cohen, as it was for Trump. Cohen clearly has found a home for his unique skill as a convicted, disbarred serial perjurer.
It was not the first time that prosecutors looked the other way as Cohen admitted to major criminal conduct: In a prior hearing, Cohen admitted under oath that he lied in a previous case where he pleaded guilty to lying. If that is a bit confusing, it was just another day in the life of Michael Cohen, who appears only willing to tell the truth if he has no other alternative. The result is truly otherworldly. You have a disbarred lawyer not only casually discussing lies and uncharged crimes, but prosecutors who proceeded to get him to remind the jury that he is not facing any further criminal charges.
If any one of those jurors had stolen tens of thousands of dollars, they would be given a fast trip to the hoosegow. Yet Cohen then matter-of-factly said he plans to run for Congress due to his “name recognition” — the ultimate proof that it does not matter whether you are famous or infamous, so long as they spell your name right.
As a legislator, Cohen would have the unique ability to say he will not be corrupted by Congress — because he came to Congress corrupted. While most members wait to take office to commit felonies, Rep. Cohen would show up with a self-affirming criminal record. He could then take one of the few oaths that he has not previously violated as the Honorable Rep. Michael Cohen.
Prior witnesses testified that Trump’s payments to Cohen were designated as “legal expenses” not by Trump but by his accounting staff. Moreover, Cohen admitted that he worked for Trump for years in his murky capacity as a fixer. References to payments as a retainer were approved by Allen Weisselberg, a retired executive with the Trump Organization. The “legal expense” label was a natural characterization for a lawyer who was paid monthly and was on-call as Trump’s personal counsel.
In any other district, this case would never have been allowed in trial. It certainly now should be facing a directed verdict by the court. Indeed, with any other defendant, a New York jury would be giving a Bronx cheer in derision. Even CNN hosts and experts have admitted that this case would never have been brought against another defendant or in another district. That is what Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is counting on.
The biggest problem facing the defense is not the evidence, but the judge: Judge Juan Merchan seems to be channeling George Patton’s warning, “May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won’t.”
Merchan has not given any indication that he is seriously considering a directed verdict, which he should clearly grant before this goes to the jury. Merchan’s rulings have largely favored the prosecution, including some rulings that left some of us mystified. Judge Merchan continues to allow the jury to hear references to campaign-finance violations that do not exist.
After gutting any use of a legal expert to testify on the absence of any such violations, the judge allowed the jury to hear Michael Cohen state that the payments to Stormy Daniels were clearly campaign violations. All that Merchan would offer is a weak instruction telling jurors not to take such statements as proof of a violation.
The alleged campaign-finance violations allowed Cohen to try to implicate Trump. However, it is doubtful that Trump could have been convicted on such a charge in any other venue.
It is precisely what the Justice Department tried and failed to do with John Edwards, a Democratic candidate. After that unmitigated failure, the Justice Department dropped this theory of hush money as a campaign contribution. Indeed, after reviewing the Trump payments, not only did the Justice Department decline any charges but the Federal Election Commission did not even seek a civil fine.
On Monday, Judge Merchan’s orders became even more inexplicable when Cohen’s former attorney Robert Costello took the stand. Merchan immediately started to sustain a flurry of prosecutors’ objections as Costello basically accused Cohen of multiple acts of perjury. At one point, Costello — one of the most experienced lawyers in New York and a former prosecutor — exclaimed that one of the judge’s rulings was “ridiculous.” The judge chastised Costello and even challenged him: “Are you staring me down?”
In fact, it was hard not to stare. What is happening in the courtroom of Judge Juan Merchan is anything but ordinary.
Jonathan Turley is an attorney and professor at George Washington University Law School.
We are now exactly one month from the release of my new book, The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage. I am happy to share the reviews from writers, academics, journalists, and civil libertarians of the book, which is available for pre-order here. Those ordering now will have the first prints shipped to them on June 18th.
I am deeply grateful to these early reviewers for their generous comments about the book. It is meant to offer a comprehensive look at the meaning, history, and current threats to free speech in America. While it may displease or discomfort others in these fields, it is offered as a foundation for restoring this truly indispensable right.
Reviews of the Turley book:
“Jonathan Turley’s magnum opus should be required reading for everyone who cares about free speech—certainly including anyone who questions or criticizes strong free speech protection. This a unique synthesis of the historical, philosophical, artistic, and even physiological bases for protecting free speech as a right to which all human beings are inherently entitled, and Turley provides riveting accounts of the courageous individuals, throughout history, who have struggled and sacrificed in order to exercise and defend the right. The Indispensable Right is an indispensable book.” —Nadine Strossen, former president of the American Civil Liberties Union
“Brilliant and intellectually honest, Jonathan Turley has few peers as a legal scholar today. With The Indispensable Right, he has given us a robust reexamination and defense of free speech as a right. Rich with historical content and insight, this superbly-written book calls out both the left and the right for attacks on free speech while offering in the final chapter a path forward.” —William P. Barr, former Attorney General and author of the No. 1 New York Times bestseller One Damn Thing After Another.
“This efficient volume is packed with indispensable information delivered with proper passion. Jonathan Turley surveys the fraught history of “the indispensable right” and today’s dismayingly broad retreat from its defense. He is especially illuminating on how the concept of “harm” from speech has been broadened to serve the interest of censors.” —George F. Will, Pulitzer Prize winner and Washington Post columnist.
“The First Amendment has consumed Jonathan Turley for more than thirty years. Lucky for us that he waited until now, amidst a climate of unprecedented rage rhetoric, to deliver a master class on the unvarnished history of free speech in America. The Indispensable Right is enlightening and engaging. It is also a cautionary tale against state overcorrection of the often acrimonious, free exchange of ideas that are an essential part of the human experience.” —Michael Smerconish, host of CNN’s “Smerconish”
“During these often-bitter times, Jonathan Turley is my “go-to” commentator for smart, clear and honest analysis on any difficult legal controversy.” —Jim Webb, former Democratic U.S. Senator, Secretary of the Navy, and bestselling author
“Jonathan Turley’s book is the rarest of accomplishments: a timely and brilliantly original yet disciplined and historically grounded treatment of free speech. He dispels the view that our current social turmoil is ‘uncharted waters’—from the 1790’s Whiskey Rebels to the 1920’s Wobblies to the 1950’s communists, we’ve been here before—and argues persuasively that free speech is a human need and that we must resist the urge to restrict speech as ‘disinformation’ or ‘seditious’ or offensive to ‘woke’ sensibilities.” —Michael B. Mukasey, former Attorney General and U.S. District Judge
“Jonathan Turley is one of the most astute and most honest analysts of the intersection of politics and law. Thirty years in the making, this book brilliantly proposes means for preserving the most important Constitutional right: the right to free speech. Elegantly written, exhaustively researched, and passionately argued, Turley has given us a superb and necessary tract for our time.” —Stephen B. Presser, Raoul Berger Professor of Legal History Emeritus, Northwestern University School of Law
“Jonathan Turley recognizes free speech as an essential good—an activity that is central to our very nature as human beings. This is in sharp contrast with those who defend free speech as merely instrumental to some other value, like democracy or the pursuit of truth; rationales that are then used to justify limiting speech in ways that obstruct human flourishing. In this important book, he explains why free speech has historically come under threat during periods of rage and proposes policies that will protect freedom of speech from those who would today destroy this indispensable right.” —Randy E. Barnett, Patrick Hotung Professor of Constitutional Law, Georgetown University Law Center
“The Indispensable Right is a courageous, provocative case by one of America’s most prolific public intellectuals for resurrecting natural law or embracing an autonomous basis for the protection of free speech. Not all First Amendment defenders will be persuaded––but one needn’t sign on to Turley’s robust view of free speech to appreciate the unique clarity and deep historical research he brings to his argument. Read this insightful book to understand the peril of today’s broad-based assault on free speech.”
—Michael J. Glennon, Professor of Constitutional and International Law, Tufts University, author of Free Speech and Turbulent Freedom: The Dangerous Allure of Censorship in the Digital Era.
“Extraordinary and needed.”
—Keith E. Whittington, William Nelson Cromwell professor of politics at Princeton University
A vigorous defense of free speech, a right enshrined but often hobbled or outright abrogated. A smart book that invites argument—civil argument, that is, with good faith and tolerance.
A federal Justice Department attorney expressed concerns to a Michigan judge about conservative media coverage suggesting that President Joe Biden’s administration is persecuting Christians and pro-lifers for their beliefs. The discussion took place during a March pre-trial conference in USA v. Zastrow, in which the federal government brought Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act charges against eight pro-life individuals who tried to stop abortions of unborn babies from taking place at Michigan abortion clinics.
Those pro-life activists are Calvin Zastrow, Eva Zastrow, Chester Gallagher, Heather Idoni, Caroline Davis, Joel Curry, Justin Phillips, and Eva Edl (a communist death camp survivor who recently spoke with The Daily Signal).
The FACE Act is a 1994 law that prohibits individuals from obstructing the entrances of both abortion clinics and pregnancy resource centers, although it has been heavily enforced by Biden’s DOJ against pro-lifers since the June 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade.
During the pre-trial motion hearing, according to a transcript obtained by The Daily Signal, DOJ attorney Laura-Kate Bernstein raised concerns that “there’s a great deal of press about this case and the case in Nashville recently.” Bernstein was referring to a case in Tennessee where six pro-lifers were praying outside of an abortion clinic in 2021 and were charged with FACE Act violations.
Bernstein did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“Where?” questioned Judge Matthew Leitman. “I haven’t seen any.”
Bernstein explained that she was referring to online media “like Mike Huckabee’s show or Laura Ingraham’s show, and those sorts of sources, and some written sources, too, in which at least one of the defense attorneys is making very acerbic statements about the government’s case and the legitimacy of the laws at stake, and that the Biden regime is persecuting Christians.”
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“My concern is one of the jury pool,” she continued. “My concern is that as these national media reach more and more people, including people in the district, that they may be tainted with a preconceived notion of the Biden regime’s persecution of Christians and be unable to try the case as neutral jurors.”
The DOJ attorney said that she was not asking the court to do “something in particular,” but then told the judge that it is the court’s “affirmative, constitutional duty to minimize the effects of prejudicial pretrial publicity.”
Leitman, after asking for clarification on her question, noted that he could ask the jurors whether they had read anything about the case. But he said that Bernstein’s question seemed to be rooted in “important political speech.”
“It seems to me that your first statement, the Biden administration is persecuting Christians … that’s pretty core, important political speech, whether you agree with it or not,” the judge said. “I mean, I’d be hard pressed to tell somebody not to say that.”
The DOJ attorney then pushed back, saying she was referring to interviews in which the pro-lifer’s attorney said that “this case is a war on pro-lifers, that the Department of Justices is using the FACE Act as a weapon against pro-lifers,” or that “the clients are victims of political persecution.”
She also pushed back against the idea that “there’s a two-tier justice system, one for friends of the administration who go free and one for people who are on the wrong spiritual side of the administration.”
“There’s also extremely inflammatory language undermining the legitimacy of the laws to be implied in this case, that you’ve already ruled on—the constitutionality of it—whether reproductive health care includes abortion, as the statue defines it,” she continued. “And because the court has this affirmative, constitutional duty, we wanted to bring it to your attention.”
Bernstein then asked the judge to admonish Thomas More Society attorney Steve Crampton “about speaking about this case in inflammatory and acerbic ways that might taint the jury pool.”
“This isn’t about trying to, you know, interfere with any of his First Amendment rights,” she followed up, noting that Crampton is “of course” free to speak about his clients. “It’s about trying to protect the due process rights in this trial and the government’s right and the public’s right to a fair trial.”
Crampton clarified to the court that Bernstein was referring to Tennessee pro-life activist Paul Vaughn’s interview on the “Mike Huckabee Show,” in which Vaughn made such comments “only after the jury verdict” was entered in his case.
In January, a federal jury convicted Vaughn and five other defendants of a felony conspiracy against rights and a FACE Act offense for trying to stop abortions from taking place at a Mount Juliet, Tennessee, abortion clinic in March 2021.
BREAKING: Six pro-life activists were just found guilty in federal court after being prosecuted by Biden's DOJ under the FACE Act for protesting outside a Nashville abortion clinic.
Here's a snippet of the protest, which occurred on March 5, 2021.
“Any reference to United States against Zastrow and this case were, at best, minimal to nonexistent,” the Thomas More Society attorney said. “So, I think the government, perhaps, is overreacting to the press coverage of the Nashville case. Nobody’s called any press conference regarding this case, and we certainly have no intention of doing so.”
This week, seven pro-life defendants have been sentenced to prison time on DOJ FACE Act charges related to their attempts to stop abortions from taking place at a Washington, D.C., abortion clinic. That abortion clinic is run by Cesare Santangelo, an abortionist who has been accused of allowing babies to die if they survive his botched abortions.
The District of Columbia does not have laws restricting abortion.
The DOJ said in a release Wednesday: “Lauren Handy was sentenced to 57 months in prison, John Hinshaw was sentenced to 21 months in prison, and William Goodman was sentenced to 27 months in prison,” adding that “Jonathan Darnel was sentenced to 34 months in prison, Herb Geraghty was sentenced to 27 months in prison, Jean Marshall was sentenced to 24 months in prison, and Joan Bell was sentenced to 27 months in prison.”
Those efforts are led by Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, the head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, who just admitted, following a report from The Daily Signal, that she hid an arrest and its subsequent expungement from investigators when she was confirmed by the Senate to her Justice Department post.
“Violence has no place in our national discourse on reproductive health. Using force, threatening to use force, or physically obstructing access to reproductive health care is unlawful,” said Clarke in a statement accompanying this week’s DOJ release.
“As we mark the 30th anniversary of the FACE Act, it’s important that we not lose sight of the history of violence against reproductive health care providers, including the murder of Dr. David Gunn in Florida—tragic and horrific events that led to passage of the law,” she added. “The Justice Department will continue to protect both patients seeking reproductive health services and providers of those services. We will hold accountable those who seek to interfere with access to reproductive health services in our country.”
Mary Margaret Olohan is a senior reporter for The Daily Signal and the author of “Detrans: True Stories of Escaping the Gender Ideology Cult.” She previously reported for both The Daily Caller and The Daily Wire. Email: marymargaret.olohan @dailysignal.com.
Below is my column on Fox.com on the approaching end of the Trump trial in Manhattan. With the dramatic implosion of Michael Cohen on the stand on Thursday with the exposure of another alleged lie told under oath, even hosts and commentators on CNN are now criticizing the prosecution and doubting the basis for any conviction. CNN anchor Anderson Cooper admitted that he would “absolutely” have doubts after Cohen’s testimony. CNN’s legal analyst Elie Honig declared “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a star cooperating witness get his knees chopped out quite as clearly and dramatically.” He previously stated that this case would never have been brought outside of a deep blue, anti-Trump district. Other legal experts, including on CNN and MSNBC, admitted that they did not get the legal theory of the prosecution or understand the still mysterious crime that was being concealed by the alleged book-keeping errors. The question is whether the jury itself is realizing that they are being played by the prosecution.
Here is the column:
In the movie “Quiz Show,” about the rigging of a 1950s television game show, the character Mark Van Doren warns his corrupted son that “if you look around the table and you can’t tell who the sucker is, it’s you.”
As the trial of former President Donald Trump careens toward its conclusion, one has to wonder if the jurors are wondering the same question.
For any discerning juror, the trial has been conspicuously lacking any clear statement from the prosecutors of what crime Trump was attempting to commit by allegedly mischaracterizing payments as “legal expenses.” Even liberal legal experts have continued to express doubt over what crime is being alleged as the government rests its case.
There is also the failure of the prosecutors to establish that Trump even knew of how payments were denoted or that these denotations were actually fraudulent in denoting payments to a lawyer as legal expenses.
The judge has allowed this dangerously undefined case to proceed without demanding greater clarity from the prosecution.
Jurors may also suspect that there is more to meet the eye about the players themselves. While the jurors are likely unaware of these facts, everyone “around the table” has controversial connections. Indeed, for many, the judge, prosecutors, and witnesses seem as random or coincidental as the cast from “Ocean’s Eleven.” Let’s look at three key things.
1. The Prosecutors
First, there are the prosecutors. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg originally (as did his predecessor) rejected this ridiculous legal theory and further stated that he could not imagine ever bringing a case where he would call former Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen, let alone make him the entirety of a prosecution.
Bragg’s suspension of the case led prosecutor Mark F. Pomerantz to resign. Pomerantz then wrote a book on the prosecution despite his colleagues objecting that he was undermining their work. Many of us viewed the book as unethical and unprofessional, but it worked. The pressure campaign forced Bragg to green-light the prosecution.
Pomerantz also met with Cohen in pushing the case.
Bragg then selected Matthew Colangelo to lead the case. Colangelo was third in command of the Justice Department and gave up that plum position to lead the case against Trump. Colangelo was also paid by the Democratic National Committee for “political consulting.” So a former high-ranking official in the Biden Justice Department and a past consultant to the DNC is leading the prosecution.
2. The Judge
Judge Juan Merchan has been criticized not only because he is a political donor to President Biden but his daughter is a high-ranking Democratic political operative who has raised millions in campaigns against Trump and the GOP. Merchan, however, was not randomly selected. He was specifically selected for the case due to his handling of an earlier Trump-related case.
3. The Star Witness
Michael Cohen’s checkered history as a convicted, disbarred serial perjurer is well known. Now, Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., is under fire after disclosing that “I have met with [Cohen] a number of times to prepare him.”
Goldman in turn paid Merchan’s daughter, Loren Merchan, more than $157,000 dollars for political consulting.
Outside the courtroom, there is little effort to avoid or hide such conflicts. While Democrats would be outraged if the situation were flipped in a prosecution of Biden, the cross-pollination between the DOJ, DNC, and Democratic operatives is dismissed as irrelevant by many in the media.
Moreover, there is little outrage in New York that, in a presidential campaign where the weaponization of the legal system is a major issue, Trump is not allowed to discuss Cohen, Colangelo, or these conflicts. A New York Supreme Court judge is literally controlling what Trump can say in a presidential campaign about the alleged lawfare being waged against him.
The most striking aspect of these controversial associations is how little was done to avoid even the appearance of conflicts of interests. There were many judges available who were not donors or have children with such prominent political interests in the case. Bragg could have selected someone who was not imported by the Biden administration or someone who had not been paid by the DNC.
There was no concern over the obvious appearance of a politically motivated and stacked criminal case. Whether or not these figures are conflicted or compromised, no effort was taken to assure citizens that any such controversies are avoided in the selection of the key players in this case.
What will be interesting is how the jury will react when, after casting its verdict, the members learn of these undisclosed associations. This entire production was constructed for their benefit to get them to convict Trump despite the absence of a clear crime or direct evidence.
They were the marks and, like any good grift, the prosecutors were hoping that their desire for a Trump conviction would blind them to the con.
Bragg, Colangelo and others may be wrong. Putting aside the chance that Judge Merchan could summon up the courage to end this case before it goes to the jury, the grift may have been a bit too obvious.
New Yorkers are a curious breed. Yes, they overwhelmingly hate Trump, but they also universally hate being treated like chumps. When they get this case, they just might look around the courtroom and decide that they are the suckers in a crooked game.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and a practicing criminal defense attorney. He is a Fox News contributor.
Below is my column on Fox.com on the approaching end of the Trump trial in Manhattan. With the dramatic implosion of Michael Cohen on the stand on Thursday with the exposure of another alleged lie told under oath, even hosts and commentators on CNN are now criticizing the prosecution and doubting the basis for any conviction. CNN anchor Anderson Cooper admitted that he would “absolutely” have doubts after Cohen’s testimony. CNN’s legal analyst Elie Honig declared“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a star cooperating witness get his knees chopped out quite as clearly and dramatically.” He previously stated that this case would never have been brought outside of a deep blue, anti-Trump district. Other legal experts, including on CNN and MSNBC, admitted that they did not get the legal theory of the prosecution or understand the still mysterious crime that was being concealed by the alleged book-keeping errors. The question is whether the jury itself is realizing that they are being played by the prosecution.
Here is the column:
In the movie “Quiz Show,” about the rigging of a 1950s television game show, the character Mark Van Doren warns his corrupted son that “if you look around the table and you can’t tell who the sucker is, it’s you.”
As the trial of former President Donald Trump careens toward its conclusion, one has to wonder if the jurors are wondering the same question. For any discerning juror, the trial has been conspicuously lacking any clear statement from the prosecutors of what crime Trump was attempting to commit by allegedly mischaracterizing payments as “legal expenses.” Even liberal legal experts have continued to express doubt over what crime is being alleged as the government rests its case.
There is also the failure of the prosecutors to establish that Trump even knew of how payments were denoted or that these denotations were actually fraudulent in denoting payments to a lawyer as legal expenses.
The judge has allowed this dangerously undefined case to proceed without demanding greater clarity from the prosecution.
Jurors may also suspect that there is more to meet the eye about the players themselves. While the jurors are likely unaware of these facts, everyone “around the table” has controversial connections. Indeed, for many, the judge, prosecutors, and witnesses seem as random or coincidental as the cast from “Ocean’s Eleven.” Let’s look at three key things.
1. The Prosecutors
First, there are the prosecutors. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg originally (as did his predecessor) rejected this ridiculous legal theory and further stated that he could not imagine ever bringing a case where he would call former Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen, let alone make him the entirety of a prosecution.
Bragg’s suspension of the case led prosecutor Mark F. Pomerantz to resign. Pomerantz then wrote a book on the prosecution despite his colleagues objecting that he was undermining their work. Many of us viewed the book as unethical and unprofessional, but it worked. The pressure campaign forced Bragg to green-light the prosecution.
Pomerantz also met with Cohen in pushing the case.
Bragg then selected Matthew Colangelo to lead the case. Colangelo was third in command of the Justice Department and gave up that plum position to lead the case against Trump. Colangelo was also paid by the Democratic National Committee for “political consulting.” So, a former high-ranking official in the Biden Justice Department and a past consultant to the DNC is leading the prosecution.
2. The Judge
Judge Juan Merchan has been criticized not only because he is a political donor to President Biden but his daughter is a high-ranking Democratic political operative who has raised millions in campaigns against Trump and the GOP. Merchan, however, was not randomly selected. He was specifically selected for the case due to his handling of an earlier Trump-related case.
3. The Star Witness
Michael Cohen’s checkered history as a convicted, disbarred serial perjurer is well known. Now, Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., is under fire after disclosing that “I have met with [Cohen] a number of times to prepare him.” Goldman in turn paid Merchan’s daughter, Loren Merchan, more than $157,000 dollars for political consulting.
Outside the courtroom, there is little effort to avoid or hide such conflicts. While Democrats would be outraged if the situation were flipped in a prosecution of Biden, the cross-pollination between the DOJ, DNC, and Democratic operatives is dismissed as irrelevant by many in the media.
Moreover, there is little outrage in New York that, in a presidential campaign where the weaponization of the legal system is a major issue, Trump is not allowed to discuss Cohen, Colangelo, or these conflicts. A New York Supreme Court judge is literally controlling what Trump can say in a presidential campaign about the alleged lawfare being waged against him.
The most striking aspect of these controversial associations is how little was done to avoid even the appearance of conflicts of interests. There were many judges available who were not donors or have children with such prominent political interests in the case. Bragg could have selected someone who was not imported by the Biden administration or someone who had not been paid by the DNC.
There was no concern over the obvious appearance of a politically motivated and stacked criminal case. Whether or not these figures are conflicted or compromised, no effort was taken to assure citizens that any such controversies are avoided in the selection of the key players in this case.
What will be interesting is how the jury will react when, after casting its verdict, the members learn of these undisclosed associations. This entire production was constructed for their benefit to get them to convict Trump despite the absence of a clear crime or direct evidence.
They were the marks and, like any good grift, the prosecutors were hoping that their desire for a Trump conviction would blind them to the con.
Bragg, Colangelo and others may be wrong. Putting aside the chance that Judge Merchan could summon up the courage to end this case before it goes to the jury, the grift may have been a bit too obvious.
New Yorkers are a curious breed. Yes, they overwhelmingly hate Trump, but they also universally hate being treated like chumps. When they get this case, they just might look around the courtroom and decide that they are the suckers in a crooked game.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and a practicing criminal defense attorney. He is a Fox News contributor.
Below is my column in USA Today on the effort to impeach President Joe Biden over his freezing of arms shipments to Israel. While one can strongly disagree with the policy or the motivation behind the action, it is not a high crime and misdemeanor in my view.
Here is the column:
After the two impeachments of former President Donald Trump, Congress seems to be on a hair-trigger for anything that can be plausibly, or even implausibly, defined as a high crime and misdemeanor. The latest example is the impeachment resolution introduced against President Joe Biden over his decision to withhold arms from Israel in an attempt to prevent an operation in Rafah to destroy Hamas’ remaining military units. While there is much to question about Biden’s motivations and his means to pressure Israel, it is not an impeachable offense.
The sponsor of the impeachment resolution, Florida Republican Rep. Cory Mills, maintains that “President Biden abused the powers of his office by soliciting a ‘quid pro quo’ with Israel while leveraging vital military aid for policy changes. This egregious action not only compromised the credibility of the United States but also undermined the interests of our longstanding ally.”
On the surface, there is an obvious appeal for Republicans to use these grounds to impeach Biden. After all, in 2019, Democrats impeached Trump on the basis of a phone call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in which the president threatened to withhold military aid to that country. Democrats insisted that Trump used the threat to deny aid as a way to encourage Zelenskyy to investigate Biden for corruption in Ukraine.
Political analysts on the left and the right have acknowledged that Biden’s hardened stance toward Israel is due to his faltering poll numbers and the threat that he could lose Michigan and Minnesota in the upcoming election. A loss in Michigan, where the state’s large Muslim population has rejected Biden’s past support for Israel, would likely doom his chances for reelection.
Presidents often make decisions based on politics
Even assuming that Biden’s recent changes were motivated by politics in Michigan (which I believe is a fair assessment), it would not be a high crime and misdemeanor. Presidents routinely act out of political interests. Indeed, a democracy involves using one’s voting power to influence politicians like Biden to change policy. The more than 100,000 “uncommitted” votes in Michigan’s Democratic primary clearly spooked the Biden White House.
To impeach presidents for such discretionary conduct would make impeachment a type of “vote of no confidence” device used in countries like the United Kingdom. That is not the purpose of impeachment, which was meant to be a rarely-used measure to address the most egregious forms of presidential misconduct.
The recent resolution falls into a type of “just desserts” rationale for impeachment. I testified in the first Trump impeachment and opposed it on constitutional grounds. I warned Democrats that they would rue the day that they lowered the standard and short-circuited the process for impeachment.
At the time, I told the House Judiciary Committee: “President Trump will not be our last president and what we leave in the wake of this scandal will shape our democracy for generations to come. I am concerned about lowering impeachment standards to fit a paucity of evidence and an abundance of anger. If the House proceeds solely on the Ukrainian allegations, this impeachment would stand out among modern impeachments as the shortest proceeding, with the thinnest evidentiary record, and the narrowest grounds ever used to impeach a president. That does not bode well for future presidents who are working in a country often sharply and, at times, bitterly divided.”
Democrats were wrong then; Republicans are wrong now
After ignoring that warning, Democrats went a step further in the second impeachment in 2021 and used what I called a “snap impeachment” in an attempt to punish Trump for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
It would be an easy thing to say “well, turnabout is fair play, so a pox upon their house.” The problem is that this is the people’s house, and we all are harmed by the destruction of the impeachment process. Democrats were wrong in 2019 and 2021 to impeach Trump, but yielding to the same political motives now is no virtue.
Ironically, the new impeachment resolution does precisely what Biden is accused of doing: using constitutionally bestowed powers for raw political purposes.
The White House has insisted that this latest effort is “ridiculous.” Except that isn’t ridiculous given Democrats’ past actions. But it is equally wrong.
In 2023, I testified in the Biden impeachment hearing and said that I believed that there was sufficient basis − and potential impeachable conduct − to justify an inquiry into the Biden corruption scandal. Without prejudging the outcome of that investigation, it was clear that, if proven, some of the allegations would meet the demanding standard under Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution.
The new allegations would not. Even if Biden were shown to be hampering Israel’s war to help him win Michigan, it would not be sufficient. The line between politics and policy has always been imprecise, if not imperceptible. All presidents are first and foremost political creatures. They often use the most noble sentiments to hide the basest interests. There is a place to render a verdict on such cynical calculations, but it is not on the floor of the House. It is rather in thousands of polling places on Nov. 5.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter: @JonathanTurley
Below is a slightly expanded version of my column in the New York Post on the first day of cross examination for Michael Cohen. He still has one day of cross examination ahead of him on Thursday. With the government resting after Cohen’s cross examination, I believe that an honest judge would have no alternative but to grant a motion for a directed verdict and end the case before it goes to the jury. Judge Juan Merchan will now have to give the full measure of his commitment to the rule of law. Given the failure to support the elements of any crime or even to establish the falsity of recording payments as legal expenses, this trial seemed to stumble through the motions of a trial. Michael Cohen was only the final proof of a raw political exercise. For critics, some of Cohen’s answers appear clearly false or misleading. Like their star witness, the prosecutors have shown that they simply do not take the law very seriously when there is an advantage to be taken. Cohen has truly found a home with the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
Here is the column:
On Tuesday, the prosecution surprised many by suddenly announcing that it would rest its case against former president Donald Trump with the completion of testimony by Michael Cohen. It was surprising because the prosecution never clearly stated the crime that it was proving, the elements of that crime, or even why denoting payments related to Stormy Daniels were not properly recorded as legal expenses. Indeed, the only thing the prosecutors proved was that, in the pantheon of dishonesty, there are liars, pathological liars . . . and Michael Cohen.
Cohen spent the last two days insisting that he used to be a liar but lied to help former President Donald Trump. If that is the thrust of his testimony, it is just the latest lie told by Cohen under oath. Cohen has lied to Congress, courts, special counsels, the IRS, the banks, and virtually every creature that walks or crawls on the face of the Earth. Notably, his past conviction for business and tax fraud were not taken in the interests of Trump but himself.
When he admitted on the stand that he lied during his prior plea agreement, that was not to assist Trump who he had already denounced. It was to advance his own interests. There is every indication that Cohen is still lying.
Cohen repeatedly said that he could not remember even recent calls after recounting calls from eight years ago with crystal clarity. He said that he could not remember key exchanges and statements. However, these paled in comparison to other glaring moments. Take, for example, his testimony on his unethical decision to secretly record a Sept. 6, 2016 telephone call with Trump. It was a breathtaking betrayal that most lawyers would not contemplate, let alone carry out.
When asked by the prosecutors about that act, Cohen bizarrely claimed that he did so to guarantee that David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer, would “remain loyal to Mr. Trump.”
No one seriously believes that this is true. It does not even make sense. Pecker was speaking to Trump about the payments and even met with him at the White House. Playing for him a call with Trump would produce nothing but confusion rather than pressure for Pecker. Moreover, why would Cohen tape the call without letting Trump know? The obvious motive was to squirrel away material to use against Trump if he ever needed a little leverage.
Again, it was for Cohen.
Cohen’s testimony showed that he has consistently acted in his sole interest. After portraying his sudden cooperation with prosecutors as a type of Road to Damascus, jurors learned that all roads lead back to Cohen and his bank accounts. After telling the jury that he has dedicated his life to righting the wrongs of Trump and holding him accountable, he admitted that he repeatedly acted to undermine the prosecution in order to make a buck.
Told by prosecutors to stop doing public interviews, Cohen did not care. He did roughly two dozen television appearances and recorded hundreds of podcast episodes. He admitted that Trump is mentioned in virtually every episode, of which he did roughly four a week. He recounted how he raked in millions on books, including one titled “Revenge.” He admitted that he is selling items like a $32 shirt with a photo of Trump in a jumpsuit behind bars and a coffee mug with the phrase “send him to the big house, not the White House.” He is also peddling a reality show called “The Fixer,” in which he promises viewers, “I am your fixer.”
After just a few hours of cross examination, it was clear that Cohen is the same grifter saving himself — one Venmo at a time. Yet, Cohen continued to reframe reality in his own self-constructed image.
When asked about his TikTok antics, he portrayed his postings as a type of sleep deprivation therapy, explaining that “having a difficult time sleeping and [he] found an out.”
No sane prosecutor would rely on Cohen, let alone make him the entirety of their case.
The prosecutors did not even bother to show that Trump was responsible for or knew about how the payments were recorded on ledgers and business records. They also just shrugged away the need to show why denoting these payments as “legal expenses” was fraudulent — or what the correct description might be. Those details might be demanded in any other courtroom, but this is New York and the defendant is Donald Trump.
For Bragg and his team, it is all about what they can get out of this case despite the law. In that sense, they found a kindred spirit in their star witness, and Michael Cohen has finally found a place that values what he calls on his reality show promo his “particular set of skills.”
Jonathan Turley is an attorney and professor at George Washington University Law School.
Michael Cohen raised his right hand on Monday in the Manhattan trial of Donald Trump and swore to tell the truth. It was a meaningless gesture. Cohen has done it before and then proceeded to lie under oath. He went to prison for it after lying to courts, lying to banks, lying to Congress, and lying to the IRS. Yet, once again, Cohen insists that now he’s telling the truth. He wants jurors to believe him. This time.
Cohen presents a contradiction about truth and falsity. In philosophy and logic, it’s known as the “liar’s paradox,” and it bedevils juries whenever habitual liars take the witness stand and promise to tell the truth.
The paradox is this: if a liar indeed lied, then his admission of his lies is truthful. Unless, of course, he is lying about the lie and everything else. You can never really know. The search for truth becomes impossible. In a court of law where the central witness is a chronic fabulist, the “liar’s paradox” equals reasonable doubt.
It was on full display Monday when Trump’s one-time self-proclaimed “fixer” failed to connect the accused to any cognizable crime. But Cohen readily confessed that he often lied and bullied people. He also deceived his own client, Trump, by secretly recording him shortly before the 2016 election.
Without permission, Cohen then shared it with the publisher of the National Enquirer. It was a sleazy maneuver that would merit disbarment for breaching the attorney-client privilege. No matter. Cohen was long ago disbarred over his criminal convictions.
When the recording was played in court it seemed to help, not hurt, the defense. Cohen refers cryptically to payments made to kill a story, which is not a crime. Trump appears somewhat in the dark and is heard asking, “What financing?” Cohen assured him that he was taking care of everything. His boss didn’t need to know the details. “I’ve got it…I’m on it,” said Cohen.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg knows that he is teetering dangerously close to suborning perjury. But he is wholly committed to convicting Donald Trump for crimes not committed or fully revealed.
It is bewildering why the prosecution ventured there, except to smear Trump with the illusion of some amorphous wrongdoing. It was utterly irrelevant since the matter dealt with former Playboy model Karen McDougal who was never called as a prosecution witness and is unconnected to the charges. Trump refused to pay her money over a purported affair that he denies.
Cohen then moved on to his tangle with ex-porn star Stormy Daniels, who was intensifying her apparent extortion scheme as voters were soon heading to the polls. Cohen admitted that it was his idea to pay $130,000 for her silence accompanied by a lawful non-disclosure agreement. As Trump’s lawyer, Cohen handled the negotiated contract which was later booked as “legal expenses” because that is what they were.
In fact, Cohen confirmed the accuracy of the bookkeeping when he explained that the money he received was compensation for his work on the legal settlement with Daniels, reimbursed payments to him, plus a retainer for his legal services as Trump’s newly named personal attorney.
Michael Cohen is questioned by prosecutor Susan Hoffinger during former President Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan state court in New York City, May 13, 2024, in this courtroom sketch. (Reuters/Jane Rosenberg )
So, where exactly is the original fraud that forms the basis for the 34 misdemeanor charges alleged by the prosecution? Nowhere.
Cohen later testified that Trump was concerned about how Daniel’s story might impact his 2016 electoral chances. Not surprisingly, that nugget is contradicted by other witnesses who informed the jury that the candidate’s main concern was his wife and family.
Either way, it doesn’t matter. Bragg’s argument is legally flawed because Trump used his own money, not campaign funds. The law imposes limits on the latter, but not on the former.
That is one of the principal reasons why the Federal Election Commission (FEC) determined there was no campaign finance violation. The Department of Justice agreed. No civil fine was levied or criminal charge rendered. Those two entities have exclusive authority over federal elections. Not a local prosecutor such as Alvin Bragg.
But that did not stop the Manhattan DA from usurping federal jurisdiction by bringing a campaign case that he has no power to enforce and for violations that don’t exist.
Under normal circumstances, the DOJ would have intervened to stop it. Instead, Attorney General Merrick Garland tossed a going away party for his deputy, Matthew Colangelo, who abandoned his prestigious job at the Department to become Bragg’s lead prosecutor.
Undeterred by the limits of the law, these ethically bankrupt prosecutors have cobbled together a lawless case by asserting that Trump falsified his own private business records with the felonious intent to conceal another crime that they still refused to identify. Presumably, it’s campaign finance. But it’s actually not.
Former FEC Chairman Bradley Smith put it this way in his column for The Wall Street Journal: “The ‘crime’ that Mr. Bragg claims is being covered up isn’t a crime at all.”
Even if the DA’s warped legal theory proceeds, he must still prove that Trump himself understood campaign finance laws and deliberately intended to violate them. There’s no evidence of that. Even experienced candidates struggle to comprehend the mind-numbing web of campaign regulations. That’s why they depend on lawyers.
Bragg wants to put Trump in prison for relying on the advice of his legal counsel. There’s a legal term for that. Nutty.
On cross-examination, Cohen will surely be confronted with his myriad of lies, which I’ve recounted in earlier columns. One in particular is worth remembering. In February of 2018, he told the New York Times, “The payment to Ms. Clifford was lawful and was not a campaign contribution or a campaign expenditure.”
Shortly thereafter, Cohen changed his tune. It’s changing still. When he retakes the witness stand on Tuesday he’ll regurgitate more lies and misinformation. None of it is worth a damn because Cohen represents the quintessential “liar’s paradox.” He’s told so many fibs that even his recantations are self-contradictory.
In the trial at hand, Cohen has a personal interest in lying —hatred and greed. When he isn’t trolling for dollars on TikTok by trashing Trump, he’s hawking a proposed reality show that he calls, “The Fixer.” Cohen needs to fix himself.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg knows that he is teetering dangerously close to suborning perjury. But he is wholly committed to convicting Donald Trump for crimes not committed or fully revealed. By calling Cohen as his star witness, the DA has forsaken his duty to seek the truth. He is aiding and abetting a convicted perjurer by enabling more lies.
This is the worst kind of government corruption. Unscrupulous, dishonest, and amoral. It is antithetical to justice and an embarrassment to our once respected legal system.
Gregg Jarrett is a Fox News legal analyst and commentator, and formerly worked as a defense attorney and adjunct law professor. His recent book, “The Trial of the Century,” about the famous “Scopes Monkey Trial” is available in bookstores nationwide or can be ordered online at the Simon & Schuster website. Jarrett’s latest book, “The Constitution of the United States and Other Patriotic Documents,” was published by Broadside Books, a division of HarperCollins on November 14, 2023. Gregg is the author of the No. 1 New York Times best-selling book “The Russia Hoax: The Illicit Scheme to Clear Hillary Clinton and Frame Donald Trump.” His follow-up book was also a New York Times bestseller, “Witch Hunt: The Story of the Greatest Mass Delusion in American Political History.”
Handy will spend 57 months in prison and is the first person sentenced for violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, a 1994 law that supposedly protects both abortion clinics and pregnancy resource centers, but has been heavily enforced by President Joe Biden’s DOJ against pro-lifers since the June 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Those efforts are led by Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, the head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, who just admitted following a report from The Daily Signal that she hid an arrest and its subsequent expungement from investigators when she was confirmed to her Justice Department post.
The president’s critics have accused Biden and the DOJ of weaponizing the FACE Act against pro-lifers while failing to charge pro-abortion criminals for the hundreds of attacks on pregnancy resource centers since the May 2022 leak of the draft Supreme Court opinion indicating Roe would soon be overturned.
Some, among them Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, have called for the repeal of the FACE Act.
“Today’s outrageous 57-month sentence for a progressive pro-life activist is a stark reminder: Biden’s DOJ is fully weaponized against pro-life American citizens, and they are using the FACE Act to do it,” said Roy in a statement following Handy’s sentence. “House Republicans should defund the DOJ weaponization, repeal the FACE Act, and stand up for the freedoms that we campaign on.”
U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly told Handy, according to The Washington Post, that “the law does not protect violence or obstructive conduct—nor should it. That’s what you’re being punished for; not your views on abortion, nor your very American commitment to peaceful protest.”
Handy is being represented by lawyers with the Thomas More Society, which said Tuesday that it is preparing to proceed with an appeal seeking to overturn her conviction and challenge the constitutionality of the FACE Act.
A Washington, D.C., jury had convicted Handy on Aug. 29, 2023, on charges of violating both the FACE Act and “conspiracy against rights” brought by the Biden DOJ against her and a number of other pro-life activists related to a “rescue” they performed at a D.C. abortion clinic, the Washington Surgi-Clinic.
Thomas More Society lawyers had asked the court to show leniency towards Handy with a 12-month sentence, while the Biden DOJ had requested a sentence up to six-and-a-half years.
🚨 BREAKING: Today, peaceful pro-life advocate Lauren Handy was sentenced to 57 months in federal prison on FACE Act charges brought by the Biden DOJ. Read our reaction: https://t.co/UYC0OU0E1a
— Thomas More Society (@ThomasMoreSoc) May 14, 2024
“There was only one thing around which Ms. Handy and her co-defendants were unified, and that was nonviolence,” said Martin Cannon, Thomas More Society senior counsel, in a statement on Tuesday. “They conspired to be peaceful. Yet, today, the Court granted the Biden Department of Justice its wish by sentencing Ms. Handy to 57 months—nearly 5 years in prison.”
“For her efforts to peacefully protect the lives of innocent preborn human beings, Ms. Handy deserves thanks, not a gut-wrenching prison sentence,” he added. “We will vigorously pursue an appeal of Ms. Handy’s conviction and attack the root cause of this injustice; that is, the FACE Act—which we believe is unconstitutional and should never again be used to persecute peaceful pro-lifers.”
Steve Crampton, who is also senior counsel with the Thomas More Society, called Handy’s sentence a “miscarriage of justice, plain and simple.”
“As I’ve gotten to know Ms. Handy, I’ve seen up close her unwavering passion for pro-life advocacy and resolute dedication to nonviolence,” he said in a statement. “The caricature of Ms. Handy that the Biden Department of Justice fabricated flies in the face of reality. Ms. Handy should have been shown the same mercy that she has herself shown to countless many downtrodden throughout her young life.”
Handy is a member of the Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, a pro-life group made up of activists with more unusual backgrounds than one might expect—including atheism, transgenderism, and more.
In March 2022, Handy and colleague Terrisa Bukovinac discovered the bodies of five preemie-sized aborted babies’ bodies in a box of fetal remains outside the Foggy Bottom-based abortion facility. That box also contained over a hundred pulverized remains of first-trimester babies, they said.
Pro-life activists believe the babies’ bodies are evidence that a D.C. abortionist was performing illegal abortions, but for two years now, D.C. authorities have stonewalled any questions about the babies’ deaths.
Handy has said that she was motivated to stop abortions from occurring inside Washington Surgi-Clinic after she viewed an undercover video published by the pro-life group Live Action that allegedly showed abortionist Cesare Santangelo discussing how he would allow babies to die if they were accidentally delivered during abortions.
The district does not have any laws that regulate how late during pregnancy a baby can be aborted. So, when the babies’ bodies were originally brought to light, D.C. police shrugged off the matter.
Ashan Benedict, the Metropolitan Police Department’s executive assistant chief of police, went so far as to tell reporters in April 2022 that the babies appeared to have been aborted “in accordance with D.C. law.”
Police have repeatedly told The Daily Signal since then that the case is still “under investigation.” Authorities will not share whether autopsies have been performed on the babies’ remains, though the D.C. Medical Examiner said in February that it would not immediately destroy the babies’ bodies after a slew of lawmakers demanded that they be preserved.
The mayor’s office has completely stonewalled questions about the babies. Even the office of the chief medical examiner for the District of Columbia directs queries to the mayor’s office—specifically, to Dora Taylor-Lowe, who refused to answer The Daily Signal’s requests for comment.
It remains unclear whether autopsies have been performed on the bodies of the five babies, whose bodies were photographed by Bukovinac. (Warning: These images are graphic and disturbing.)
And though D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser refused to address the possibility that Santangelo was criminally aborting late-term babies in the nation’s capital, she did accuse Handy of “tampering with fetal remains” in an April 2022 letter to Republican lawmakers highlighting that Handy herself faced FACE Act charges for blocking the entrance to a D.C. abortion clinic in October 2020.
Handy’s involvement in the discovery of the remains, as well as her participation in the October 2020 “blockade,” according to Bowser, are potentially “serious violations of federal law.”
Mary Margaret Olohan is a senior reporter for The Daily Signal and the author of “Detrans: True Stories of Escaping the Gender Ideology Cult.” She previously reported for both The Daily Caller and The Daily Wire. Email: marymargaret.olohan @dailysignal.com.
Below is my column in the New York Post on the first day of the examination of Michael Cohen. He is expected to start his cross examination today. How bad will it be? After lying to Congress, courts, banks, and most everyone else, it will be bad. Years ago, Cohen threatened a journalist and told him “What I’m going to do to you is going to be f—ing disgusting.” Well, that bad. On cross examination, Cohen faces a reckoning of biblical proportions.
Just before he took the stand, the New York Post revealed that Cohen has been peddling a reality show called “The Fixer,” including working with Colin Whelan, who helped create “Joe Exotic: Tigers, Lies and Cover-Up.” Whelan appears interested to stay within that genre.
The Cohen pitch came with a cheesy promo video where he promised viewers, “I am your fixer.”
His first post-Trump client, Bragg, may have to disagree.
Cohen had only one advantage for Bragg: His notoriously flexible morals and ethics, which allows him to say most anything to support his sponsors.
With the prosecution’s case almost over, Bragg needed Cohen to clearly state that Trump intentionally committed fraud to conceal some still poorly defined crime. The problem is that Cohen only confirmed that Trump knew he was going to pay for the nondisclosure agreement and that it would be buried before the election. None of that is unlawful.
On his reality show promo, Cohen tells viewers that he is now there to fix their problems because “the little guy doesn’t usually have access to people with my particular set of skills.” Those skills seem to have escaped all of the witnesses who were compelled to work with him.
Witnesses detailed how Cohen was ridiculed as someone “prone to exaggeration” and unprofessional. Former Trump associate Hope Hicks said that Cohen was constantly trying to insinuate himself into the campaign and that he “used to like to call himself Mister Fix It, but it was only because he first broke it.”
Cohen only succeeded in confirming that he put together this payment and advised Trump to go forward with it. He assured him that it would effectively kill the story before the election. None of that is illegal. The “Fix it man” assured Trump that he fixed it and now wants Trump to go to jail for following that advice.
This is the man who, according to Stormy Daniels’ attorney, Keith Davidson, expected to be Trump’s Attorney General. Davidson said that Cohen was “depressed and despondent” and “I thought he was going to kill himself” when he realized that he would not be made a cabinet member.
Cohen contradicted Davidson and insisted that he only wanted to be Trump’s personal lawyer.
He also admitted that he was unaware that the publisher of National Enquirer, David Pecker, had long killed negative stories about Trump and other celebrities for decades.
Cohen has yet to fix the problem for Bragg.
More importantly, he has added to the problem for Judge Juan Merchan. Many of us have ridiculed this case as devoid of any criminal act.
Indeed, Merchan has allowed the prosecutors to proceed without clearly stating what crime was being concealed.
It is not even clear why paying one’s lawyer a lump sum for his services and costs (including the NDA payment) was not a “legal expense” or how it was supposed to be entered on a business ledger.
Absent a sudden epiphany in his final testimony on Tuesday, Merchan should rule in favor of a directed verdict — that is, throwing the case out before it goes to a jury. If he instead sends this farcical case to the jury, it is Merchan, not Cohen, who may have a better claim to a reality show as the ultimate “Fixer.”
Jonathan Turley is an attorney and professor at George Washington University Law School.
Republican West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey is trying to find out why a former high-ranking Department of Justice employee is being used in the criminal prosecution of former President Donald Trump in New York.
Morrisey on Monday filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the DOJ regarding documents that could indicate whether the Biden administration colluded with New York prosecutors in Trump’s trial in which he is charged with falsifying business records to cover a payment of $130,000 before the 2016 election to porn star Stormy Daniels.
Matthew Colangelo was acting assistant attorney general — the No. 3 spot in the DOJ — in the Biden administration from January 2021 until he was hired by Democrat Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg in December 2022 and assigned as the lead prosecutor in Trump’s case. Colangelo, who had several roles in the Obama administration, reportedly was a paid consultant for the Democratic National Committee in 2018.
“We need to get to the bottom of this political prosecution of a former president who is on track to defeat the incumbent in November,” Morrisey said in a statement to the Washington Examiner, referring to the other criminal indictments Trump faces in Georgia, Florida, and Washington, D.C., as he seeks another term as president.
In a letter Monday to Attorney General Merrick Garland, Morrisey pointed out that Colangelo was hired by Bragg, and Colangelo worked as a consultant with the DNC — both evidence of collusion.
“Coordinating to advance election-influencing prosecutions directly violates the [DOJ’s] own guidelines, which says the Department cannot take ‘any action … for the purpose of affecting any election, or for the purpose of giving an advantage or disadvantage to any candidate or political party.’ ” Morrisey wrote. “So unlawful coordination must stop immediately.”
Morrisey wrote Americans have a right to know whether the DOJ is using taxpayer money as a “coercive lever” to “manipulate elections.”
“This strategy against a former President and current political candidate seems to be an unprecedented weaponization of the prosecutorial system for political ends,” he wrote.
In addition to Colangelo, Morrisey mentioned Trump’s prosecution for 2020 election interference in Georgia by Democrat Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, where public records revealed Fulton County prosecutors were in contact with the White House.
“In short, the public facts confirm that DOJ is tied up with Democratic prosecutors’ intent on doing exactly the kind of politically motivated work that Department policy says is forbidden,” Morrisey wrote.
In his FOIA request with Garland, Morrisey is seeking documents involving Colangelo’s transition from the DOJ to Bragg’s office, plus documents concerning meetings attended or contact by a DOJ employee with special counsel Jack Smith, Democrat New York Attorney General Letitia James, Bragg, Willis, or anyone who reports directly or indirectly to them.
For those of us who have criticized the cancel culture in higher education for years, the attacks and shunning have been unrelenting. The media has played a role in that culture and none more prominently than the New York Times. Recently, however, the mob came for liberal professors and media who have remained silent for years as conservatives and others were targeted on campus. Suddenly, there is a new interest in free speech and academic freedom, including by the Times editors who blamed cancel culture for the recent demonstrations and disruptions on campus.
Until good liberals were targeted on campus, cancel culture was treated as free speech. It did not matter that preventing others from speaking or being heard is the very antithesis of free speech.
The New York Times reached true infamy in the controversy over publishing Sen. Tom Cotton’s (R., Ark.) op-ed where he argued for the possible use of national guard to quell violent riots around the White House. It was one of the lowest points in the history of modern American journalism. Cotton was calling for the use of the troops to restore order in Washington after days of rioting around the White House. While Congress would “call in the troops” six months later to quell the rioting at the Capitol on January 6th, New York Times reporters and columnists called the column historically inaccurate and politically inciteful.
Reporters insisted that Cotton was even endangering them by suggesting the use of troops and insisted that the newspaper cannot feature people who advocate political violence. One year later, the New York Times published a column by an academicwho had previously declared that there is nothing wrong with murdering conservatives and Republicans.
Now, however, liberal professors and writers are being targeted. After years of turning a blind eye to conservative and libertarian figures being purged from faculties or canceled in events, the Times is alarmed that …students and other demonstrators disrupting college campuses this spring are being taught the wrong lesson — for as admirable as it can be to stand up for your beliefs, there are no guarantees that doing so will be without consequence.
What is most striking is how the editors chastise administrators for lacking the courage that they have not shown for years in standing up to their cultural warriors:
For several years, many university leaders have failed to act as their students and faculty have shown ever greater readiness to block an expanding range of views that they deem wrong or beyond the pale. Some scholars report that this has had a chilling effect on their work, making them less willing to participate in the academy or in the wider world of public discourse. The price of pushing boundaries, particularly with more conservative ideas, has become higher and higher…
It has not gone unnoticed — on campuses but also by members of Congress and by the public writ large — that many of those who are now demanding the right to protest have previously sought to curtail the speech of those whom they declared hateful.
It is certainly good to see the “Old Gray Lady” have second thoughts about cancel culture. However, she might want to look inwardly before casting more cultural stones.
Below is my column on the completion of the testimony of Stormy Daniels and the start of the testimony of Michael Cohen. With a dubious legal theory, the testimony has only magnified the criticism of the prosecution as parading sensational rather than material evidence before the jury and the public. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is losing even CNN hosts and legal analysts. Fareed Zakaria noted “I doubt the New York indictment would have been brought against a defendant whose name was not Donald Trump” Elie Honig has observed that, if brought in a less Democratic district, “I would say there’s no chance of a conviction.” The Bragg case was never “normal” but last week it seemed to go paranormal.
Here is the column:
“I see dead people.” Before this week, that claim was most associated with the nine-year-old character Cole Sear from the 1999 film “The Sixth Sense.” But now it is one of the talents claimed by former adult film actress Stormy Daniels in her bizarre testimony in Manhattan during former President Donald Trump’s trial.
It turns out that speaking to the dead was one of the few relevant things Daniels had to offer in the case, which is now on a collision course with a motion for acquittal before the case even goes to the jury.
The Daniels testimony will live in infamy in the annals of criminal justice. For two days, she offered lurid and completely irrelevant details whose only possible purpose was to humiliate Trump. Admitting that she was coached by the prosecution in her testimony, it was clear that she was there not to win a case but to win an election. Judge Juan Merchan allowed this legal burlesque to unfold in his courtroom, later blaming defense counsel who had vociferously objected to her appearance and the scope of the examination.
The cross examination was devastating. It shattered her laughable claim that she had not really been seeking money in shaking Trump down for a non-disclosure agreement, a claim contradicted by her own former lawyer. Daniels also revealed that she had spoken with the dead, and that a ghost had once held her boyfriend under water in a bathtub. She also said that she lived in a haunted house, only to discover later that the spirit haunting it was actually a large possum.
In a case based on a dead misdemeanor and a rapidly falling heart rate on the manufactured felony, one can understand the appeal of witnesses who can speak for the dead. Indeed, Daniels’s graphic testimony may prove the moral high point of this trial, since serial perjurer and disbarred attorney Michael Cohen is scheduled to testify Monday.
Cohen recently broke his pledge, midway through the trial, to stop attacking and taunting Trump. Cohen has insisted that he deserves the protection of the gag order by Judge Merchan as a witness, despite serious constitutional concerns. Merchan continues to threaten Trump with jail if he responds to Cohen’s unrelenting attacks. Merchan waited for the weekend before his testimony to suggest that the prosecutors tell Cohen to stop the public antics.
But it remains unclear what the order is protecting Cohen from. Not only is he trolling for money on social media with reference to the trial, but he is also widely being attacked by others. It is only Trump who cannot address his attacks, including political opposition to his campaign.
Cohen’s testimony will be the culmination of this travesty of a trial. But Bragg already jumped the shark with Daniels. After three weeks, legal experts are still debating what the crime was that Trump was seeking to conceal by recording payments for a standard non-disclosure agreement as a legal expense. (That is the same characterization used by Hillary Clinton’s campaign for its funding for the infamous Steele dossier.)
It is still unclear that Trump even knew how the payments were characterized, and the alleged false record was not even created until after the election was over. Yet he stands accused of using the “false business records” to somehow steal or rig an election that was already over.
After this circus with Cohen is complete, Trump will be allowed to testify. He would be insane to do so. Merchan has already said that he will allow a broad scope to cross-examination, making any appearance unlikely.
That is when Merchan will face a key test of judicial ethics. He has failed to protect the rights of the defendant from a baseless, politically motivated prosecution. He could insist that he simply felt Bragg had a right to present his case. He will soon be done and, as expected, it is entirely based on Cohen, a disbarred perjurer who will ask for his former client to be sent to prison for following his own legal advice.
After Bragg closes the prosecution’s case, the defense will make a standard motion for dismissal. Merchan should grant that motion. There has been no showing of an actual crime, let alone a clear record tying Trump to key decisions or actions.
Merchan will then have to decide whether he has the courage that Bragg lacked. Bragg knew that this case was ridiculous. The Justice Department had declined any prosecution for a federal campaign finance violation, the theory referenced in the case. Indeed, it did not even seek a civil fine over the payments. Bragg’s predecessor had also rejected the prosecution.
When Bragg took over, he similarly balked and stopped the move toward an indictment. But two prosecutors in his office, Carey R. Dunne and Mark F. Pomerantz, then resigned and started a public pressure campaign to get New Yorkers to demand prosecution.
Pomerantz went even further and took an action that some of us viewed as deeply unethical and unprofessional. Over the objections of his own former office and colleagues, he published a book on the case against Trump — then still under investigation and not charged, let alone convicted. It was a pressure campaign directed at Bragg. In New York, Bragg knew that he would either have to indict Trump or forget about reelection.
Merchan will now have to make the same choice in yielding to politics or principle…or to the paranormal. He has already allowed every effort to bring this dead misdemeanor back to life. But even Stormy Daniels may not be able to serve as Merchan’s medium in reaching back eight years.
Jonathan Turley is the J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at the George Washington University Law School.
Below is an expanded version of my New York Post column on the appearance of Michael Cohen Monday in the Manhattan prosecution of former President Donald Trump. His testimony will not be for the intestinally weak or ethically strong viewers. It has all the draw of a Nascar race on a rainy day.
Here is the column:
Michael Cohen is to criminal justice what car crashes are to Nascar: few want to admit it, but he is the perverse draw for the wreck-obsessed. The difference is that Cohen was already a rolling smoking wreck when he pulled up to the track.
Even for those of us who have long been critics of this case and its dubious legal theory, it has been surprising to see that the prosecutors had no more evidence than what we previously knew about. The assumption was that no rational prosecutor would base a major criminal case virtually entirely on the testimony of Michael Cohen who was just recently denounced by a judge as a serial perjurer peddling “perverse” theories in court.
The calculus of Alvin Bragg is now obvious. He is counting on the jury convicting Trump regardless of the evidence. He believes that all he needs is to check the boxes on the elements of the crime, no matter how unbelievable the vehicle.
The reason is that Bragg likely fears a directed verdict more than a jury verdict. After the government closes its evidence, the defense will move for a directed verdict on the basis that the evidence is insufficient to sustain a conviction.
In other words, when the prosecution rests this week, Trump’s counsel will stand and ask Merchan to end the case before it is even given to the jury. Many of us agree with that assessment. After three weeks of testimony, there is still confusion on what crime Trump was allegedly seeking to cover up.
Bragg has vaguely referred to using the denotation of payments to Daniels as “legal expenses” as a fraud committed to steal the election. However, the election was over when those denotations were made. Moreover, many believe that such a characterization for payments related to a nondisclosure agreement was accurate. (Hillary Clinton’s campaign claimed in the same election that hiding the funding for the Steele dossier as legal expenses was perfectly accurate).
Judge Juan Merchan, in my view, has failed repeatedly to protect the rights of the accused in this case. However, he can claim that there was enough alleged to give Bragg the chance to make his case. Thus far he has not done so and, if he is truly neutral, Merchan should grant the motion.
Bragg is counting on not only a motivated jury but a motivated judge to keep this anemic case alive. All he hopes that he needs to do is get this to a Trump-loathing jury to set aside any reasonable doubt. To do that, he found the ultimate motivated witness with a record of saying whatever serves his interests and those of his sponsors.
Even with a New York jury, however, you cannot assume that every juror will jettison doubt when it comes to the unpopular defendant. Yet, Bragg first has to show Merchan that someone claimed to have evidence directly tying Trump to an intentional fraudulent scheme to conceal a crime.
Thus far, Bragg is not even close. Indeed, many of his witnesses helped Trump more than they hurt him on the actual charges.
Bragg started with testimony on the killing of a story by David Pecker, former publisher of the National Enquirer tabloid, on an uncharged transaction to kill a story of a Trump affair with a different woman, Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model.
The relevancy was marginal but the testimony backfired in that Pecker admitted that Trump told him that he knew nothing about any reimbursement to Cohen for any hush money. He further said that he had killed or raised such stories with Trump for decades before he ever announced for president. He also said that he had killed stories for other celebrities and politicians, including Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tiger Woods, Rahm Emanuel and Mark Wahlberg.
For good measure, Pecker noted that Cohen often exaggerates and became loud and argumentative.
Witnesses said that Trump likely had a mix of motivations including sparing his family from embarrassment. Daniels’ own counsel contradicted the prosecution’s reference to the payment as “hush money.”
Prosecutors now need Cohen to check virtually every box on his own. It is not enough to say that Trump wanted to hush up the alleged affair. That is no crime and NDAs are common and legal.
Cohen has to say that Trump specifically knew and approved of the characterization of the payments as “legal expenses.” He further has to establish that Trump intended the denotation to conceal the payments for the purposes of election violations or fraud.
That could make this a “he said, he said” case, but only if Trump were to actually testify. However, Merchan’s earlier rulings make such testimony highly unlikely. The court approved a sweeping scope for cross examination if Trump dares to take the stand. No competent lawyer would advise him to do so after Merchan’s rulings.
That is exactly where Bragg wants to be: with a “he said” not a “he said, he said” case. With Trump effectively silenced, Bragg will argue that that is enough to get this to the jury and he can then allow the New York jury to jettison any notion of reasonable doubt when it comes to Donald Trump.
For most people, this cynical calculation will be immaterial when Cohen is called. Calling a convicted, disbarred, serial perjurer to any court is a spectacle in itself. Cohen seems like he has never met an oath that he does not want to break.
Indeed, he appears eager to expand his collection by announcing in the midst of the trial coverage that he is running for Congress. Given the blind rage of many New Yorkers, he could well succeed with single-issue, anti-Trump voters. If so, we will all be back just to see if a vortex to the netherworld opens up when Cohen stands on the House floor and swears that he is taking the oath “without . . . purpose of evasion.”
But before he becomes Rep. Michael Cohen, he will have to appear for his Nascar moment, though he will be the first wreck in search of a race.
As the lawfare crusade continues, former President Donald Trump is racking up significant victories in court. Down in Florida, President Trump secured an indefinite delay in his criminal case involving alleged mishandling of classified documents. This delay was ordered following revelations that Special Counsel Jack Smith and prosecutors mishandled and misrepresented evidence, which is uniquely ironic given the subject matter of the underlying case.
In Georgia, where another criminal case is pending, the Georgia Court of Appeals agreed to hear President Trump’s attempt to remove Democrat District Attorney Fani Willis from the case. The Georgia Court of Appeals is set to consider and decide this issue in the coming weeks.
It is becoming increasingly likely that the ongoing Manhattan criminal case is the only trial that President Trump will face before the November election.
Here’s the latest information you need to know about each case.
Manhattan, New York: Prosecution by DA Alvin Bragg for NDA Payment
How we got here: In this New York state criminal case, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg — who The New York Times acknowledged had “campaigned as the best candidate to go after the former president” — charged former President Donald Trump in April 2023 with 34 felony charges for alleged falsification of business records.
Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen paid pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 presidential election as part of a nondisclosure agreement in which she agreed not to publicize her claims that she had an affair with Trump (who denies the allegations). Nondisclosure agreements are not illegal, but Bragg claims Trump concealed the payment to help his 2016 election chances and in doing so was concealing a “crime.”
The trial began on April 15, and jury selection was completed on April 19. Judge Merchan, a donor to Biden’s campaign and an anti-Trump cause in 2020, has issued a gag order on President Trump generally prohibiting him from publicly speaking on possible jurors, witnesses, and other personnel in this case.
Latest developments: This week, the jury heard testimony from porn performer Stormy Daniels, also known as Stephanie Clifford. Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal are central to this case because prosecutors allege that former President Trump paid them off and then falsified business records, to prevent negative media stories during his 2016 presidential campaign. Daniels alleges that she had a sexual encounter with President Trump in 2006, but President Trump denies the affair.
On May 8, President Trump’s attorneys cross-examined and discredited Stormy Daniels, highlighting her history of being a pornographer, her strip club tour, and her history of profiting off allegations against Trump. That same day, Judge Merchan denied a second attempt by President Trump to dismiss this case for a mistrial. President Trump’s attorneys argued that Stormy Daniels’s testimony was unfairly prejudicial against Trump due to its inconsistencies and unnecessary detail, which could improperly influence the jury.
The jury is soon expected to hear from President Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen, who is the prosecutor’s star witness. Another key witness, Karen McDougal, is not expected to testify.
Judge Merchan handed the prosecution another win by ruling that former Federal Election Commission Chairman Bradley Smith, an expert on campaign finance-related issues, is limited as to what he can say in his testimony in the case. One of the defenses raised by the president’s legal team is that even if such payments were made, they were not necessarily to influence an election but rather to protect Donald Trump’s name, his brand, and his family. Chairman Smith was expected to testify in support of this theory, as he has long asserted that “almost anything a candidate does can be interpreted as intended to ‘influence an election’” but “not every expense that might benefit a candidate is an obligation that exists solely because the person is a candidate.” But after Judge Merchan’s ruling, Smith can now only testify as to the “general background as to what the Federal [Election] Commission is, background as to who makes up the FEC, what the FEC’s function is, what laws, if any, the FEC is responsible for enforcing, and general definitions and terms that relate directly to this case, such as for example ‘campaign contribution.’”
Fulton County, Georgia: Prosecution by DA Fani Willis for Questioning Election Results
How we got here: The Georgia state criminal case is helmed by District Attorney Fani Willis and her team of prosecutors — which until recently included Nathan Wade, with whom Willis had an improper romantic relationship. Willis charged Trump in August 2023 with 13 felony counts, including racketeering charges, related to his alleged attempt to challenge the 2020 election results in Georgia. President Trump is joined by 18 co-defendants, including Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows, Sidney Powell, and others. Some of President Trump’s co-defendants have reached plea deals; others have petitioned to have the case removed to federal court, each attempt of which has been denied. A trial date has not yet been set, though prosecutors have asked for a trial to begin on Aug. 5, just a few short weeks after the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
Latest developments: On May 8, the Georgia Court of Appeals agreed to hear former President Trump’s attempt to disqualify Democrat District Attorney Fani Willis from the pending criminal case in Georgia. Trial court judge Scott McAfee previously denied President Trump’s attempt to remove Willis from the case, but the Georgia Court of Appeals will now determine whether that denial was permissible.
Southern District of Florida: Prosecution by Biden DOJ for Handling of Classified Documents
How we got here: In this federal criminal case, special counsel Jack Smith and federal prosecutors with Biden’s Justice Department charged former President Trump in June 2023 with 40 federal charges related to his alleged mishandling of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence. The trial was set to begin on May 20, 2024, but this date has now been postponed indefinitely. Additionally, venue matters: The trial is currently set to take place in Fort Pierce, Florida, in a locality that heavily backed President Trump in the 2020 election. If that remains unchanged, the demographics of the jury pool may result in a pro-Trump courtroom.
Latest developments: On May 7, Judge Aileen Cannon postponed the trial date indefinitely in this case. In an order, Judge Cannon stated “that finalization of a trial date at this juncture … would be imprudent and inconsistent with the Court’s duty to fully and fairly consider the various pending pre-trial motions before the Court.” This delay comes after Special Counsel Jack Smith and other prosecutors admitted to tampering with evidence, stating “there are some boxes [of documents seized from Mar-a-Lago] where the order of items within that box is not the same as in the associated scans.” Prosecutors previously represented to the court that the documents were “in their original, intact form as seized.” Judge Cannon also recently unredacted documents showing the Biden administration’s involvement in this case.
As a result of this indefinite delay, it is unlikely that a trial will occur before the November election.
Washington, D.C.: Prosecution by Biden DOJ for Jan. 6 Speech
How we got here: In this federal criminal case, special counsel Jack Smith and federal prosecutors charged former President Trump in August 2023 with four counts of conspiracy and obstruction related to his actions on Jan. 6, 2021. President Trump’s lawyers have argued that immunity extends to actions taken by a president while acting in his official capacity and that, in any event, the First Amendment protects his right to raise legitimate questions about a questionable election process.
Latest developments: This case is currently stalled while awaiting a ruling from the Supreme Court on former President Trump’s immunity claim.
New York: Lawsuit by A.G. Letitia James for Inflating Net Worth
How we got here: In this New York civil fraud case, Democrat Attorney General Letitia James — who campaigned on going after Trump — sued former President Trump in September 2022 under a civil fraud statute alleging that he misled banks, insurers, and others about his net worth to obtain loans, although the loans have been paid back and none of the parties involved claimed to have been injured by the deals.
Following a no-jury trial, Judge Arthur Engoron — whom Trump’s lawyers have accused of “astonishing departures from ordinary standards of impartiality” — issued a decision on Feb. 16, 2024 ordering Trump to pay a $454 million penalty. Trump has appealed this decision and posted a required $175 million appeal bond. The appeals court plans to hold hearings on the merits of the full case in September 2024.
Latest developments: This case mostly remains on hold.
Steve Roberts is a partner and Oliver Roberts is an associate with Holtzman Vogel Baran Torchinksy & Josefiak PLLC. They can be reached at sroberts@holtzmanvogel.com and oroberts@holtzmanvogel.com.
Fox is reporting that Michael Cohen was back on TikTok last night using the Trump trial to troll for dollars. Cohen reportedly appeared in a teeshirt showing Trump in an orange jumpsuit and asked for more followers. He also reportedly announced his candidacy for Congress, which would allow him to take one of the seemingly few oaths that the serial perjurer has not violated.
Who would have thought that District Attorney Alvin Bragg calling a porn star to the stand would be the moral high ground for key witnesses? Next could be a disbarred, convicted perjurer who is still seeking to make money off the case.
Cohen previously pledged not to discuss the trial after many of us objected to Judge Juan Merchan’s gag order as unconstitutional, particularly as to Cohen who has continued to attack Trump on the air while defending the gag order for his own protection.
Cohen’s prior promise lasted a record of a couple days before he broke it on TikTok. Now he is appearing with a tee-shirt mocking Trump and using the moment to pursue a congressional seat.
For Judge Merchan, this is precisely what he was warned about. He has stubbornly enforced his poorly written and excessively broad order. After admitting that this was a “case of first impression” on the extension of gag orders to such things as repostings on social media, Merchan clarified his meaning not with a new order but by imposing sanctions on Trump.
Trump is now appealing the gag order and Cohen is doing his best to undermine not just his residual credibility but that of the court. Between the lurid testimony of Daniels and the continued antics of Cohen, Merchan looks completely feckless, if not farcical, in his own courtroom.
For Merchan and the prosecutors, none of this can come as a surprise.
There is an old fable of a scorpion who wants to cross a river and convinced a hesitant frog to carry him on its back. After all, if he stung the frog in the river, they both would die. That seemed logical so the frog agreed to do so only to have the scorpion deliver a lethal sting halfway across. When the frog asked why the scorpion would doom them both, the scorpion replies: “I am sorry, but I couldn’t resist the urge. It’s in my nature.”
Cohen has always been open as a grifter.
The problem is not Cohen. He continues to act to his nature. The problem is a political and legal system that enables him as a serial liar. It is a system that continues to call Cohen to the stand and ask him to swear to God to offer the “truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” without a signature joke drum roll before his punchline.
Yet, Cohen now wants to take an oath of office in the legislative branch. He seems to collect oaths the way some collect animal heads for a trophy wall. The question is whether other members could suppress laughter when he swears that he is taking the oath of office “without… purpose of evasion.”
While pundits, politicians and the press have long expressed outrage over attacks on judges by former President Donald Trump, many are now attacking any judge who delays any trial of Trump before the election. Democrats have accused Judge Aileen Cannon of being politically compromised, if not conspiratorial, in her delay of the Florida trial over the mishandling of classified documents. Yet, there is ample reason for the delay that many of us anticipated in this type of case when it was filed.
For months, many of us have said that we doubt that this type of trial could be held on the rapid schedule demanded by Special Counsel Jake Smith. Smith has repeatedly sought to curtail trial review and even appellate rights of Trump to advance his schedule.
His office has made convicting Trump before the election the overriding objective of its motion — a sharp departure from past Justice Department efforts to avoid trials to influence elections.
As a criminal defense counsel, I have handled classified material cases, and they are notoriously slow. Smith could have prosecuted this case in the shorter time frame if he simply charged obstruction. That would have also eliminated the glaring contrast with the handling of the Biden investigation into the current president’s retention and mishandling of classified material.
Smith decided to charge an array of document charges related to classified material. The defense must have access, review, and can appeal issues related to the classified procedures. Yet, Smith wanted both the array of document charges and a fast track to trial. The Supreme Court has agreed with Cannon that Smith’s desire to secure a conviction before the election is not the overriding consideration.
Judge Cannon is faced with recent admissions that the government mixed up files in the boxes and staged the famous photos of documents strewn over a floor with classified jackets. Most importantly, disputes over the relevant documents continues as expected in the case. Nevertheless, leading democrats are denouncing Cannon as a partisan hack.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on federal courts and oversight, accused Cannon of “deliberately slow-walking the case.” Ignoring the fact that similar cases have taken much longer to go to trial, Whitehouse simply declared “it is hard for me not to reach the conclusion that this [judge] is deliberately slow-walking the case to put it into a position where should [Trump] be elected, he can order that the investigation and prosecution be terminated.”
His colleague Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) insisted that Cannon was “managing this case in a way that is making it highly unlikely that it will be resolved in a timely fashion.”
Coons added “Justice deferred is often justice denied.” It is a bizarre statement. Classified documents cases routinely take longer to go to trial. The alternative is to cut off the ability of the defense to fully review the documents and review objections for resolution before trial. Yet, because the defendant is Trump and these Democrats want the trial to influence the election, such defense protections are now evidence of judicial bias. They, of course, ignore that Cannon has ruled repeatedly against major Trump motions in the case.
Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), a member of the Judiciary Committee, said Cannon’s “at it again, doing everything she can to delay.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), offered the most telling line. He said, “I question whether this judge understands the magnitude or the legal import of this trial.”
Indeed, it is the timing as much as the charges that makes this so important to the Justice Department and the Democrats. Smith has crafted this case to impact the election and the failure of the court to support that effort is apparently grounds for recusal.
Blumenthal called for such a motion before the window is lost before the election: “It’s a classic dilemma for justice that a particular judicial officer may be conducting a trial that could be better done by somebody else.”
Despite the statement of his colleague Coons, this is a case where justice delayed is justice.
Below is my New York Post column on the unseemly scene in the courtroom of Judge Juan Merchan as prosecutors used porn star Stormy Daniels to present lurid details on her alleged tryst with former president Donald Trump. It was a dumpster fire that Judge Merchan watched burn for a full day and then said the jury may have to disregard much of what they saw and heard.
Here is the column:
Before the start of the Manhattan prosecution of former president Donald Trump, I characterized the case of District Attorney Alvin Bragg as based on a type of obscenity standard.
In a 1984 pornography case, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart wrote “I shall not today attempt further to define [obscenity]. . . . But I know it when I see it.”
Bragg has refused to clearly define the crime that Trump was seeking to conceal when payments for a non-disclosure agreement were listed as a legal expense. We would just know it when we saw it at trial. We are still waiting, but this week, Bragg seems to be prosecuting an actual obscenity case.
The prosecution fought with Trump’s defense counsel to not only call porn star Stormy Daniels to the stand, but to ask her for lurid details on her alleged tryst with Trump. The only assurance that they would make to Judge Juan Merchan was that they would “not go into details of genitalia.” For Merchan, who has largely ruled against Trump on such motions, that was enough. He allowed the prosecutors to get into the details of the affair despite the immateriality of the evidence to any criminal theory.
Neither the NDA nor the payment to Daniels is being contested. It is also uncontested that Trump wanted to pay to get the story (and other stories, including untrue allegations) from being published.
The value of the testimony was entirely sensational and gratuitous, yet Merchan was fine with humiliating Trump. Daniels’ testimony was a dumpster fire in the courtroom.
The most maddening moment for the defense came at the lunch break when Merchan stated, “I agree that it would have been better if some of these things had been left unsaid.” He then denied a motion for a mistrial based on the testimony and blamed the defense for not objecting more. That, of course, ignores the standing objection of the defense to Daniels even appearing, and specific objections to the broad scope allowed by the court.
This is precisely what the defense said would happen when the prosecutors only agreed to avoid “genitalia.” There was no reason for Daniels to appear at all in the trial. Even if he was adamant in allowing her, Merchan could have imposed a much more limited scope for her testimony. He could also have enforced the limits that he did place on the testimony when it was being ignored by both the prosecutors and the witness.
Merchan said that he is considering a limiting instruction for the jury to ignore aspects of the testimony. But that is little comfort for the defendant.
The court was told that this would happen, it happened, and now the court wants to ask the jury to pretend that it did not happen. Merchan knows that there is no way for the jury to unhear the testimony. More importantly, the prosecution knew that from the outset.
Daniels appeared eager to share the stories for the same reason that she was eager to sell her story. While she said that she “hates” Trump and wants him “held accountable,” Daniels is no victim. She had an alleged tryst with Trump and then sought to cash in on the story.
It is a standard form of extortion of celebrities. She later sought to cash in on the notoriety by appearing in strip clubs as part of a “Make America Horny Again” tour. She is in her element in Merchan’s courtroom.
In New York, the relevance or credibility of witnesses like Daniels is largely immaterial.
New Yorkers elected a state attorney general, Letitia James, who ran on the pledge to bag Trump on something — without specifying any crime.
Bragg then indicted Trump without clearly defining any crime — a debate that continues among legal experts after two weeks of testimony.
This is entertainment for many in New York — as is the thrill of the possibility of his going to jail under Merchan’s poorly written and arguably unconstitutional gag order.
When it comes to a thrill kill trial, who better to call than Daniels?
After all, she has been treated as a heroine by many, even being given the key to the city of West Hollywood, California, on “Stormy Daniels Day.”
Well, it was Stormy Daniels Day in Judge Merchan’s courtroom this week, and it is a bit late for the court to express shock over her testimony.
It is not the witness, but the case that seems increasingly obscene.
You have a judge who should have recused himself given his daughter’s major role as a Democratic activist and fundraiser.
You have a gag order that is allowing a New York Supreme Court justice to regulate what the leading candidate for the presidency may say in an election on the weaponization of the legal system.
Below is my column in The Hill on the expected appearance of Michael Cohen in the Manhattan trial of former president Donald Trump. It will be a scene that is both mesmerizing and repellent for many, particularly in the bar.
Here is the column:
A disbarred, serial perjurer walks into a courtroom and asks to take an oath . . . No, seriously, this is not a joke. Michael Cohen will soon appear in a Manhattan courtroom in what is sure to be one of the most bizarre moments in legal history.
Cohen nearly comprises the prosecution’s entire case against former President Donald Trump under a criminal theory that still has many of us baffled. It is not clear what crime Trump was supposedly trying to conceal by making “hush-money” payments to former porn actress Stormy Daniels. What is clear is that none of the witnesses called in recent weeks has had any direct involvement with Trump on the payments. The witnesses had a lot to say about Cohen, and most of it was not good. They described an unprofessional, self-proclaimed “fix-it man” who created a shell corporation to buy out Daniels with his own money. The money was later paid back by Trump after the election, with other legal expenses.
So, Cohen will now make the pitch to the jury that they should put his former client in jail for following his own legal advice. This would be difficult even for a competent and ethical lawyer. For Cohen, it is utter insanity. But Bragg is betting on a New York jury looking no further than the identity of the defendant to convict.
Cohen has an impressive history of lies and exaggerations that may be unparalleled. Just weeks ago, another judge denounced him as a serial perjurer who was still gaming the system. This is not the defendant, mind you, but Alvin Bragg’s star witness.
When a journalist pursued a story Cohen did not like, he told the reporter that he should “tread very f—ing lightly because what I’m going to do to you is going to be f—ing disgusting. Do you understand me?”
It is not hard to “understand” Cohen. He has long marketed his curious skill of voluntarily saying whatever the highest bidder wants him to say. He is a convicted perjurer who seems to lie even when the truth would do. Each time he is caught lying, he claims to be the sinner who has finally seen the light, seeking redemption.
When he was called before the House to testify against Trump soon after his plea agreement with the Justice Department (for lying), Cohen was again accused of perjury. House Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), warned Cohen repeatedly that he had better tell the truth this time. Cohen then testified that Trump wanted him to work in his administration and offered him multiple jobs, which he turned down. He also claimed, “I have never asked for, nor would I accept, a pardon from President Trump.” Multiple sources have said that Cohen’s lawyer pressed the White House for a pardon, and that Cohen unsuccessfully sought a presidential pardon after FBI raids on his office and residences last year.
Even after being stripped of his law license and sentenced to three years in prison, Cohen continued the pattern. In 2019, Cohen failed to appear to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee, citing an inability to travel due to surgery. He was then seen partying before the hearing date with five friends.
Even while in jail, Cohen was accused of lying to a court, in violation of an order for early release due to medical problems. He was ordered back into custody after being spotted at a high-end restaurant.
But the most impressive moment came when Cohen was put back on the stand under oath and matter-of-factly claimed that he had lied in his prior hearing, when he pleaded guilty to lying.
In his 2018 guilty plea before U.S. District Judge William Henry Pauley III, Cohen admitted to this conduct under oath.
Then, when Cohen was asked by Trump’s counsel, “Did you lie to Judge Pauley when you said that you were guilty of the counts that you said under oath that you were guilty of? Did you lie to Judge Pauley?”
Cohen responded, “Yes.” He was then again asked “So you lied when you said that you evaded taxes to a judge under oath; is that correct?” He again responded, “Yes.”
Most of us expected the Justice Department to bring new perjury charges at that point. It is rare that a defendant will actually take the stand and confess to perjury. However, Cohen was now useful again. This time, he was willing to deliver Trump. The Justice Department and Manhattan prosecutors were clearly willing to tolerate a little perjury for that prize.
Cohen’s conduct has already loomed large in the Manhattan proceedings. When Keith Davidson took the stand — the attorney who represented both Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal — he recounted how Cohen was furious about not being offered a job in the White House. That directly contradicts Cohen’s congressional testimony. Davidson said that Cohen believed he might be named attorney general.
The account, if true, shows that Cohen is not only unethical, but also delusional. Cohen was found incapable of being an attorney, let alone an attorney general.
As prosecutors set the table for the grand arrival of their star witness, the testimony only got worse. David Pecker, the former owner of the National Enquirer, said charitably that Cohen was “prone to exaggeration.”
Davidson described Cohen’s profane and unprofessional conduct, stating that “the moral of the story is nobody wanted to talk to Cohen.” That may be the first time the word “moral” was used in the same line with Cohen.
Former Trump associate Hope Hicks mocked Cohen on the stand. She said that he constantly tried to insinuate himself into the campaign, without success, and that he “used to like to call himself Mister Fix It, but it was only because he first broke it.” Mind you, these were his fellow prosecution witnesses, not the defense.
These witnesses also contradicted the basis for the prosecution. Pecker said that he killed stories for various celebrities for years, and that he did so for Trump for over a decade before he ran for office. Davidson testified that he did not consider the deal to be “hush money” but simply “consideration” to kill bad press.
Hicks testified that she believed Trump wanted to kill the stories in significant part to protect his family from embarrassment.
Cohen could not even maintain a consistent position during the trial. Many of us have denounced the gag order on Trump that prevents him from responding to Cohen’s unrelenting attacks in the media. Cohen then promised to stop any further comments. That promise may have set a record for Cohen. He kept it for roughly three days before being accused of trolling for dollars on social media by attacking Trump.
District Attorney Bragg will now call this disbarred, serial perjurer to make the case against a former president. Under New York law, the oath administered by the court is supposed “to awaken the conscience and impress the mind of the witness in accordance with that witness’s religious or ethical beliefs.”
Before the bailiff administers the oath to Cohen, Judge Juan Merchan may have to warn spectators in the courtroom not to laugh. For anyone familiar with Cohen, it will sound like the ultimate punchline to a bad joke.
Jonathan Turley is the J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at the George Washington University Law School.
Five West Virginia middle school girls banned from participating in track and field meets after they protested against a trans athlete last week are allowed to compete again, a judge ruled Thursday night. Judge Thomas A. Bedell issued a preliminary injunction that prevents the Harrison Board of Education and its schools from penalizing student-athletes for their speech. (https://wordpress.com/post/whatdidyousay.org/90958)
The school board denied allegations of retaliation against the students, and instead asserted the students were allowed to protest without hindrance and with full awareness and permission from coaches and the principal.
Liars don’t win trials. The truth does. That’s how it’s supposed to work, anyway.
Fulfilling that maxim is the challenge for the defense in the Manhattan trial of Donald Trump. Lawyers for the former President are tasked with exposing the legal deceit of District Attorney Alvin Bragg and the chronic dishonesty of his star witness, Michael Cohen. Compounding the challenge is a presiding judge, Juan Merchan, whose anti-Trump bias is conspicuous and disgraceful.
Back on the stand Thursday was the Beverly Hills attorney who negotiated payments for two women who demanded exorbitant cash from Trump in exchange for their silence about purported affairs. But the witness, Keith Davidson, admitted he had no contact whatsoever with the defendant and never met him. He dealt exclusively with Trump’s ex-lawyer, Cohen, who appeared to be acting entirely on his own. Nothing in his testimony involved crimes allegedly committed by Trump.
Davidson’s description of Cohen was both accurate and scathing —profane, offensive, unceasingly angry, and often threatening. Importantly, he depicted Cohen as a liar who turned bitter toward Trump when the newly elected president refused to take him to Washington, D.C. Jurors learned that Cohen had delusions of grandeur, envisioning himself as White House chief of staff or even attorney general of the United States.
When his bubble burst, Cohen detonated like a nuclear device with seething hatred for his former boss that became a maniacal obsession. He raged to Davidson, “Jesus Christ, can you f***ing believe I’m not going to Washington after everything I’ve done for that guy?” Cohen seemed suicidal. This helps shape the defense theory that Cohen’s real objective in testifying against Trump is vengeance, not truth.
It’s hard to imagine that any sentient or ethical prosecutor would ever rest his case on the slumped shoulders of an unhinged and inveterate liar like Cohen. After confessing in 2018 to a string of shameful fabrications under oath, he was dispatched to prison for perjury and fraud. He is exactly what a federal judge called him recently, “a serial perjurer.” He’s the Talented Mr. Ripley…without the talent.
After appearing incessantly on television shows trashing Trump and calling him a criminal, Cohen has taken to TikTok during the trial to comment on the testimony and escalate his Trump tirades. His social media rants reap financial profits, which means that now, more than ever, he has an economic motive to lie. Indeed, his livelihood depends on it. Prosecutors’ heads must have exploded when they discovered what he was doing. What little credibility Cohen might have brought to the courtroom has vanished.
FILE – Michael Cohen, former personal lawyer to former President Donald Trump is seen outside federal court in New York City on Thursday, Dec. 14, 2023. (Yuki Iwamura/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The mere mention of Cohen’s name in a court of law should equal “reasonable doubt.” He’s the definition of untrustworthy. Without him there is no legitimate case to be prosecuted. But instead of throwing in the towel by admitting that their central witness has gone rogue and self-destructed, Bragg persists in his contemptible pursuit of Trump. The D.A. is like an attack dog who won’t let go.
If there is a sleaze factor to the trial, it has rubbed off on Bragg’s witnesses more than Trump. Increasingly, the defendant resembles a victim of blackmail, which the law defines as a demand for money under threat.
If Bragg thought that Davidson would be a stellar witness for the prosecution, it may have backfired. He refused to call the Stormy Daniels payment “hush money or a payoff” while insisting that its proper definition is “consideration.” That is a fancy legal term in contract law that simply means an exchange of benefits. Here, it was compensation in return for a non-disclosure agreement. Booking it as a legal expense would, therefore, be manifestly proper.
This key testimony blows a gaping hole in all of Bragg’s 34 charges against Trump that he falsified private business records. What was false? The Daniels deal was a legal settlement negotiated by two lawyers that culminated in the execution of a legal document. Of course, it was a legal expense. What else would it be?
On cross-examination, Davidson melted like a Joe Biden ice cream cone when confronted with evidence that he was once investigated by law enforcement for criminal extortion, although never charged. He admitted that much of his practice involved “extracting” money (he preferred to label them “settlements”) from celebrities. He also “brokered sex tapes.” For the defense, it fits a pattern of squeezing prominent people for cash during times of vulnerability. People such as Donald Trump.
If there is a sleaze factor to the trial, it has rubbed off on Bragg’s witnesses more than Trump. Increasingly, the defendant resembles a victim of blackmail, which the law defines as a demand for money under threat. In 2016, as the presidential election neared, the cash ultimatums intensified and, in the case of Daniels, Trump reluctantly capitulated.
However, that does not mean that Trump himself committed any crimes. His personal reimbursements to Cohen did not constitute a violation of election laws, as Bragg contends. The two government departments that have exclusive authority over such matters —the Federal Election Commission and the Justice Department— correctly concluded that the payments to Daniels did not constitute an unlawful contribution.
In other words, there’s no there there. But Alvin Bragg could care less. He deliberately commandeered a state statute that has no application to a federal election and twisted it into a pretzel to bring a preposterous charge against Trump that is utterly unsupported by the facts and the law.
The consternation for the defense is the jurors who may be predisposed to convict in a politically charged case involving a presidential candidate they might dislike. Are they capable of setting aside their personal beliefs to see through the prosecution’s charade? Or will they be snookered into believing that there is an election crime here, even though there is none?
When an unscrupulous prosecutor contorts statutes and deploys nefarious or lying witnesses to fool a jury into convicting an innocent defendant, it is an assault on the rule of law and an abuse of our justice system. In Manhattan, the crooked cards are stacked against Trump.
Gregg Jarrett is a Fox News legal analyst and commentator, and formerly worked as a defense attorney and adjunct law professor. His recent book, “The Trial of the Century,” about the famous “Scopes Monkey Trial” is available in bookstores nationwide or can be ordered online at the Simon & Schuster website. Jarrett’s latest book, “The Constitution of the United States and Other Patriotic Documents,” was published by Broadside Books, a division of HarperCollins on November 14, 2023. Gregg is the author of the No. 1 New York Times best-selling book “The Russia Hoax: The Illicit Scheme to Clear Hillary Clinton and Frame Donald Trump.” His follow-up book was also a New York Times bestseller, “Witch Hunt: The Story of the Greatest Mass Delusion in American Political History.”
The Trump short list for vice presidential candidates is reportedly down to Ohio Senator, J.D. Vance, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum. Rubio is a favorite for many due to his record in the Senate and his appeal to hispanic voters (where the GOP is hoping to make gains in the coming election). The problem is not Rubio or his record, but his residence.
TheTwelfth Amendment contains a habitation or “favorite sons” provision: “The Electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves.”
The risk is that Florida’s electoral votes could be challenged in any election since both Trump and Rubio reside in the state. That is a chunk of 30 votes in a close election. In addition other states which sought to block Trump from the ballot like Colorado could try this new tack to derail his campaign.
The most obvious option is for either Trump or Rubio to move. The easiest would be for Trump to move since Rubio represents Florida. That could include either New York or New Jersey (where his Bedminster property is located).
That option would be costly for Trump in terms of taxes. Moreover, Trump is desperately trying to get out of New York where he is effectively shackled to the defense table as his opponent, President Joe Biden, campaigns around the country.
The funny thing is that Trump has been campaigning in New York and drawing some large crowds. It would be the height of irony if Trump ends up making New York competitive with a mix of the time forced to be in the state and a change of residency.
Alternatively, Rubio could resign from the Senate and focus on running with a residence in a different state. He could also attempt a more creative approach and just change residency for the election.
Under Article I, Section 3, Clause 3:
No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen.
Rubio can argue that he was “an Inhabitant” of Florida “when elected.” Given the recent controversy over the appointment of Democratic Senator Laphonza Butler, it could be hard for some Democrats to object.
Yet, there will be some who will no doubt try. In 2000, Dick Cheney was challenged by three Texas residents when he moved back to Wyoming. They failed.
Ultimately, it could also be challenged in Congress under the Electoral Count Reform Act.
Despite declaring the challenge to the Biden election was an attack on democracy, Democratic members previously challenged Republican presidents in Congress, including Jan. 6th committee head Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.)
In other words, it could be done but it would likely draw challenges. Then again, why should this part of the election be any different from every other part?
A witness in the NY v. Trump case in Manhattan testified that former Trump attorney Michael Cohen wanted a job in the 45th president’s administration, despite previously denying wanting a White House role during congressional testimony.
Keith Davidson, an attorney who represented former pornographic actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, continued his testimony before the court Thursday, when he said that Cohen had been hopeful that he would land a position as White House chief of staff or attorney general in the lead-up to Trump’s inauguration.
Davidson also recounted that Cohen had been upset he was “not going to Washington” following Trump’s win in 2016.
“Can you f—ing believe I’m not going to Washington after everything I’ve done for that guy? I can’t believe I’m not going to Washington… I’ve saved his a–…,” Davidson recounted of a conversation he had had with a “despondent and saddened Michael Cohen” in December following the 2016 election.
Michael Cohen, former personal lawyer to President Donald Trump, appears outside federal court in New York on Dec. 14, 2023. (Yuki Iwamura/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Davidson testified that Cohen had called him while shopping in a California store memorably decorated with an “Alice in Wonderland”-type theme.
The NY v. Trump case focuses on Cohen paying Daniels $130,000 to allegedly quiet her claims of an alleged extramarital affair she had with Trump in 2006. Trump has denied having an affair with Daniels.
Cohen lamented to Davidson in the December call that he had not yet been reimbursed for the sum he had paid Daniels, according to Davidson’s testimony.
Former President Donald Trump awaits the start of proceedings at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York on April 22. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura, Pool)
Prosecutors allege that the Trump Organization reimbursed Cohen and fraudulently logged the payments as legal expenses. Prosecutors are working to prove that Trump falsified records with the intent to commit or conceal a second crime, which is a felony, in violation of a New York law called “conspiracy to promote or prevent election.”
Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
Davidson’s testimony that Cohen sought a White House job stands in stark contrast to what the former Trump attorney told Congress back in 2019.
“Sir, I was extremely proud to be personal attorney to the President of the United States of America. I did not want to go to the White House. I was offered jobs,” Cohen told Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, in 2019 during a House Oversight Committee hearing.
Michael Cohen, who is supposed to be a star witness in NY v. Trump, might have “torpedoed” the case before taking the stand by ranting about it on TikTok, according to legal observers. (Getty Images)
“I can tell you a story of Mr. Trump reaming out Reince Priebus because I had not taken a job where Mr. Trump wanted me to, which is working with Don McGahn at the White House general counsel’s office,“ he continued. “What I said at the time — and I brought a lawyer in who produced a memo as to why I should not go in, because there would be no attorney/client privilege. And in order to handle some of the matters that I talked about in my opening, that it would be best suited for me not to go in and that every president had a personal attorney.”
“I did not want to go to the White House,” Cohen added later in his testimony to Congress. “I retained, I brought an attorney in, and I sat with Mr. Trump, with him for well over an hour, explaining the importance of having a personal attorney, that every president has had one in order to handle matters like the matters I was dealing with.”
Cohen’s comments came after he pleaded guilty to five counts of willful tax evasion, one count of making false statements to a bank, one count of causing an unlawful campaign contribution and one count of making an excessive campaign contribution in 2018. He again pleaded guilty in November of that same year to lying to Congress about testimony regarding the work he had done on a project to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.
A court sketch depicts former President Donald Trump’s appearance in Manhattan Criminal Court in New York on April 19. (Christine Cornell)
Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison and has since been released.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner, R-Ohio, and House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., are currently demanding the Justice Department investigate Cohen. They allege that he committed perjury and “knowingly” made false statements while testifying before Congress in 2019.
Turner and Stefanik argue that Cohen is being used as the prosecution’s “star witness” in the NY v. Trump case, despite his previous conviction.
Trump, meanwhile, has slammed the trial as a “scam” and “hoax” promoted by the Biden administration and led by a “conflicted judge.”
Former President Donald Trump leaves Trump Tower to attend his trial for allegedly covering up hush money payments linked to extramarital affairs in New York on April 22. (Charly Triballeau/AFP via Getty Images)
“This is a hoax. This is a judge who is conflicted — badly, badly, badly conflicted. I’ve never seen a judge so conflicted and giving us virtually no rulings,” Trump said outside the courtroom on Tuesday morning.
“I’m going to sit in the freezing cold icebox for eight hours, nine hours or so. They took me off the campaign trail. But the good news is my poll numbers are the highest it’s ever been. So, at least we’re getting the word out. And everybody knows this trial is a scam. It’s a scam. The judge should be recused; that he should recuse himself today, he should recuse himself today. And maybe he will,” Trump said.
Fox News Digital’s Brooke Singman contributed to this report.
Now this could truly be educational. Students protesting on our campuses have been offered free scholarships at Shiraz University in Fars. So, while Northwestern has reached a settlement with protesters to give scholarships to Palestinian students and positions to Palestinian faculty, U.S. protesters can now go to Iran for their education.
Mohammad Moazzeni, head of Shiraz University told media that “students and even professors who have been expelled or threatened with expulsion can continue their studies at Shiraz University and I think that other universities in Shiraz as well as Fars Province are also prepared [to provide the conditions].”
Warning: vegan meals are not available at Iranian protests. Instead, it has ordered the arrest and killing of writers and artists while holding such fun events as a cartoon competition on the Holocaust.
While expungements are not a common feature of the criminal justice system, it does have unique elements like judicially ordered blindings. Likewise, where else can you go where a criminal defendant was ordered to be executed by being tied into a burlap bag and thrown down a cliff with sharp rocks?
Some universities clearly have space after students were arrested for protesting the death sentence given a rapper. That includes Shiraz University where the Iranian regime’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) arrested students for protests.
The good thing is that U.S. students are already covering up their faces. Iranian women have faced arrest for being photographed without hijabs.
Students like Khymani James, the Columbia organizer declaring that “Zionists don’t deserve to live” have the right viewpoint but may find that the Iranian officials are less supportive in other respects.
Just a year studying abroad in Iran is worth a lifetime of education.
So Iranian universities are making the ultimate pitch to come for the free education and stay for the free amputations.
When Robert Mueller appointed Andrew Weissmann as one of his top advisers, many of us warned that it was a poor choice. Weissmann seemed intent to prove those objections correct in increasingly unhinged and partisan statements. This week, he ratcheted up the rhetoric even further in claiming that the nation is “one vote away” from the end of democracy if the Supreme Court does not embrace the sweeping claims of Special Counsel Jack Smith.
At the time of his appointment, many Republicans objected to Weissmann’s status as a democratic donor, including his reported attendance of the election night party for Hillary Clinton in 2016. My objection was not to his political affiliations but to his professional history, which included extreme interpretations that were ultimately rejected by courts. Weissmann was responsible for the overextension of an obstruction provision in a jury instruction that led the Supreme Court to reverse the conviction in the Arthur Andersen case in 2005.
Now he is predicting the end of democracy if the Court remand the immunity case for further proceedings. Weissmann told MSNBC anchor Jen Psaki on Sunday:
I think that it’s important to remember that at the outset, the court had already given Donald Trump the win that he was seeking, which is the delay of the DC trial.
So going into this, this was all upside for him. I mean, I think he had to be thinking, I’m making this really outlandish argument, with ramifications that couldn’t possibly be squared with the text and history. The text of the Constitution or the history of the presidency? So, it’s all upside if the court would actually bite on this. And so, what was surprising is that there were justices who actually were taking this seriously. And it just was, frankly, shocking.
Remember, going into this, the given was that private conduct was certainly not, immunized from criminal liability. What everyone’s talking about now is, hey, maybe they think that some of this is private and they can go forward, but that was what was given going into this. And the reason people are thinking that is because there seem to be four justices who were really taking Donald Trump’s claim of criminal immunity seriously. And we are.
I mean, I know it sounds like hyperbole, but I think your opening is so correct that we are essentially, as Neil put it, one vote away from sort of the end of democracy as we know it with checks and balances. And to say it’s an imperial presidency that would be created is, it’s frankly saying it would be a king, he would be criminally immune. And that that is what is so shocking is how close we are.
And we are really on the razor’s edge of that kind of result. But for the chief justice.
Just for the record, it sounds less “like hyperbole” than hysteria. The justices were exploring the implications of the sweeping arguments on both sides of the immunity question. What they were not willing to do (as does Weissmann) is simply dismiss any arguments of official status on the part of the accused. That would establish a dangerous ambiguity for the future as prosecutors claim that political statements are private matters for the purpose of prosecution.
Ironically, Weissmann’s lack of concern for the implications of such an interpretation is reminiscent of his prior sweeping arguments as a prosecutor that led to the stinging defeat in the Anderson case.
Of course, there is another possibility is that the justices were not seeking the end of democracy. The Court was honestly trying to get this standard correct not just for this case but future cases. To do so, it will require a record on the underlying actions rather than the categorical threshold judgment made by the district court. The argument showed justices exploring how to avoid a parade of horribles on either extreme with a more moderate approach.
As I previously noted, it has been almost 50 years since the high court ruled presidents have absolute immunity from civil lawsuits in Nixon v. Fitzgerald. That protection applied to acts taken “within the ‘outer perimeter’ of his official responsibility.”
Apparently, that immunity did not endanger democracy.
In United States v. Nixon, the court also ruled a president is not immune from a criminal subpoena. Nixon was forced to comply with a subpoena for his White House tapes in the Watergate scandal from special counsel Leon Jaworski. Since then, the court has avoided any significant ruling on the extension of immunity to a criminal case — until now.
There are cliffs on both sides of this case. If the court were to embrace special counsel Jack Smith’s arguments, a president would have no immunity from criminal charges, even for official acts taken in his presidency. It would leave a president without protection from endless charges from politically motivated prosecutors.
If the court were to embrace Trump counsel’s arguments, a president would have complete immunity. It would leave a president largely unaccountable under the criminal code for any criminal acts.
The first cliff is made obvious by the lower-court opinion. While the media have largely focused on extreme examples of president-ordered assassinations and coups, the justices are clearly as concerned with the sweeping implications of the DC Circuit opinion.
Chief Justice John Roberts noted the DC Circuit failed to make any “focused” analysis of the underlying acts, instead offering little more than a judicial shrug. Roberts read its statement that “a former president can be prosecuted for his official acts because the fact of the prosecution means that the former president has acted in defiance of the laws” and noted it sounds like “a former president can be prosecuted because he is being prosecuted.”
Weissmann is not concerned with the clear politicization of the criminal justice system by Bragg just before one of the most consequential elections in our history.
No, the threat is that justices may want to balance the interests over immunity by rejecting the extreme arguments on both sides. They may try to pursue a course that allows for immunity for official acts or functions while rejecting immunity for non-official acts. Some or all of Trump’s actions or statements could well fall into the unprotected category.
The sense of alarm expressed by legal experts is that the Court would not simply sign off on the absolutist arguments of Smith and, most importantly, allow for a trial before the election.
So how will democracy end if the Court adopts a middle road on immunity? It appears to come down to the loss of a possible conviction to influence the outcome of the election.
At the same time, MSNBC guests are also calling, again, for the packing of the Supreme Court. While conservative justices have repeatedly voted with the Biden Administration, it does not matter. They want the Court packed to guarantee outcomes with the appointment of reliable liberal justices. All of this is being defended in the name of democracy, as was ballot cleansing.
The problem with the escalating rhetoric is that there is not much room for further hysterics. Where does Weissmann and others go from here after predicting the imminent death of democracy?
Pundits have now predicted the creation of camps for democrats, killing journalists and homosexuals, the death of the free press, and tyranny. That leaves only systemic mutilations and Roman decimation. For lawyers to fuel this hysteria is a sad commentary on the state of our country. Whether a true crisis of faith or simple opportunism, it disregards centuries of constitutional history in overcoming every threat and obstacle. We have the oldest and most stable constitutional system in the world. To suddenly embrace tyranny would require all three branches, and the citizens as a whole, to shred an elaborate system of checks and balances.
We are better than that . . . and these inflammatory predictions.
Below is my column in The Hill on the first week of testimony in the Trump trial. It is making Rube Goldberg’s 13 step self-operating napkin look like a model of efficiency and clarity. It is so convoluted and illogical it is mesmerizing.
Here is the column:
Rube Goldberg, the inventor of bizarre machines that performed simple tasks through dozens of mechanical steps, was once asked about the essence of creating such fantastic, illogical machines. He replied, “An inventor is simply a fellow who doesn’t take his education too seriously.” After the first week of testimony, the trial of Donald Trump is increasingly looking like a mad prosecution machine by lawyers who don’t take law too seriously.
I have long been a critic of the Bragg indictment as legally incomprehensible. However, I must confess that after a week of testimony, some of us have developed a weird fascination with the utter madness of the scene unfolding in Manhattan. It was not until the second week of proceedings that Bragg even revealed part of his theory of criminality. For months, even liberal legal analysts have expressed dismay that Bragg’s indictment had not clearly stated what specific crime that Trump sought to conceal by allegedly misrepresenting payments to former adult film actress Stormy Daniels.
The premise of the prosecution always had that Rube Goldberg feel. It was so implausible as to be impossible. After all, the base charge is a simple misdemeanor under a New York law against falsifying business records. Trump paid Cohen hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees and costs, including $130,000 for a nondisclosure agreement with Daniels.
Bragg is vague as to what should have been noted on the ledgers for the payments. It is not even clear if Trump knew of this expense’s designation as a legal cost. However, it really did not matter, because the misdemeanor has been as dead as Dillinger for years.
The dead misdemeanor was shocked back into life by claiming that it was committed to conceal another crime. Under New York’s penal law, section 175.10, it can be a felony if the “intent to defraud includes an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof.”
For months, Bragg has suggested that the “other crime” was the violation of federal election laws, suggesting that the payment was really a campaign contribution Trump made to himself that was not properly recorded. The problem is that the Justice Department investigated that crime already and decided that it was not a viable criminal claim. It did not even seek a civil fine.
Bragg’s predecessor and Bragg himself rejected the theory behind this prosecution. But then a pressure campaign led Bragg to green-light a prosecution roughly eight years after the 2016 campaign.
In the trial, Bragg added a type of frying pan flip to his Rube Goldberg contraption by arguing that Trump may have been trying to hide his violation of another dead misdemeanor under yet another New York election law prohibiting “conspir[ing] to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means.”
In other words, Trump was conspiring to try to win his own election. This even though the notations were made after he had won the election, and even though Trump was running for a federal, not a state office.
So again, what is the unlawful means?
The machine then flips you back to the beginning — seeking “to influence the election.” There are still the federal election violations, but that theory was rejected after an investigation. And if it were a real crime, it would be brought by federal, not state prosecutors.
There are also the misdemeanor falsifications of business records under section 175.05. So, Bragg would use one dead misdemeanor to trigger a second dead misdemeanor to create a felony on the simple notations used to describe payments for a completely legal nondisclosure agreement.
This circular reasoning is already incredibly creative, but the actual evidence used to propel this ball through the machine is even wackier. Bragg decided to start with a witness to discuss an affair that is not part of the indictment. David Pecker, former publisher of the National Enquirer tabloid, had supposedly been paid to kill a story of a Trump affair with a different woman, Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model.
Pecker proceeded to make the prosecution case even more convoluted. On cross examination, Pecker admitted that Trump told him that he knew nothing about any reimbursement to Cohen for any hush money, that he had killed or raised such stories with Trump for decades before he ever announced for president and that he had also killed stories for other celebrities and politicians, including Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tiger Woods, Rahm Emanuel and Mark Wahlberg.
He also testified that Trump told him that paying hush money never really worked because stories still get out. And he understood that Michael Cohen was working as Trump’s personal counsel, not his campaign counsel. Finally, he testified that Trump had no direct involvement in arranging any payments to McDougal.
Pecker added that Bragg’s star witness, Michael Cohen, commonly exaggerated and often became loud and argumentative. Cohen will effectively ask the jury to send his former client to jail for following his own legal advice.
Bragg will now call to the stand Cohen, whom a judge just recently denounced as a serial perjurer who is continuing to game the system.
Even as legal experts debate what crime can be found in any of these flips and dips, Judge Juan Merchan seems content to listen as this weird machine bleeps and whirls in his courtroom.
That is why Bragg has created the perfect Rube Goldberg attraction. The artist himself explained his unlikely success by saying, “It just happened that the public happened to appreciate the satirical quality of these crazy things.”
In New York, that appreciation has moved from the satirical to the legal.
Jonathan Turley is the J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at the George Washington University Law School.
Former President Donald Trump returned to court in Manhattan on Friday for day eight of the NY v. Trump trial. Former American Media CEO David Pecker took the stand for cross-examination by defense attorneys who seek to poke holes in prosecutors’ allegations that Trump falsified business records.
Former President Donald Trump is on trial in Manhattan for allegedly falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal during his 2016 campaign for president.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg charged Trump with 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree. Trump pleaded not guilty to all 34 counts.
For prosecutors to secure a criminal conviction, they must convince a jury that Trump committed the crime of falsifying business records in “furtherance of another crime.” New York prosecutor Joshua Steinglass on Tuesday said the other crime was a violation of a New York law called “conspiracy to promote or prevent election.”
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Trump calls for Judge Merchan to ‘immediately’ lift gag order imposed upon him in criminal trial
Former President Trump and his team are requesting New York Judge Juan Merchan “immediately LIFT THE GAG ORDER” so that the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee can “freely state his views, feelings, and policies.”
“45th President Donald J. Trump is again the Republican Nominee for President of the United States, and is currently dominating in the Polls. However, he is being inundated by the Media with questions because of this Rigged Biden Trial, which President Trump is not allowed to comment on, or answer, because of Judge Juan Merchan’s UNPRECEDENTED AND UNCONSTITUTIONAL Gag Order,” Trump posted to his Truth Social Friday.
“His Opponents have unlimited rights to question, but he has no right to respond,” the post continued.
“There has never been a situation like this in our Country’s History, a Candidate that is not allowed to answer questions,” he continued. “Even Crooked Joe Biden is talking about the Sham Case, and others inspired by his Administration.”
“We request that Judge Merchan immediately LIFT THE GAG ORDER, so that President Trump is able to freely state his views, feelings, and policies. He is asking for his Constitutional Right to Free Speech,” he posted. “If it is not granted, this again becomes a Rigged Election!”
Merchan, who is presiding over the trial, imposed a gag order on the former president before the trial began, which prohibits him from making statements about court staff and potential witnesses. The former president is allowed to discuss the trial in other ways, and without mentioning those individuals.
Bragg has alleged Trump violated the order at least 14 times and is asking the judge to fine the former president $1,000 per violation. They also want Trump to be held in contempt of court.
Trump attorneys argue the gag order is a violation of the former president’s First Amendment rights.
The judge is expected to hold a hearing on the gag order alleged violations on Thursday. Merchan has not yet ruled.
Former President Trump suggested the White House as the venue for a debate against President Biden, saying he “would be very comfortable.”
The presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee, after hours in a Manhattan courtroom for the eighth day of his criminal trial, has repeatedly said he will debate Biden “anywhere, anytime, anyplace.”
Biden broke his silence on debating his 2024 opponent on Friday during an interview with radio host Howard Stern. Biden said he would be “happy” to debate Trump.
“…we’re willing to do it Monday night, Tuesday night, Wednesday night, Thursday night, Friday night on national television,” Trump said after court concluded for the week. “We’re ready. Just tell me where.”
“We’ll do it at the White House,” Trump added. “That would be very comfortable, actually. You tell me where. We’re ready.”
Day 8 of Trump’s hush money trial adjourned until Tuesday
(REUTERS)
Court was dismissed late Friday afternoon following the eighth day of the hush money trial against former President Donald Trump.
The last witness called to testify was Gary Farro, a former senior bank manager at First Republic Bank who worked closely with Trump’s ex-lawyer Michael Cohen, and who is expected to be a key witness later in the trial.
Cohen has said that he arranged the $130,000 hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels through First Republic.
Farro testified Friday that every time Cohen spoke to him “he showed a sense of urgency.” Farro was selected to manage Cohen. He testified that he was selected “because of his knowledge and ability to work with clients who may be a little challenging.”
Farro said that he believes he can identify Cohen’s signature. Cohen had more than one account at the First Republic, and they were all his personal accounts. Farro testified that he did not open any accounts for the Trump Organization.
Earlier in the day, ex-tabloid publisher David Pecker took the witness stand, followed by a long-time Trump Org. employee Rhona Graff, who said she had a “vague recollection” of seeing Daniels at Trump Tower.
The trial will resume on Tuesday, April 30.
Fox News’ Grace Taggart contributed to this update.
Long-time Trump ‘gatekeeper’ testifies working for Trump, Stormy Daniels considered for ‘Apprentice’
Rhona Graff testifies during former U.S. President Donald Trump’s criminal trial (REUTERS/Jane Rosenberg)
Rhona Graff, a long-time Trump Organization employee and considered a “gatekeeper” to former President Donald Trump, testified Friday in the hush money case against him.
New York prosecutor Susan Hoffinger has Graff if she ever saw adult film actress Stormy Daniels in the office at Trump Tower.
Graff said she had a “vague recollection” of seeing her in the reception area before the 2016 election.
Defense lawyer Susan Necheles cross-examined Graff. When asked about her 34-year tenure Graff said, “I never had the same day twice in all that time. It was very stimulating, exciting….”
Necheles asked if Graff if she recalled Trump considering Daniels for his reality show, The Apprentice.
Graff testified that she vaguely recalled it. that Stormy would be an interesting addition. Necheles asks if Daniels was at Trump Tower to discuss being cast for the Apprentice, and Graff said that she assumed so based on office chatter.
Necheles asked if Graff was responsible for sending checks to the WH; Graff says she was not.
Graff confirmed that she would see Trump sign checks, sometimes on the phone, “It would happen…”
When asked what kind of boss Trump was, Graff said, “I think he was fair…and respectful boss to me in all that time.”
Necheles asks if he respected her intelligence, to which Graff says she wouldn’t have been there 34 yrs if he didn’t.
Graff testified that her conversations with Trump were about business 99% of the time. He would occasionally ask about her family, sometimes telling her to leave early.
Graff said she attended his presidential inauguration and sat on the platform at the U.S. Capitol.
“It was a pretty unique, memorable experience,” she recalled.
Pecker testimony concludes with personal detail about Trump
(Getty Images)
At the conclusion of his testimony, ex-tabloid publisher David Pecker testified that former President Donald Trump was one of the first people to reach out following an anthrax incident at his company, American Media, Inc., (AMI)
Pecker was CEO of AMI until summer 2020, during which time he was publisher of news outlets like the National Enquirer, Men’s Fitness, and Star.
Defense attorney Emil Bove pressed Pecker if Trump cares about his family, which Pecker confirmed.
Pecker’s testimony was key in the hush money trial against Trump. Pecker said he had told Trump and his personal lawyer at the time, Michael Cohen, that he would be their “eyes and ears” for any negative stories that could crop up during the campaign in 2016.
One of those stories is now part of the driving force behind Trump’s hush money trial. Pecker previously admitted to working with Trump’s team to purchase and suppress a story from former Playboy model Karen McDougal about claims of a 2006 affair with Trump. She was reportedly paid $150,000 to keep quiet.
Fox News Digital’s Greg Wehner contributed to this update.
Pecker says ‘catch and kill’ term not used with Trump, prosecutors dispute his memory
(Getty Images)
David Pecker, former CEO of American Media, Inc., and publisher of the tabloid magazine National Inquirer, changed his testimony Friday about when he first heard the term “catch and kill.”
“Catch and kill” is a tabloid industry term that refers to the practice of buying the rights to a story without ever publishing it.
Pecker told New York prosecutor Joshua Steinglass Friday afternoon that “catch and kill” was not a term used with former President Donald Trump.
Pecker said he first heard the term from federal prosecutors. But the prosecution referred to the 2016 article in the Wall Street Journal that reported the National Inquirer paid for former Playboy model Karen McDougal’s story that she had an affair with Trump, which reads, “Squashing stories that day is known in the tabloid world as ‘catch in kill.’
Pecker then changed his testimony that the first he heard of “catch and kill” in the press.
Fox News’ Grace Taggart contributed to this update.
Court is back in session Friday after breaking for lunch, David Pecker resumes the witness stand
(Getty Images)
The hush money trial against former President Donald Trump has resumed shortly after 2:00 p.m. on Friday after a lunch break.
Former American Media, Inc., CEO David Pecker will continue to be questioned by New York prosecutor Joshua Steinglass.
Defense attorney Emil Bove is expected to also cross-examine the ex-tabloid publisher.
Earlier in the day the defense set out to highlight inconsistencies in Pecker’s recollection of key events in an effort to show hey may not be a credible witness. Trump’s lawyers also asked questions that emphasized the financial motives behind AMI’s decision to purchase the rights to Karen McDougal’s story about her alleged affair with Trump.
The decisions Pecker made, the defense attempted to show the jury, were based on what was best for AMI and not what was best for the Trump presidential campaign.
As for articles in the National Enquirer that attacked Trump’s political opponents, Pecker testified that the information reported was not original to the Enquirer and had been publicly reported previously.
Fox News Digital’s Chris Pandolfo contributed to this update.
American Media Inc., – or AMI – is a parent company and publisher of celebrity, health, and fitness outlets like Star, Shape, and the tabloid magazine National Inquirer.
David Pecker was the CEO of AMI until summer 2020. Pecker is a a longtime friend of former President Trump. He recently testified about the “catch-and-kill” scheme to hide allegations of a past affair that surfaced when then-candidate Trump was running for the White House in 2016.
According to Pecker, he told Trump and his personal lawyer at the time, Michael Cohen, that he would be their “eyes and ears” for any negative stories that could crop up during the campaign.
One of those stories is now part of the driving force behind Trump’s hush money trial. Pecker previously admitted to working with Trump’s team to purchase and suppress a story from former Playboy model Karen McDougal about claims of a 2006 affair with Trump. She was reportedly paid $150,000 to keep quiet. Pecker was granted immunity in 2018 after working with prosecutors on their hush money case against Cohen.
On Friday, The defense set out to highlight inconsistencies in Pecker’s recollection of key events in an effort to show hey may not be a credible witness. Trump’s lawyers also asked questions that emphasized the financial motives behind AMI’s decision to purchase the rights to Karen McDougal’s story about her alleged affair with Trump.
The decisions Pecker made, the defense attempted to show the jury, were based on what was best for AMI and not what was best for the Trump presidential campaign. As for articles in the National Enquirer that attacked Trump’s political opponents, Pecker testified that the information reported was not original to the Enquirer and had been publicly reported previously.
Prosecutors will continue to ask Pecker questions when court resumes at 2:15 p.m. after a lunch break.
Fox News Digital’s Greg Wehner contributed to this report.
President Biden said he would be “happy” to debate former President Trump on Friday during an interview with radio host Howard Stern.
“I am, somewhere, I don’t know when. I’m happy to debate him,” Biden said, after Stern said he didn’t know whether Biden would participate in a debate.
In a response after his criminal trial recessed for lunch, Trump eagerly challenged Biden to debate as soon as possible, even tonight in front of the Manhattan courthouse.
“Crooked Joe Biden just announced that he’s willing to debate! Everyone knows he doesn’t really mean it, but in case he does, I say, ANYWHERE, ANYTIME, ANYPLACE, an old expression used by Fighters,” Trump posted on Truth Social.
“I suggest Monday Evening, Tuesday Evening, or Wednesday Evening at my Rally in Michigan, a State that he is in the process of destroying with his E.V. Mandate,” the presumptive Republican nominee continued. “In the alternative, he’s in New York City today, although probably doesn’t know it, and so am I, stuck in one of the many Court cases that he instigated as ELECTION INTERFERENCE AGAINST A POLITICAL OPPONENT – A CONTINUING WITCH HUNT! It’s the only way he thinks he can win. In fact, let’s do the Debate at the Courthouse tonight – on National Television, I’ll wait around!”
Former President Trump’s criminal trial is in recess after defense attorneys finished their cross-examination of former American Media Inc. (AMI) CEO David Pecker.
The defense set out to highlight inconsistencies in Pecker’s recollection of key events in an effort to show hey may not be a credible witness. Trump’s lawyers also asked questions that emphasized the financial motives behind AMI’s decision to purchase the rights to Karen McDougal’s story about her alleged affair with Trump.
The decisions Pecker made, the defense attempted to show the jury, were based on what was best for AMI and not what was best for the Trump presidential campaign.
As for articles in the National Enquirer that attacked Trump’s political opponents, Pecker testified that the information reported was not original to the Enquirer and had been publicly reported previously.
Prosecutors will continue to ask Pecker questions when court resumes at 2:15 p.m. after a lunch break.
David Pecker is questioned during former U.S. President Donald Trump’s criminal trial on charges that he falsified business records to conceal money paid to silence porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016, in Manhattan state court in New York City, U.S. April 23, 2024 in this courtroom sketch.(REUTERS/Jane Rosenberg)
Defense attorney Emil Bove questioned ex-tabloid publisher David Pecker about the latter’s meetings with the FBI amid a since-closed federal probe into the payments made to Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels.
Pecker testified that the FBI approached him in April 2018. He said agents arrived at his home and searched his phone. Pecker said he could not recall the number of times he met with the FBI after that but confirmed it was at least one meeting.
Asked if those meetings were stressful, Pecker said his attorney was present and that he “felt good.”
Bove also asked about an apparent inconsistency in Pecker’s testimony. Pecker testified yesterday that Trump thanked him for his help in suppressing an unsubstantiated story about former President Trump fathering a child with a Trump Tower maid.
But according to notes cited by Bove in court, Pecker had previously told federal authorities that Trump did not express any gratitude to him or American Media during the meeting.
Pecker insisted that what he said in court was the truth.
“I know what the truth is,” he said.
Fox News’ Maria Paronich and the Associated Press contributed to this update.
The defense introduced a Wall Street Journal article published shortly before the 2016 election that revealed the National Enquirer had endorsed Trump and was supporting his presidential campaign.
“Since last year, the Enquirer has supported Mr. Trump’s presidential bid, endorsing him and publishing negative articles about some of his opponents,” the Wall Street Journal reported in 2016, noting that then-candidate Donald Trump and former American Media Inc. CEO David Pecker were “longtime friends.”
Newspapers routinely endorse presidential candidates and cover their opponents with a negative slant. The defense’s point was to show the Enquirer acted like any other publication.
For example, here’s how the New York Times endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016:
“In any normal election year, we’d compare the two presidential candidates side by side on the issues. But this is not a normal election year. A comparison like that would be an empty exercise in a race where one candidate — our choice, Hillary Clinton — has a record of service and a raft of pragmatic ideas, and the other, Donald Trump, discloses nothing concrete about himself or his plans while promising the moon and offering the stars on layaway. (We will explain in a subsequent editorial why we believe Mr. Trump to be the worst nominee put forward by a major party in modern American history.)
“But this endorsement would also be an empty exercise if it merely affirmed the choice of Clinton supporters. We’re aiming instead to persuade those of you who are hesitating to vote for Mrs. Clinton — because you are reluctant to vote for a Democrat, or for another Clinton, or for a candidate who might appear, on the surface, not to offer change from an establishment that seems indifferent and a political system that seems broken.”
Fox News Legal Editor Kerri Kupec contributed to this update.
Defense questions Pecker on National Enquirer’s motives
National Enquirer tabloid newspapers are arranged for a photograph at a newsstand in Louisville, Kentucky, U.S., on Thursday, Feb. 14, 2019. (Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Defense attorneys questioned former American Media Inc. CEO David Pecker about the editorial process of his tabloid, the National Enquirer, and whether the company buried Karen McDougal’s story to help Trump’s campaign.
The point of the questions was to show that the Enquirer was motivated by profits, not politics, when it purchased the rights to McDougal’s story about her alleged affair with Trump.
Trump attorney Emil Bove asked Pecker about the August 2015 meeting with Michael Cohen at Trump Tower and Pecker testified that prior to that meeting the Enquirer was already running negative stories about Bill and Hillary Clinton because it sold papers.
“Running those stories was good for [American Media Inc.],” Pecker said.
Bove introduced several examples of the Enquirer running negative stories about Trump’s opponents in the 2016 Republican primary, including Ben Carson and Ted Cruz. The attorney noted that some of the information in those articles was publicly available and published in other outlets, including The Guardian.
Pecker agreed with Bove that recycling material with a new angle is quick, easy and good for business. Pecker testified the Enquirer would’ve ran those stories even if he hadn’t discussed it with Trump.
This line of questioning builds the defense team’s narrative that negative stories about Trump’s opponents were in the public domain, and other outlets covered them well before American Media Inc. If those other publications aren’t being charged with campaign violations, the reasoning goes, why should Trump be for working with AMI?
Criminal defense attorney Mark Eiglarsh explained Friday that prosecutors face a difficult task of making the jury understand what the crime is former President Trump is accused of.
Joining “America’s Newsroom,” Eiglarsh said most juries can wrap their heads around crimes like murder or rape. But in this case, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office alleges Trump falsified business records in “furtherance of another crime” that until the trial was not made clear.
“In this particular case, you’re looking at them to see whether they understand this at all. They come into this thinking, well, wait, what’s the crime exactly? And why should we care? And I think that there’s a problem right now with the prosecution being able to show that what was done was unlawful,” Eiglarsh said.
New York prosecutor Joshua Steinglass on Tuesday said the other crime was a violation of a New York law called “conspiracy to promote or prevent election.” Prosecutors questioned former tabloid publisher David Pecker about a “catch and kill” scheme to have his publication purchase the rights to Karen McDougal’s story about her alleged affair with Trump and then bury the story.
But Pecker testified Thursday that his publication did the same thing for other celebrities including Arnold Schwarzenegger and Rahm Emanuel.
“You’re getting Pecker as an expert defense witness to say, for over 17 years this was commonplace. Buying stories wasn’t just because of an election, we did it all the time on behalf of Trump, but so did many celebrities. And it doesn’t mean the stories were true,” Eiglarsh said. “It’s the cost of doing business when you’re a celebrity, because people are constantly looking for cash grabs, or because you might have done something a little questionable and you got to buy that out because it’ll hurt your brand or it’ll affect your home life, or it might even affect an election.”
Fox News contributor Jonathan Turley cautioned that it may not be an advantage for former President Trump’s legal team that there are two attorneys present in the jury pool.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s prosecutors allege that Trump committed a felony by falsifying business records in “furtherance of another crime.” New York prosecutor Joshua Steinglass on Tuesday said the other crime was a violation of a New York law called “conspiracy to promote or prevent election.”
“This case has no crime that is discernable,” Turley said on “America’s Newsroom,” criticizing prosecutors.
He cautioned however that if members of the jury feel compelled to express doubts about the district attorney’s case against Trump, the attorneys present in the jury pool might “weigh in at that moment” and “silence those dissenting voices.”
“That’s why I think it’s a bad idea and I don’t think it’s a good thing to have two attorneys on this jury,” Turley said.
Former President Donald Trump appears at Manhattan criminal court before his trial in New York, Friday, April 26, 2024. (Jeenah Moon/Pool Photo via AP)
Former President Trump filed another complaint about the “freezing courthouse” on Friday and speculated that the temperature was being kept low on purpose.
“They don’t seem to be able to get the temperature up,” Trump said. “It shouldn’t be that complicated. But we have a freezing courthouse and that’s fine, that’s just fine.”
Trump’s attorneys have asked Judge Juan Merchan if something can be done about the temperature, but the judge declined. Last week he apologetically explained that the old courthouse has two modes: chilly or sweltering, and that it’d be better to be cold than hot.
Trump attorney Todd Blanche asked the judge if it were possible to increase the temperature by “just one degree.”
“It is cold, there’s no question it is cold, but I’d rather be a little cold than sweaty, and really those are the choices,” the judge said, according to a pool report. “I agree with you it’s chilly, no question.”
Former President Trump wished his wife Melania a “very happy birthday” on Friday morning and complained that he could not spend the day with her because of his “rigged” trial.
Trump spoke to reporters moments before he entered the courtroom for the continuation of his criminal trial on charges of falsifying business records.
“I want to start by wishing my wife Melania a very happy birthday. It’d be nice to be with her but I’m in a courthouse for a rigged trial,” Trump said.
The former president and presumptive Republican nominee for 2024 said yesterday’s proceedings went “very well” and that his trial “should be over.”
“I think we have a judge who will never allow the case to be over in a positive way, he’s highly conflicted,” Trump said, taking a shot at presiding Judge Juan Merchan.
He also commented on Thursday’s Supreme Court hearing on his claim of presidential immunity, calling his attorney’s arguments “brilliant.”
“I listened to it last night, I thought it was really great. I thought the judge’s questions were really great,” Trump said. “All presidents have to have immunity, it has nothing to do with me,” he asserted.
Trump told reporters he will return to Florida after the trial warps up today to be with his wife.
Former President Trump has departed Trump Tower for the Manhattan courthouse where his criminal trial for allegedly falsifying business records will continue for its eighth day.
Court proceedings will begin at 9:30 a.m. ET. Trump did not make any statements as he left Trump Tower, but he has held several impromptu press conferences outside the courtroom this week and may speak to reporters again.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg charged Trump with 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree. Bragg alleges that Trump ex-attorney Michael Cohen orchestrated hush money payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal to prevent them from sharing their stories about alleged affairs with Trump. Bragg is trying to prove that Trump was aware of those payments, and allegedly falsified records of payments to Cohen as “legal expenses” rather than repayments for the hush money.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to all counts and told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview on Thursday that he was simply paying Cohen legal fees because Cohen was his lawyer.
Bragg also alleged American Media Inc., which witness David Pecker was the CEO of, allegedly employed the “catch and kill” strategy to bury stories — specifically Karen McDougal’s. Bragg and prosecutors sought to convince the jury that Pecker’s work to do this was made with the blessing of Trump’s 2016 campaign.
Pecker, though, testified that he worked with Cohen in his capacity as Trump’s personal attorney.
Pecker’s cross-examination is expected to continue Friday morning.
Fox News Digital’s Brooke Singman contributed to this update.
Prosecutor Christopher Conroy argued Thursday that former President Donald Trump allegedly violated a gag order four additional times, for a total of 14 violations.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office has asked Judge Juan Merchan to hold Trump in contempt of court for allegedly violating an order which prohibits Trump from commenting on likely witnesses in his criminal trial. The judge has yet to rule on the request.
In documents filed Thursday, Conroy outlined four additional alleged violations that happened this week when Trump made statements to the press between his court appearances. The prosecutor pointed to comments Trump made to a local Pennsylvania news station about his former attorney Michael Cohen, who is expected to testify at trial later on.
“Well, Michael Cohen is a convicted liar and he’s got no credibility whatsoever. He was a lawyer and you rely on your lawyers. But Michael Cohen was a convicted liar. He was a lawyer for many people, not just me. And he got in trouble because of things outside of what he did for me, largely, it was essentially all because what he did in terms of campaign I don’t think there was anything wrong with that with the charges that they made. But what he did is he did some pretty bad things, I guess, with banking or whatever if that was a personal thing to him,” Trump said on Monday.
Conroy called this a “knowing and willful statement” that violated Merchan’s gag order. The prosecutor also noted statements Trump made about David Pecker, a former tabloid publisher who will resume cross examination today.
“He’s been very nice. I mean, he’s been — David’s been very nice. A nice guy,” Trump said on Thursday.
At trial, Conroy told the judge that Trump was sending a message to Pecker, instructing him to “be nice” else Trump would use his platform to “say things like I said about Cohen.”
Trump prosecutor quit top DOJ post for NY job in likely bid to ‘get’ former president, expert says
Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo speaks in DOJ video. (Department of Justice/YouTube)
The prosecutor whose opening statement kicked off the historic trial of Former President Donald Trump left a lofty perch in the Biden administration Justice Department for his current comparatively modest New York City job – a career move that legal analysts describe as puzzling and one that’s prompted questions regarding motivation.
Even though Matthew Colangelo is only now sitting in a courtroom formally opposing the former president, his work has for years involved investigating Trump and his businesses, despite working for different prosecutorial offices at varying levels of government. Colangelo’s sudden switch from top DOJ official to a role with the DA’s office in the Big Apple has particularly raised eyebrows.
“It’s very odd. It’s usually the other way around. . . . And frankly, that sounds to me like somebody who thought, ‘Ah, here’s an opportunity to go and get Donald Trump,'” attorney and former member of the Federal Election Commission, Hans von Spakovsky, told Fox News Digital in a phone interview this month.
It’s rare to see successful, ambitious attorneys willingly climb several steps down the career ladder, experts note.
“It is a little unusual,” Heritage Foundation senior legal fellow Zack Smith said of Colangelo’s career moves. “Particularly, the position he had at the Justice Department was a fairly high ranking one . . . he spent some time in the New York Attorney General’s office, he also spent some time as a career staffer in the DOJ Civil Rights Division. He was in leadership in the Justice Department, and then immediately from that leadership position — an acting leadership position — went to the DA’s office.”
Fox News Digital’s Emma Colton contributed to this update.
Pecker claims Trump said anytime Stormy mentions his name, ‘it’s a $1M penalty’
Former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker speaks from the witness stand during former U.S. President Donald Trump’s criminal trial on charges that he falsified business records to conceal money paid to silence porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016, in Manhattan state court in New York City, U.S. April 22, 2024 in this courtroom sketch. (REUTERS/Jane Rosenberg)
Former American Media Inc. (AMI) CEO David Pecker told the court that former President Trump had an agreement with Stormy Daniels and every time she said his name she would have to pay a $1 million penalty.
One of the exhibits presented in court was a Wall Street Journal article from Jan. 12, 2018, which revealed Michael Cohen paid Daniels to stay quiet. The evidence was presented, “not for the truth, but to show that it was printed on that date.”
Fast-forwarding to March 2018, Steinglass brought up an interview between Karen McDougal and Anderson Cooper, which Pecker remembered taking place around March 18, 20218.
The day after the interview, Pecker claimed, Trump called him.
“Did you see the interview last night with Anderson Cooper and Karen McDougal? I thought you had, and we had, an agreement that she can’t give any interviews or be on any television shows,” Pecker recalled Trump saying.
“Yes, we have an agreement, but I amended it to allow her to speak to the press,” Pecker said he told Trump.
Pecker testified that Trump got upset.
Pecker also talked about another call between Trump, Hope Hicks and Sarah Huckabee Sanders, where he mentioned he was going to extend Karen’s contract because they had not fulfilled some of the obligations.
Trump allegedly told him it was a bad idea but later told him, “It’s your business, do whatever you plan on doing.”
McDougal filed a lawsuit against AMI in March 2018 and wanted out of the NDA. The lawsuit was ultimately settled. Pecker said when he communicated the lawsuit with Cohen, he thought it was a bad idea. Still, Pecker told Cohen he did not want to continue with the lawsuit and was giving McDougal back her rights.
Pecker also told Cohen he was planning to sell back the rights because McDougal was upset.
Also, while on the stand, Pecker said he watched the Anderson Cooper and Stormy Daniels interview. Afterward, Trump called and asked if he saw the interview.
“We have an agreement with Stormy that she cannot mention my name or do anything like this,” Pecker claimed Trump said. “Anytime she breaches the agreement it’s a $1 million penalty. Based on that interview, she owes $24 million.”
Trump compliments prosecution’s first witness in criminal trial: ‘very nice’
Former US president and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump leaves Trump Tower to attend his trial for allegedly covering up hush money payments linked to extramarital affairs in New York, on April 22, 2024. Donald Trump’s unprecedented criminal trial is set for opening statements after final jury selection ended Friday, leaving the Republican presidential candidate facing weeks of hostile testimony that will overshadow his White House campaign. (CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP via Getty Images)
Former President Donald Trump lauded the first witness in his trial in Manhattan, former tabloid publisher David Pecker, as a “nice guy” earlier Thursday ahead of court.
“He’s been very nice. David’s been very nice. He’s a nice guy,” Trump told the media while meeting with construction crews in the city early Thursday morning.
Pecker is the prosecution team’s first witness in the NY v. Trump case, where the 45th president is facing 34 charges of falsifying business records.
Pecker is the former CEO of American Media Inc., the parent company of publications such as the National Enquirer, who has known Trump stretching back to the 1980s. The former media publisher took the stand earlier this week, where he testified regarding “catch and kill schemes” to allegedly bury negative information about Trump ahead of the 2016 election.
“Catch-and-kill” schemes are understood as tactics used by media and publishing companies to buy the rights of a person’s story with no intention of publishing it. The NY v. Trump case specifically revolves around a payment of $130,000 given to former pornographic actress Stormy Daniels by former Trump personal attorney in 2016 to allegedly silence her claims she had an extramarital affair with Trump in 2006.
Pecker testified Thursday that he first heard of Daniels’ claims of a sexual affair with Trump after the notorious “Access Hollywood” tape was unearthed ahead of the election in 2016. He said that Daniels was selling rights to her story for $120,000, which Pecker said the media company could not afford.
“I am not a bank,” Pecker said he told National Enquirer editor Dylan Howard of the tip and sale of Daniels’ story. Howard then told Pecker he would contact Cohen about the matter, Pecker said.
Prosecutors allege that after Cohen paid Daniels in exchange for silence on the alleged affair, Trump fraudulently logged reimbursements to the personal lawyer as legal expenses. Prosecutors in the case are trying to prove that Trump falsified business records in “furtherance of another crime.” The DA’s office said the other crime is the violation of a New York law against “conspiracy to promote or prevent election.”
Fox News Digital’s Emma Colton contributed to this update.
NY v. Trump: Tabloid publisher testifies he bought stories on Tiger Woods, ex-Obama chief of staff
David Pecker is questioned during former U.S. President Donald Trump’s criminal trial on charges that he falsified business records to conceal money paid to silence porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016, in Manhattan state court in New York City, U.S. April 23, 2024 in this courtroom sketch. (REUTERS/Jane Rosenberg)
David Pecker testified Thursday that he purchased stories about professional golfer Tiger Woods, former Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, among others during questioning by defense attorneys for former President Trump.
Pecker is the former CEO of American Media Inc., the parent company of publications such as the National Enquirer, who has known Trump stretching back to the 1980s. Prosecutors allege that Pecker worked closely with the Trump campaign to bury negative information about Trump ahead of the 2016 election. Trump is accused of falsifying records related to the alleged “catch and kill” scheme.
Pecker testified that he purchased negative stories about Trump before the 2016 election and did not publish them — known as a “catch and kill” scheme. The stories included allegations from adult film actress Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal about affairs with Trump.
With regard to negative stories coming out about Trump before the election, Pecker testified that Trump was concerned about what his family would say about it, specifically about how it would impact his wife Melania Trump and daughter Ivanka Trump.
Pecker also testified that Trump was concerned about what the impact would be on his campaign in 2016.
But under cross-examination by Trump defense attorney Emil Bove, Pecker testified he purchased stories about other high-profile individuals besides Trump.
Pecker testified he purchased a story about professional golfer Tiger Woods, and a story about Rahm Emanuel in 2009 after he left the Obama White House. Pecker said he purchased the story about an alleged affair Emanuel had so that it would not be published. Emanuel also later served as ambassador to Japan.
Pecker also testified that he worked with Trump attorney Michael Cohen in his capacity as the former president’s personal attorney — not as part of the 2016 campaign.
Fox News Digital’s Brooke Singman contributed to this update.
While Donald Trump was on trial in Manhattan, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments on the former president’s claims of presidential immunity.
In nearly three hours of debate on Thursday, the high court wrestled with this question: “Whether and if so to what extent does a former president enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office?”
Special Counsel attorney Michael Dreeben argued that U.S. presidents cannot enjoy blanket immunity from criminal prosecution Thursday. Trump attorney John Sauer contended that prosecuting a president for official acts while in office is “incompatible” with the U.S. Constitution.
Over the course of questioning, the justices seemed generally split along ideological lines.
“If the potential for criminal liability is taken off the table, wouldn’t there be a significant risk that future presidents would be emboldened to commit crimes with abandon while they’re in office?” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked in an exchange with Trump’s lawyer, John Sauer.
“Once we say, ‘No criminal liability, Mr. President, you can do whatever you want,’ I’m worried that we would have a worse problem than the problem of the president feeling constrained to follow the law while he’s in office,” Jackson said.
Conversely, Justice Samuel Alito questioned whether limiting immunity for a former president would send the country into a destabilizing cycle.
“If an incumbent who loses a very close, hotly contested election knows that a real possible after leaving office is not that the president is going to be able to go off into a peaceful retirement, but that the president may be criminally prosecuted by a bitter political opponent, will that not lead us into a cycle that destabilizes the functioning of our country as a democracy? And we can look around the world and find countries where we have seen this process, where the loser gets thrown in jail,” Alito remarked.
“We’re writing a rule for the ages,” Justice Neil Gorsuch later stated.
A decision in the case is expected early this summer.
Fox News Digital’s Brianna Herlihy and Anders Hagstrom contributed to this update.
David Pecker, chair and CEO of American Media, speaks at the Shape and Men’s Fitness Super Bowl Party in New York City, U.S., January 31, 2014. REUTERS/Marion Curtis/File Photo
Tabloid publisher David Pecker is known as a longtime friend of former President Trump. He recently testified about the “catch-and-kill” scheme to hide allegations of a past affair that surfaced when then-candidate Trump was running for the White House in 2016.
Pecker was the CEO of American Media until summer 2020, during which time he was publisher of news outlets like the National Enquirer, Men’s Fitness, and Star.
According to Pecker, he told Trump and his personal lawyer at the time, Michael Cohen, that he would be their “eyes and ears” for any negative stories that could crop up during the campaign.
One of those stories is now part of the driving force behind Trump’s hush money trial. Pecker previously admitted to working with Trump’s team to purchase and suppress a story from former Playboy model Karen McDougal about claims of a 2006 affair with Trump. She was reportedly paid $150,000 to keep quiet.
Pecker was granted immunity in 2018 after working with prosecutors on their hush money case against Cohen.
Former President Donald Trump will return to New York Supreme Court on Friday morning for day eight of his criminal trial for allegedly falsifying business records.
Court will resume at 9:30 a.m. ET with former American Media CEO David Pecker taking the stand for cross-examination by defense attorneys. Trump is expected to attend today and every day of the trial.
On Thursday, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office wrapped up their direct examination of Pecker. The former tabloid publisher explained in great detail the “catch and kill” scheme regarding former Playboy model Karen McDougal’s story about an alleged affair with Trump.
Pecker coordinated with former Trump attorney Michael Cohen and purchased the exclusive rights to McDougal’s story, paying her $150,000 with the intention of never publishing it. He testified that he believed McDougal’s story to be true and it would have been very embarrassing for Trump and his 2016 presidential campaign if it became public.
Pecker also described learning about former pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels’ allegations of an affair with Trump, and testified that Cohen urged Pecker to buy Daniels’ story as well. However, Pecker said he refused to buy the story, instead telling Cohen that Trump should buy it himself.
Additionally, Pecker testified about various calls and meetings with Trump, including a visit to the White House in July 2017. He recalls Trump always asking about Karen.
At the end of his direct examination, Pecker discussed entering into a non-prosecution agreement with federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York about campaign finance violations and an agreement with the Manhattan district attorney’s office. He admitted he was given immunity if he cooperated. He also said he has no negative feelings towards Trump and considers him a mentor and friend.
Defense attorneys began to cross-examine Pecker in the last hour of court on Thursday. During questions, Pecker said he had been giving Trump a heads up about negative stories since 1998. He also said he had purchased negative stories about celebrities and politicians in the past, including Arnold Schwarzenegger and ex-Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
Fox News’ Maria Paronich contributed to this update.
FBI Director Christopher Wray testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee Dec. 5, 2023 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
The director of the FBI is being accused of hypocrisy for allowing the targeting of concerned parents, Trump supporters, and American Catholics but not “monitoring” pro-Hamas rallies and protests on college campuses.
Director Christopher Wray was asked in an interview on Tuesday about “actively monitoring” the rallies erupting across college and university campuses, which have become the subject of controversy and condemnation from even senior government officials. Wray replied, “We don’t monitor protests.” He added, “But we do share intelligence about specific threats of violence.”
Social media users reacted, accusing Wray of hypocrisy. Conservative podcast host Graham Allen quoted Wray saying, “We don’t monitor protests,” and wrote:
FBI Director Chris Wray: "We don't monitor protests"
They just monitor: Republicans Church Christians Donald Trump supporters Parents who attend a PTA meeting
Author and conservative media commentator Jesse Kelly pointed out the FBI’s failure to investigate the vandalizing and firebombing of pregnancy resource centers, commenting:
“We can’t find who’s bombing pregnancy centers cause they’re doing it at night.” -Merrick Garland
“We don’t monitor protests.”-Chris Wray
The truth is the street animals are protected by the elite. The good people in the middle are attacked from top and bottom. https://t.co/2cvGOJFqxQ
Numerous social media users posted photos of known or suspected FBI agents undercover at pro-Trump rallies, alleged that the FBI embedded undercover agents at the Jan. 6, 2021 rally at the U.S. Capitol building, or noted the FBI’s designation of parents protesting school board meetings or “radical traditionalist Catholics” as potential domestic terror threats. Referring to the infamous memo from the FBI’s Richmond field office, detailing plans to infiltrate and spy on Catholic parishes, one user commented, “I guess they are too busy monitoring Catholic churches.”
The U.S. House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government previously castigated the FBI’s memo for its reliance on biased sources, including the Southern Poverty Law Center, which lists “radical traditionalist Catholics” as a hate group, alongside neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan. The controversial memo, leaked early in 2023, labeled American Catholics who attend the Tridentine Mass (the form of the Mass common prior to 1969) as “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists” (RMVEs). The memo’s creation included communication with other FBI field offices, interviews with at least one priest and a choir director, and the approval of senior FBI lawyers. The House Committee warned, “The FBI must be held accountable for its actions. It is not enough for the FBI to investigate itself and remedy its own wrongdoings, especially when it involves law-enforcement overreach involving fundamental religious freedoms.”
But that’s what the FBI appears to have done. Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Inspector General Michael Horowitz submitted a report to Congress absolving the FBI of any wrongdoing in the drafting and circulating of the memo. Horowitz wrote, “Our review did not find evidence that anyone ordered or directed Analyst 1 or 2 to find a link between RMVEs and any specific religion or political affiliation, including Church 1, or that there was any underlying policy direction concerning such a link.” The report added, “Additionally, our review of emails, instant messages, and text messages for Analysts 1 and 2 during the relevant time period did not identify any evidence of discriminatory or inappropriate comments by them about Church 1, or individuals who practiced a particular religious faith or held specific political beliefs.”
Previously, both Wray and U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland have stonewalled Congress in response to requests to interview FBI agents and analysts responsible for drafting and circulating the memo.
Arielle Del Turco, director of the Center for Religious Liberty at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand, “The FBI shouldn’t be monitoring most protests, but when massive demonstrations are shutting down higher education institutions that threaten fellow students and incorporate genocidal slogans like ‘From the river to the sea,’ that all should pique the interest of federal law enforcement.”
She continued, “Wray’s comments are yet another hit to the FBI’s credibility after the Department of Justice’s inspector general held last week that the FBI did not commit any wrongdoing when it was looking into ‘racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists’ that they alleged were connected to ‘radical-traditionalist Catholic ideology.’”
Del Turco added, “The FBI’s heightened concern over traditional Catholics appears especially absurd when considering the agency’s total disinterest in protestors who are threatening Jewish students on college campuses.”
Currently, pro-Hamas rallies are taking place at schools such as Ohio State University and the Ivy League Columbia and Yale universities.
Below is my column in the New York Post on yesterday’s oral arguments on presidential immunity. As expected, with the exception of the three liberal justices, the Court appears to be struggling to find a more nuanced approach that would avoid the extreme positions of both parties. Rather than take a header off either cliff, the justices seem interested in a controlled descent into the depths of Article II.
Here is the column:
Writer Ray Bradbury once said, “Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down.”
In Thursday’s case before the Supreme Court on the immunity of former President Donald Trump, nine justices appear to be feverishly working with feathers and glue on a plunge into a constitutional abyss. It has been almost 50 years since the high court ruled presidents have absolute immunity from civil lawsuits in Nixon v. Fitzgerald. The court held ex-President Richard Nixon had such immunity for acts taken “within the ‘outer perimeter’ of his official responsibility.”
Yet in 1974’s United States v. Nixon, the court ruled a president is not immune from a criminal subpoena. Nixon was forced to comply with a subpoena for his White House tapes in the Watergate scandal from special counsel Leon Jaworski. Since then, the court has avoided any significant ruling on the extension of immunity to a criminal case — until now.
There are cliffs on both sides of this case. If the court were to embrace special counsel Jack Smith’s arguments, a president would have no immunity from criminal charges, even for official acts taken in his presidency. It would leave a president without protection from endless charges from politically motivated prosecutors.
If the court were to embrace Trump counsel’s arguments, a president would have complete immunity. It would leave a president largely unaccountable under the criminal code for any criminal acts.
The first cliff is made obvious by the lower-court opinion. While the media have largely focused on extreme examples of president-ordered assassinations and coups, the justices are clearly as concerned with the sweeping implications of the DC Circuit opinion.
Chief Justice John Roberts noted the DC Circuit failed to make any “focused” analysis of the underlying acts, instead offering little more than a judicial shrug.
Roberts read its statement that “a former president can be prosecuted for his official acts because the fact of the prosecution means that the former president has acted in defiance of the laws” and noted it sounds like “a former president can be prosecuted because he is being prosecuted.”
If the justices want insight into the implications of denying any immunity, they just need to look north to New York City.
The ongoing prosecution of Trump is legally absurd but has resulted in the leading presidential candidate not only being gagged but prevented from campaigning.
Alvin Bragg is the very personification of the danger immunity is meant to avoid.
With cliffs to the left and the right, the justices are looking at a free-fall dive into the scope of constitutional and criminal law as they apply to presidential conduct. They may be looking not for a foothold as much as a shorter drop.
Some of the justices are likely to be seeking a third option where a president has some immunity under a more limited and less tautological standard than the one the DC Circuit offered. The problem for the court is presidential privilege and immunity decisions are meant to give presidents breathing room by laying out bright lines within which they can operate. Ambiguity defeats the purpose of such immunity. So does a test that turns on the motivation of an official act.
The special counsel insists, for example, Trump was acting for his personal interest in challenging certification and raising electoral fraud since he was the other candidate. But what if he wasn’t on the ballot — would it have been an official function to raise such concerns for other candidates?
When pressed on the line between official and nonofficial conduct, the special counsel just dismissed such concerns and said Trump was clearly acting as an office-seeker not an officeholder.
Likewise, the special counsel argued the protection for presidents must rest with the good motivations and judgment of prosecutors.
It was effectively a “Trust us, we’re the government” assurance. Justice Samuel Alito and others questioned whether such reliance is well placed after decades of prosecutors’ proven abuses.
Finally, if there is no immunity, could President Barack Obama be prosecuted for ordering the killing of a citizen by drone attack and then killing his son in a second drone attack? The government insisted there is an exception for such acts from the murder statute.
In the end, neither party offers a particularly inviting path. No immunity or complete immunity each holds obvious dangers.
I have long opposed sweeping arguments of immunity from criminal charges for presidents. The devil is in the details, and many justices are struggling with how to define official versus nonofficial conduct.
The line-drawing proved maddening for the justices in the oral argument. The most they could say is similar to the story of the man who jumped off a building. As he passes an office window halfway down, another man calls out to ask how he’s doing. The jumper responds, “So far so good.”
As the justices work on a new set of legal wings, anything is possible as the nation waits for the court to hit ground zero in the middle of the 2024 presidential election.
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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