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Tag: donald trump judge

  • Manhattan Prosecutors Claim Trump Violated Gag Order After Attacks On Judge’s Daughter

    Manhattan Prosecutors Claim Trump Violated Gag Order After Attacks On Judge’s Daughter

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    Local prosecutors in Donald Trump’s hush money criminal case in New York have asked the state judge overseeing the impending trial, scheduled to begin April 15, to clarify the terms of a gag order placed on Trump last week, after the former president repeatedly attacked the judge’s daughter.

    Judge Juan Merchan instituted the gag order on Tuesday, citing Trump’s “threatening, inflammatory, denigrating” rhetoric and barring him from making interfering statements about witnesses, lawyers, and “the family members” of any “counsel or staff member” in the case. The order did carve out an exception for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who is leading the prosecution. It did not explicitly mention Merchan or his family as covered by the terms of the order.

    A day later, Trump wrote on Truth Social that Merchan’s daughter, Loren Merchan, was using a photo of Trump behind bars as her social media profile, claiming that the photo “makes it completely impossible for me to get a fair trial.” Merchan is a Democratic political consultant, and Trump wrote that she “represents Crooked Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Adam “Shifty” Schiff, and other Radical Liberals.”

    Yet the New York State Court system quickly refuted Trump’s claim. A spokesperson said Wednesday that the account in question “no longer belongs” to Merchan’s daughter, and that someone else had taken it over. (As of Saturday, it is still unclear who owns the account.) The profile photo was a “manipulation of an account [Merchan] long ago abandoned,” the spokesperson added.

    In a letter filed on Thursday and made public on Friday, Bragg’s office asked Merchan to clarify the order and to direct Trump to “immediately desist from attacks on family members.”

    “The People believe that the March 26 Order is properly read to protect family members of the Court,” wrote Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass. “But to avoid any doubt, this Court should now clarify or confirm that the Order protects family members of the Court, the District Attorney, and all other individuals mentioned in the Order.” Steinglass added that Trump should face “sanctions under judiciary law” if he continues to “disregard” court orders.

    Lawyers for Trump shot back on Friday in a letter to Merchan. “The Court cannot ‘direct’ President Trump to do something that the gag order does not require,” Todd Blanche and Susan Necheles wrote. “To ‘clarify or confirm’ the meaning of the gag order in the way the People suggest would be to expand it.”

    In the letter to Merchant, Steinglass claimed that “multiple potential witnesses” have come forward to express concerns “about their own safety and that of their family members” should they testify against Trump next month.

    The former president’s New York trial is expected to last approximately two months, and could be the only one of his four criminal trials to wrap up before the November election. The Republican presumptive nominee is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal hush money payment during the 2016 presidential race to Stormy Daniels, who claimed to have had a sexual relationship with Trump years earlier.

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    Jack McCordick

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  • Trump’s Federal Election Subversion Trial Postponed For Now: Judge

    Trump’s Federal Election Subversion Trial Postponed For Now: Judge

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    U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan announced Friday that she was postponing the March 4 trial date in Donald Trump’s election interference case, as the former president’s claims of legal immunity have bogged down legal proceedings and prevented the case from moving forward.

    The federal judge promised to set a new trial date “if and when” Trump’s legal claims are resolved by a three-judge panel in an appeals court, which heard oral arguments in the case in early January. During a press conference, the judge seemed to acknowledge that the case had thrown a wrench into her scheduling, saying that she did “not know what my schedule will be in mid-April.”

    In the six months since Special Counsel Jack Smith handed down his indictment, it has been clear that Trump’s lawyers are angling to delay the trial until after November’s presidential election. If Trump wins before a ruling has been handed down, he can instruct his attorney general to dismiss any charges against him or seek a pardon for himself.

    Chutkan set the March 4 trial date back in August, promising a “prompt and efficient resolution of this matter” and rebuffing Trump’s legal team’s demand for the trial to be held in 2026. But the Obama-appointed judge put the case on hold in December to allow Trump’s legal team to pursue its claim that the former president enjoys immunity from prosecution.

    A D.C. appeals court took up the claim and moved quickly. But despite setting an extremely swift schedule—the panel told the defense and prosecution to file papers on successive Saturdays in late December and scheduled oral argument for January 9—it has yet to reach a verdict, though it has signaled skepticism of the immunity argument. Even if it does hand down a decision rejecting Trump’s claims, his legal team will likely appeal again, further adding to delays.

    “It is surprising, given how quickly they moved to have this appeal briefed and argued, for the court to not yet have issued a decision,” University of Texas at Austin law professor Stephen Vladeck told The New York Times. “It’s surprising both just because of how fast they moved and because of the broader timing considerations in this case — both the March 4 trial date and the looming specter of the election.”

    Vladeck added that the court—composed of two Biden appointees and one George H.W. Bush appointee—may be taking its time to reach a unanimous decision and avoid the public perception of division on such a crucial legal matter.

    The move is a blow to the team of federal prosecutors who have consistently pressed for as early a trial date as possible. Smith’s office asked the Supreme Court in December to fast-track Trump’s immunity case, but the court quickly rejected the request, handing a significant victory to Trump.

    One consequence of Chutkan’s decision is that the first of Trump’s four criminal cases to appear before a jury is more likely to be his New York state trial on charges of illegally arranging hush payments to porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 presidential election. That trial is currently scheduled for March 25.

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    Jack McCordick

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  • Trump Doesn’t Have a “Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free” Pass in 2020 Election Subversion Prosecution: Judge

    Trump Doesn’t Have a “Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free” Pass in 2020 Election Subversion Prosecution: Judge

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    Former President Donald Trump is not immune from prosecution for his attempts to overturn the 2020 election, US District Judge Tanya Chutkan ruled Friday.

    Chutkan didn’t mince words in her ruling, writing that the presidency “does not confer a lifelong ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ pass” and that Trump’s “four-year service as commander in chief did not bestow on him the divine right of kings to evade the criminal accountability that governs his fellow citizens.”

    The historic ruling marks the first time a US court has determined that a president can be charged with crimes when out of office, Reuters noted. “Former presidents enjoy no special conditions on their federal criminal liability,” the judge concluded. “Defendant may be subject to federal investigation, indictment, prosecution, conviction, and punishment for any criminal acts undertaken while in office.”

    Trump’s lawyers aren’t expecting their Hail Mary motion to be successful in requesting sweeping immunity privileges for their client, who faces 91 charges across four criminal cases in the midst of a run for the 2024 White House. The New York Times reported Friday that the former president’s legal team has “been planning for weeks to use the defeat to begin a long-shot strategy to put off the impending trial,” which is set to begin in March, just one day before the Super Tuesday primaries.

    Friday’s ruling will likely spark an appeal to a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals, then to the full Court of Appeals, and ultimately to the Supreme Court, if possible. Trump’s lawyers hope these delays will push the trial past the US presidential election on November 5, 2024.

    Chutkan also addressed Trump’s lawyers’ claims that shielding the president’s actions from legal scrutiny was based on longstanding American political traditions and constitutional principles. “As the Constitution, the Supreme Court, and hundreds of years of history and tradition all make clear, the President’s motivations are not for the prosecution or this Court to decide,” Trump’s attorneys wrote in their motion to dismiss the election subversion case, citing “234 years of precedent.”

    “To the contrary,” Chutkan coolly replied in her ruling, “America’s founding generation envisioned a Chief Executive wholly different from the unaccountable, almost omnipotent rulers of other nations at that time.”

    Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung responded to the ruling by saying it is an effort by Trump’s opponents “to try and destroy bedrock constitutional principles and set dangerous precedents that would cripple future presidential administrations and our country as a whole, in their desperate effort to interfere in the 2024 Presidential Election.”

    “The corrupt leftists will fail, and President Trump will keep fighting for America and Americans, including by challenging these wrongful decisions in higher courts,” Cheung added.

    Chutkan’s ruling wasn’t the only legal blow dealt to the Trump campaign Friday. A federal appeals court ruled earlier in the day that civil lawsuits against Trump for inciting the January 6 Capitol riot can move forward. Some Democratic lawmakers and Capitol police officers have brought the lawsuits. The former president is also likely to appeal that decision.

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    Jack McCordick

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  • Trump-Appointed Judge Nixes CNN Defamation Suit

    Trump-Appointed Judge Nixes CNN Defamation Suit

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    A federal judge dismissed Donald Trump’s $475 million defamation lawsuit against CNN late Friday. The infamously litigious former president claimed that the network’s use of the phrase “The Big Lie” to describe his fraudulent election claims amounted to defamation by likening him to Adolf Hitler.

    “Being ‘Hitler-like’ is not a verifiable statement of fact that would support a defamation claim,” U.S. District Judge Raag Singhal, who Trump appointed in 2019, wrote in his dismissal. “CNN’s statements, while repugnant, were not, as a matter of law, defamatory.”

    Trump filed the suit last October in a Fort Lauderdale, Florida district where four of the five sitting judges were his own appointees. At the time, he suggested similar legal actions against other media companies were in the works. Trump had previously sued The New York Times and The Washington Post for their coverage of him.

    The CNN suit alleged that the “Big Lie” phrase had been used roughly 7,700 times on the network since January 2021, and cited examples from host Jake Tapper, former commentator Chris Cillizza, and historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat. Trump’s lawyers also cited a 2022 documentary in which host ​​Fareed Zakaria juxtaposed some of Trump’s comments with footage of Adolf Hitler, as well as an interview in which singer Linda Ronstadt compared Trump’s America with Nazi Germany.

    “The Court finds Nazi references in the political discourse (made by whichever ‘side’) to be odious and repugnant. But bad rhetoric is not defamation when it does not include false statements of fact.” Singhal wrote in his decision. “CNN’s use of the phrase ‘the Big Lie’ in connection with Trump’s election challenges does not give rise to a plausible inference that Trump advocates the persecution and genocide of Jews or any other group of people. No reasonable viewer could (or should) plausibly make that reference.”

    Somewhat ironically, several months before the lawsuit was filed, then-recently hired (and now former) CNN CEO Chris Licht reportedly discouraged staff from using the phrase as part of the network’s turn to the center.

    Friday’s ruling marks the second time Singhal has ruled in favor of CNN in a defamation case this year. The Florida judge also oversaw former Trump lawyer and retired Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz’s $300 million defamation suit against the network, which stemmed from CNN’s coverage of Dershowitz’s defense of Trump during his first impeachment trial. Singhal ruled in favor of the network in April.

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    Jack McCordick

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  • Trump-Friendly Judge To Oversee Mar-a-Lago Document Trial, Dealing Potential Blow to Prosecution

    Trump-Friendly Judge To Oversee Mar-a-Lago Document Trial, Dealing Potential Blow to Prosecution

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    Just one day after former President Donald Trump was slapped with a 49-page indictment listing 37 criminal counts of seven different charges, including obstruction and mishandling of classified documents, prosecutors were hit with the news that Judge Aileen Cannon, nominated by Trump in 2020, will oversee the case. 

    It remains uncertain whether Cannon will preside over the entire trial, but her review of the case presents a historic twist: Cannon previously gave Trump a highly controversial favorable ruling related to the FBI’s initial search of his Mar-a-Lago residence last year. If Cannon does oversee the trial, that will make Trump the first person in U.S. history to take part in a criminal proceeding in front of a federal judge whom they appointed. 

    Cannon, 42, has been a member of the arch-conservative Federalist Society since 2005, and was nominated by Trump to a Florida federal court judgeship in 2020. She was little known until last September when she was assigned to the immediate aftermath of the August FBI search on Mar-a-Lago, when federal agents seized thousands of documents, some marked classified, that Trump had stored at his private club. 

    In a decision widely criticized by legal experts as an extraordinary affront to the separation of powers, Cannon granted Trump’s request to appoint a special master to review the documents taken by the FBI, which would have halted the case. Cannon’s decision was eventually overturned by an appeals court stacked with conservative judges in what Slate legal commentator Mark Joseph Stern called “one of the most humiliating appellate smackdowns in recent history.” 

    After the news broke on Friday, legal analysts speculated whether Cannon had been intentionally assigned to Trump’s criminal case. In an interview with ABC News, a former senior Justice Department official argued that “if the same district and magistrate judges are overseeing the case, that means the court likely considered the indictment to be ‘related’ to the search warrant and intentionally assigned it to those judges.” 

    As a general policy, the Southern District of Florida randomly distributes cases to its 15 active judges (along with 11 senior judges, who receive a reduced workload), though “it was not immediately clear whether Mr. Trump lucked out, or if an exception was made,” The New York Times noted.

    Though Trump will ultimately have to face a jury of his peers, Cannon would have control over the timeline of the case, and may also have opportunities to exclude evidence.  

    “When you have classified documents, there is abundant opportunities to slow this down, and if they’ve got a judge who is willing to go along with slowing this down, it becomes very hard to predict when this will go to trial,” Samuel Buell, a white-collar criminal law professor at Duke, told The Times. If Trump can successfully punt the case until after the 2024 presidential election, then a potential Republican president—either Trump himself or another nominee—could shut down the case entirely. 

    “Cannon’s total lack of principle, combined with her evident incapacity to experience shame, renders her a uniquely favorable jurist for the former president,” Stern wrote on Friday. “If Cannon remains assigned to this case, Trump will not be convicted, no matter how damning the evidence.”

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    Jack McCordick

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