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Tag: Trump Trial

  • Judge delivers ruling in Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial in New York | LIVE

    Judge delivers ruling in Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial in New York | LIVE

    NEW YORK — A judge has delivered a ruling Friday in Donald Trump’s New York civil fraud trial.

    Trump could be hit with millions of dollars in penalties and other sanctions in the decision by Judge Arthur Engoron, who has already ruled that the former president inflated his wealth on financial statements that were given to banks, insurers and others to make deals and secure loans.

    New York Attorney General Letitia James is seeking $370 million and a ban on Trump and other defendants from doing business in the state. A penalty like that could potentially wound the real estate empire that helped Trump craft his image as a savvy billionaire businessman and vaulted him to fame and the White House.

    Engoron is set to rule after two months of testimony from 40 witnesses, including Trump. Closing arguments were held Jan. 11. The judge is deciding the case because juries are not allowed in this type of lawsuit and neither James’ office nor Trump’s lawyers asked for one.

    Engoron is expected to release his decision Friday, barring unforeseen circumstances that would necessitate a delay, court officials said.

    It has already been a big week in court for Trump. On Thursday, a different New York judge ruled that Trump will stand trial March 25 on charges that he falsified his company’s records as part of an effort to buy the silence of people with potentially embarrassing stories about alleged infidelity. Trump says he is innocent.

    If the schedule holds, it will be the first of his four criminal cases to go to trial.

    Also Thursday, a judge in Atlanta heard arguments on whether to remove Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from Trump’s Georgia election interference case because she had a personal relationship with a special prosecutor she hired.

    James’ office has estimated that Trump exaggerated his wealth by as much as $3.6 billion. State lawyers contend Trump used the inflated numbers to get lower insurance premiums and favorable loan terms, saving at least $168 million on interest alone.

    Trump has denied wrongdoing and his lawyers have said they’ll appeal if Engoron rules against him.

    The Republican presidential front-runner testified Nov. 6 that his financial statements actually understated his net worth and that banks did their own research and were happy with his business. During closing arguments in January, he decried the case as a “fraud on me.”

    Engoron is deciding six claims in James’ lawsuit, including allegations of conspiracy, falsifying business records and insurance fraud.

    Before the trial, Engoron ruled on James’ top claim, finding that Trump’s financial statements were fraudulent. As punishment, the judge ordered some of his companies removed from his control and dissolved. An appeals court has put that on hold.

    Because it is civil, not criminal in nature, there is no possibility of prison time.

    Copyright © 2024 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

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  • Trump faces Monday deadline to ask SCOTUS for delay in election interference trial

    Trump faces Monday deadline to ask SCOTUS for delay in election interference trial


    WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump faces a Monday deadline for asking the Supreme Court to extend the delay in his trial on charges he plotted to overturn his 2020 election loss.

    His lawyers have indicated they will file an emergency appeal with the court, just four days after the justices heard Trump’s separate appeal to remain on the presidential ballot despite attempts to kick him off because of his efforts following his election loss in 2020.

    The filing would preserve a delay on what would be a landmark criminal trial of a former president while the nation’s highest court decides what to do. The federal appeals court in Washington set the deadline for filing when it rejected Trump’s immunity claims last week and ruled the trial could proceed.

    The Supreme Court’s decision on what to do, and how quickly it acts, could determine whether the Republican presidential primary front-runner stands trial in the case before the November election.

    RELATED: Takeaways from the Supreme Court oral arguments on the Trump 14th Amendment case

    There is no timetable for the court to act, but special counsel Jack Smith’s team has strongly pushed for the trial to take place this year. Trump, meanwhile, has repeatedly sought to delay the case. If Trump were to defeat President Joe Biden, he could potentially try to use his position as head of the executive branch to order a new attorney general to dismiss the federal cases he faces or even seek a pardon for himself.

    The Supreme Court’s options include rejecting the emergency appeal, which would enable U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan to restart the trial proceedings in Washington’s federal court. The trial was initially scheduled to begin in early March.

    The court also could extend the delay while it hears arguments on the immunity issue. In that event, the schedule the justices might set could determine how soon a trial might begin, if indeed they agree with lower court rulings that Trump is not immune from prosecution.

    In December, Smith and his team had urged the justices to take up and decide the immunity issue, even before the appeals court weighed in. “It is of imperative public importance that Respondent’s claim of immunity be resolved by this Court and that Respondent’s trial proceed as promptly as possible if his claim of immunity is rejected,” prosecutors wrote in December.

    RELATED: Appeals court rejects Trump’s immunity claim in federal election interference case

    Trump’s legal team has ascribed partisan motives to the prosecution’s push for a prompt trial, writing in December that it “reflects the evident desire to schedule President Trump’s potential trial during the summer of 2024-at the height of the election season.”

    Now it’s up to a court on which three justices, Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, were appointed by Trump when he was president. They have moved the court to the right in major decisions that overturned abortion rights, expanded gun rights and ended affirmative action in college admissions.

    But the Supreme Court hasn’t been especially friendly to Trump on legal matters directly concerning the former president. The court declined to take up several appeals filed by Trump and his allies related to the 2020 election. It also refused to prevent tax files and other documents from being turned over to congressional committees and prosecutors in New York.

    Last week, however, the justices did seem likely to end the efforts to prevent Trump from being on the 2024 ballot. A decision in that case could come any time.

    The Supreme Court has previously held that presidents are immune from civil liability for official acts, and Trump’s lawyers have for months argued that that protection should be extended to criminal prosecution as well.

    Last week, a unanimous panel of two judges appointed by President Joe Biden and one by a Republican president sharply rejected Trump’s novel claim that former presidents enjoy absolute immunity for actions that fall within their official job duties. It was the second time since December that judges have held that Trump can be prosecuted for actions undertaken while in the White House and in the run-up to Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol.

    ALSO SEE: New poll finds many Americans feel Biden, Trump are both too old to be president

    The case was argued before Judges Florence Pan and J. Michelle Childs, appointees of Biden, a Democrat, and Karen LeCraft Henderson, who was named to the bench by President George H.W. Bush, a Republican.

    The case in Washington is one of four prosecutions Trump faces as he seeks to reclaim the White House. He faces federal charges in Florida that he illegally retained classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate, a case that was also brought by Smith and is set for trial in May.

    He’s also charged in state court in Georgia with scheming to subvert that state’s 2020 election and in New York in connection with hush money payments made to porn actor Stormy Daniels. He has denied any wrongdoing.

    Copyright © 2024 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.



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  • Why Trump is make his lawyers look like fools in court

    Why Trump is make his lawyers look like fools in court

    The idea that former President Donald Trump was performing his official duties when he told his supporters to march to the Capitol and “fight like hell” and then sat in his dining room as they stormed the building and he refused to do anything to quell the riot has always seemed to be a stretch. After he lost 60 of 61 court cases in which he tried to overturn the results of the election and continued to exhort the top officials in the Justice Department to lie and say they had evidence of fraud hardly seems like a presidential duty either. And all the calls to local officials asking them to “find” enough votes to change the outcome of their election wouldn’t normally be considered the job of a president. American elections, for better or worse, are processed by state and local authorities.

    Nonetheless, Donald Trump’s lawyers filed an appeal in a U.S. District court arguing that everything he did in the post-election period was part of Trump’s official duties as president and therefore he should be given immunity for all of it, which is ridiculous. But even more ridiculous: His lawyers didn’t really end up addressing that claim in oral arguments before the court on Tuesday, instead focusing on a truly fatuous assertion that unless a president has been impeached and convicted by Congress, he cannot be prosecuted for anything that happened during his term in office. This naturally led to some very unusual questioning by the judges:

    I think even smart elementary school kids could see the holes in that argument. What if a president just resigned before the impeachment so that he would be immune from prosecution for his heinous acts? What if he decided to have enough members of the Senate killed as well so they couldn’t get to the two-thirds majority required for conviction? Once you start handing out immunity from crimes unless they follow the very weak political process of impeachment you’ve pretty much said all bets are off and the president of the United States has a license to kill.

    Trump’s lawyer seemed to get backed into this ridiculous argument and couldn’t figure out how to get out of it. All he had to do was say that ordering a hit on a political opponent could never be part of a president’s official duties so such an act would not qualify for immunity. But then that would have brought the argument back to the also terrible but not completely embarrassing grounds on which they had originally wanted to make it — the absurd notion that Trump’s attempts to overturn the election were part of his official duties.

    That original argument didn’t hold much water anyway. Judge Karen L. Henderson, appointed by George H.W. Bush, wasn’t impressed with the argument that Trump attempted to overturn the fully adjudicated, legal election because it is his constitutional duty to ensure that election laws are upheld. As she said, “I think it’s paradoxical to say that his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed allows him to violate the criminal law.”

    The original standard they are sort of basing this on was developed by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel to ensure that a president could not be criminally prosecuted while he was in office. And over and over again, as this has come up in various investigations and earlier impeachments, parties on all sides made it clear that any president who breaks the law could be prosecuted after his term was over. Why else would Gerald Ford have pardoned Richard Nixon or would Bill Clinton have entered into a plea agreement with the Office of Special Counsel when he left office? Did none of the lawyers involved have the Trump team’s sophisticated understanding of the US Constitution? Unlikely in the extreme.

    Trump attended the arguments in person even though he didn’t need to. I suspect it’s partly because he thinks that glowering at the judges in his cases intimidates them. According to news reports he sat emotionless most of the time but scribbled what were likely instructions when the prosecution was speaking. He seemed very pleased when his lawyer made the irrelevant, political arguments that Trump is winning in all the polls, which is also a lie.

    Trump also just likes to be a part of the story so he can pound home to his followers that he is being persecuted for their crimes. But it didn’t work out so well for him this time. The courthouse required him to enter in the back and there were no cameras in the hallways or out front so he had to retreat to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel to hold his little post-hearing press briefing. He expressed his firm conviction that “as president you have to have immunity, very simple” and said that there would be “bedlam” if the courts didn’t buy his argument, obviously signaling his flock to stand back and stand by. He concluded with this:

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    We’ll probably get the District Court opinion quite soon and then it will be on to the Supreme Court for Trump’s appeal, should they decide to accept it. In the meantime, there will be plenty of Trump Trial action in the next few days. The second E. Jean Carroll defamation case begins next week (in which, incidentally, the U.S. Appeals Court from the 2nd Circuit refused to rehear Trump’s earlier “immunity” argument on Monday.) And closing arguments in his fraud trial are scheduled for Thursday. Trump announced that he will be giving the closing arguments himself in that case, ostensibly because he knows the case better than anyone. I assume he got his law degree from Trump University.

    As we watch these legal cases start to take off, it’s both reassuring that it seems as though rational people are in charge of the proceedings and nerve-wracking considering that Trump’s main strategy — to delay the process as long as possible — may end up working simply because the judicial system is not built for speed. He’ll try to wrap up the primaries as early as possible and officially become the presumptive nominee and then claim that the political process must supersede the legal process until the election is over.

    He doesn’t care if his lawyers make fools of themselves in court just as long as he can push off the trial date as long as possible. Justice and democracy may be winning the legal battles at every turn but Trump could end up winning the war.

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