Trump’s criminal hush-money trial continues in New York, while both Trump and Biden fight for voters in swing states
Hello! Welcome back to our new US elections newsletter.
Non-Trump supporters have been all jittery this week, after a poll appeared to show Joe Biden getting royally stuffed by Trump in the election.
Continue reading...Todd Blanche seemed to be looking for a ‘gotcha’ – instead there was laughter in the viewing room and one irked judge
“Mr Trump, is Todd doing a good job?”
So shouted a pool reporter outside a Manhattan courtroom Tuesday afternoon shortly after Trump’s lead attorney, Todd Blanche, started cross examining former fixer turned prosecution witness, Michael Cohen, in his criminal hush-money trial.
Continue reading...This live blog is now closed. You can read our latest reporting from court here:
Donald Trump is entering the courtroom. He was carrying papers, which he dropped on to the defense table before sitting.
Trump is joined by Florida congressman Cory Mills, North Dakota governor Doug Burgum, former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, as well as Eric Trump and Lara Trump.
Continue reading...Former Trump lawyer tells trial that ex-president said, ‘Just do it. Go meet up with Allen Weisselberg and figure this whole thing out’
More people here this morning in support of Donald Trump, per poolers:
JD Vance, the Ohio senator who is being floated as a potential Republican running mate to Trump
Tommy Tuberville, the Republican senator of Alabama
Boris Epshteyn, a longtime Trump aide who was charged with conspiracy, fraud and forgery in Arizona
Jason Miller, a Trump campaign adviser
Continue reading...Former fixer tells hush-money trial Trump was ‘really angry’ after account of alleged sexual liaison with adult film star emerged
Donald Trump told his one-time fixer Michael Cohen to bury Stormy Daniels’s account of an alleged sexual liaison weeks before the election, demanding that he “just take care of it”, according to trial testimony in Manhattan court on Monday.
“This was a disaster, a fucking disaster,” Cohen, after he took the stand, recalled Trump saying. “Women will hate me.”
Continue reading...Keith Davidson gives colorful testimony at former president’s hush-money trial about how agreements came together in 2016
As Donald Trump’s presidential victory became clearer and clearer on election night in 2016, an attorney who brokered hush-money payments to bury the then candidate’s alleged sexual liaisons seemed shocked that his efforts had worked, texting his longtime confidant: “What have we done?”
So went the second day of testimony from Keith Davidson – who represented alleged Trump paramours Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal – in the ex-president’s criminal trial. The friend in question was Dylan Howard, then the editor of the National Enquirer. Prosecutors allege that the tabloid veteran kept Trump’s lawyer at the time, Michael Cohen, apprised of damaging information about his boss.
This article was amended on 2 May 2024 to correct the amount of money that Davidson said in testimony that Michael Cohen sent to Stormy Daniels.
Continue reading...Former Trump lawyer says he used AI program Google Bard and blames his lawyer for not fact-checking him
Michael Cohen, the former attorney and fixer for ex-president Donald Trump, said in a newly unsealed court filing that he accidentally gave his lawyer fake legal citations that were made up by an artificial intelligence program.
In a sworn declaration made public on Friday, Cohen told a Manhattan judge that the sham citations had been generated by the AI program Google Bard, and had made their way into his lawyer’s filing because of a pair of misunderstandings – including his failure to realize that the information spat out by the program was not based in reality.
Continue reading...Trump’s former fixer testifies in ex-president’s civil fraud trial at Manhattan court
As the court breaks, here is a bit of background on the Trump-Cohen relationship:
In 2006, Cohen started working as Trump’s personal lawyer and served in that role for 10 years, according to The Hill.
Continue reading...Trump’s ex-fixer takes stand at New York fraud trial as former president, in attendance in court, attacks Cohen as ‘proven liar’
Donald Trump’s ex-fixer inflated the valuation of the former president’s assets to “whatever number Mr Trump told us to”, he has testified.
Michael Cohen made the allegation as he took the stand at Trump’s civil fraud trial in New York. His highly anticipated testimony is at the heart of the prosecutors’ case against his former boss.
Continue reading...Ex-president is expected to appear for his arraignment on Tuesday where he will be fingerprinted, photographed and processed for arrest
A grand jury has voted to indict Donald Trump in New York over a hush money payment made to the adult film star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 election.
No former US president has ever been criminally indicted. The news is set to shake the race for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, in which Trump leads most polls.
Continue reading...In an excerpt from her forthcoming book, CNN supreme court analyst Joan Biskupic reveals a body where the conservative majority fortified by Donald Trump is driving forward with decisions to change America – even as some of its members try to appear conciliatory in public.
She also describes chief justice John Robert’s decision to quickly move Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s papers from her office after she died in 2020, which offended some of her aides used to more relaxed transitions between justices.
Within days of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s memorial service in late September 2020, boxes of her files and other office possessions were moved down to a dark, windowless theater on the Supreme Court’s ground floor, where – before the ongoing pandemic – tourists could watch a film about court operations.
Grieving aides to the justice who’d served 27 years and become a cultural icon known as the “Notorious RBG” sorted through the chambers’ contents there.
Continue reading...His appearance comes as the inquiry into the $130,000 the former president paid to Stormy Daniels comes to an end
Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former lawyer and intermediary in the Stormy Daniels hush-money affair, is scheduled to testify before a Manhattan grand jury on Monday about payments made to the adult film performer, according to a report on Saturday.
Cohen’s appearance before a grand jury convened by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg comes as prosecutors are believed to be nearing the end of an investigation into payments totaling $130,000 that Trump made to Daniels shortly before the 2016 election to stop her discussing their alleged affair.
Continue reading...New York investigation of Trump Organization is one of a number of sources of legal jeopardy for the former president
Prosecutors in New York could “indict Donald Trump tomorrow if they really wanted and be successful”, the ex-president’s former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen said on Sunday, discussing investigations of Trump’s business affairs.
Asked if he was “confident you did help Donald Trump commit crimes”, Cohen told NBC’s Meet the Press: “I can assure you that Donald Trump is guilty of his own crimes. Was I involved in much of the inflation and deflation of his assets? The answer to that is yes.”
Continue reading...Cohen filed court papers contending he ‘could be eligible for release’ under the First Step Act that Trump signed into law in 2018
Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, says he deserves early release from home confinement under Trump’s signature sentencing reform – but federal authorities refuse to credit him for good behavior and hundreds of hours of work and prison courses completed behind bars.
Related: Disloyal review: Michael Cohen's mob hit on Trump entertains – but will it shift votes?
Continue reading...The president’s fixer wanted to be a Goodfella but ended up taking a fall. His revenge is a tawdrily readable tell-all memoir
Michael Cohen is no saint. Aside from the obvious, Donald Trump’s former fixer has never entered into a formal cooperation agreement with federal prosecutors, a fact duly noted by the US attorneys’ office for the southern district of New York in its sentencing memorandum. Because of that, the “inability to fully vet his criminal history and reliability impact his utility as a witness”.
Related: Michael Cohen book details Trump's racism and toxic family dynamic
Continue reading...White House dismisses as ‘fan fiction’ the tell-all memoir of convicted former fixer who claims Trump is guilty of the same crimes as him
Michael Cohen’s tell-all memoir makes the case that president Donald Trump is “guilty of the same crimes” that landed his former fixer in federal prison, offering a blow-by-blow account of Trump’s alleged role in a hush money scandal that once overshadowed his presidency.
Of all the crises Cohen confronted working for Trump, none proved as vexing as the adult film actor Stormy Daniels and her claims of an extramarital affair with Trump, Cohen writes in Disloyal: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump.
Continue reading...Apart from legal trouble, what Bannon, Manafort, Flynn, Cohen, Stone, Gates and Papadopoulos have in common is the president
To live outside the law, Bob Dylan sang, you must be honest. It also helps, apparently, to stay as clear as possible from Donald Trump, whose inner circle of advisers has suffered steady attrition since 2017, through a series of encounters with the criminal justice system.
Related: Steve Bannon pleads not guilty to fraud after arrest on luxury yacht
Continue reading...Bureau of Prisons says Cohen, who was released in May over coronavirus concerns, ‘refused conditions of home confinement’
Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, was returned to federal prison on Thursday, after balking at certain conditions of the home confinement he was granted because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Related: Trump’s taxes may be released to grand jury, supreme court rules – live
Continue reading...Trump’s ex-fixer will remain under quarantine for 14 days before he is released to serve the rest of his sentence in home confinement
Donald Trump’s former lawyer and longtime fixer Michael Cohen will reportedly be released from federal prison to serve the remainder of his sentence in home confinement because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Cohen is currently locked up at FCI Otisville in New York after pleading guilty to numerous charges, including campaign finance fraud and lying to Congress. Cohen began serving his sentence last May and was scheduled to be released from prison in November 2021.
Continue reading...A guide to ‘the bottom-feeders, crooked lawyers and gossip mongers who created the 45th president’ demands to be read
In February 2019, Jeff Bezos accused David Pecker and the National Enquirer of extortion and blackmail after the tabloid published intimate pictures taken by the Amazon chief. Pecker and co denied being motivated by a desire to aid Donald Trump or receiving a major assist from Saudi Arabia. It was just about gossip.
Related: 'Click I agree': the UN rapporteur says prince tried to intimidate Bezos with message
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