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Michael Gottlieb, one of the plaintiffs’ lawyers, said that he will not provide the jury with a number for damages to be paid, Law & Crime’s Brandi Buchman reports.
Instead, he said that they must reach that number by weighing the humiliation, indignity and suffering Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss experienced based on the evidence provided.
Continue reading...Ashlee Humphreys, a Northwestern professor, testifies that Giuliani’s claims against plaintiffs have significant effects on their reputations
Ashlee Humphreys said in court that prior to 3 December, 2020, there was almost no search traffic for “Ruby Freeman”, the Guardian’s Sam Levine reports.
Afterwards, there was an increase, she said.
Continue reading...Senate Democrats argue justice poses potential conflict of interest because his wife has previously supported Trump’s election lies
Senate Democrats are pressuring the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from deciding whether Donald Trump has immunity from prosecution for alleged crimes he committed while president.
Democrats have argued that Thomas poses a potential conflict of interest because his wife, Ginni Thomas, has previously supported Trump’s false claims that the election was stolen, the Hill reported.
Continue reading...Filing suggests experts could connect former president’s tweets with the movements of January 6 rioters who stormed the Capitol
Special counsel prosecutors indicated on Monday they will call three expert witnesses at Donald Trump’s trial over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election who could potentially show how January 6 rioters moved on the Capitol in response to the former president’s tweets.
The witnesses, according to a three-page filing, involve two experts on geolocation data to show the crowd’s movement during and after Trump’s speech at the Ellipse, and an expert on cellular phone data to testify about when and how Trump’s phone was being used, including over the same time period.
Continue reading...Georgians are seeking $15.5m-$43m in damages from former New York City mayor for his false statements about ballot counts
Rudy Giuliani “disgraced” the names of two Atlanta election workers as part of a call to action, causing them to suffer a “perpetual nightmare” since December 2020, attorneys representing the two women said during opening statements in a closely watched defamation trial.
“It was vicious,” Von DuBose, a lawyer representing Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss, two Black election workers from Georgia, told an eight-person jury seated on Monday. “He used their names as a cornerstone of a call to action.”
Continue reading...Plaintiff are seeking up to $43m in damages in defamation case and Giuliani’s lawyer tells court it would ‘be the end’ of him if he loses
Here is footage of Giuliani arriving for the defamation trial this morning:
The Department of Justice announced today that a 30-year-old New Hampshire man was arrested after threatening to kill attendees at a campaign event for Vivek Ramaswamy.
Continue reading...Former president, who was expected to take the stand, announced on Truth Social on Sunday that he already testified to everything
Donald Trump announced he would not take the witness stand for a second time at his fraud trial in New York on Monday, the former US president’s last chance to make his case as he combats a potential $250m fine that hangs over his family business.
Trump had been expected to take the stand again as the hearings draw to a close. But on Sunday he announced on the Truth Social site that he would no longer be making an appearance.
Continue reading...Audience at gala event included allies that Trump is expected to tap for top roles should he be re-elected next year
Donald Trump tested the contours of his gag order in the federal criminal case over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, assailing his former attorney general and potential trial witness William Barr in remarks at a Saturday night New York gala event.
“I make this commitment to you tonight: we will not have Bill Barr as our attorney general, is that OK?” Trump said as he discussed a potential second presidency. “He was a coward. He was afraid of being impeached.”
Continue reading...Republican senator also declines to rule out voting for Biden, and added he wishes Joe Manchin would ‘be the Democratic nominee’
Utah senator Mitt Romney declined to rule out voting for Joe Biden next year and said he hasn’t offered an endorsement in the Republican race because his backing would probably be a “kiss of death”.
“If I endorsed them, it would be the kiss of death – I’m not going to do that,” Romney said during an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press.
Continue reading...Counties in swing states like Georgia overwhelmed with requests at the same time as they scramble to prepare for 2024
Deb Cox has been elections director of Lowndes county in southern Georgia for more than a decade – and has never before received so many time-consuming demands for public information.
Like many elections officials across the country, Cox has been inundated with Freedom of Information Act and open records requests from rightwing activists who believe the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump. That’s forced her and other local officials to spend an unusual amount of time and money providing polling documents to partisan groups – an additional burden as they scramble to prepare for the fraught 2024 presidential election.
Continue reading...Trump ahead 47% to 43%, worrying some Democrats as others caution avoiding ‘mad poll disease’
Donald Trump has nudged ahead of Joe Biden in national polling for the 2024 presidential election, a survey published on Saturday revealed, a day after the US president branded his predecessor as “despicable” at an event in California.
The Wall Street Journal poll shows Biden with the lowest approval rating of his presidency, a finding broadly in line with other recent studies that have sparked concern in Democratic circles less than a year before voters go to the polls.
Continue reading...Federal appeals court rules Trump free to speak about special counsel Jack Smith but maintains other restrictions
Donald Trump may now assail the special counsel who brought the federal criminal case against him over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, in addition to being free to criticize the judge, the justice department, the Biden administration and the case as politically motivated.
The former president remains barred, however, from attacking potential trial witnesses, court staff or the special counsel’s staff, as well as the family members of any court staff or the special counsel’s staff.
Continue reading...Court hears Eli Bartov, professor at NYU, has worked about 650 hours on New York fraud case at rate of $1,350 per hour
An accounting expert who came to Donald Trump’s defense in his $250m fraud has racked up nearly $900,000 in fees for his testimony, a court heard on Friday.
New York University Stern School of Business research professor Eli Bartov testified on Thursday that he had found “no evidence here of concealment” in his review of the financial statements at the heart of the case.
Continue reading...This week, Joe Biden admitted that he probably would not be running for re-election if Donald Trump was not likely to be the Republican candidate. The thoughts of a rehashed presidential race in 2024 has many Americans dreading next year, and some are looking to third-party or independent candidates as potential alternatives.
So why hasn’t an outsider been more successful in the past? Is running independently of the Democrat and Republican parties a legitimate offer to voters, or nothing more than an election spoiler? And if the answer is the latter, why should the president be the one to worry?
This week, Jonathan Freedland speaks to Nitish Pahwa of Slate about why Democrats are worried that Biden could suffer the same fate as Hilary Clinton in 2016
Archive: CNN, CSPAN, CBS News, AP News
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Here is the moment House speaker Mike Johnson announced the votes on the censure of New York’s Democratic representative Jamaal Bowman:
The House has voted to censure Jamaal Bowman with 214 yeas and 191 nays.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Fulton county prosecutors say in emails their legal careers will continue long after defendants go to jail
Fulton county prosecutors have signaled they want prison sentences in the Georgia criminal case against Donald Trump and his top allies for allegedly violating the racketeering statute as part of efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, according to exchanges in private emails.
“We have a long road ahead,” the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, wrote in one email. “Long after these folks are in jail, we will still be practicing law.”
Continue reading...Donald Trump claims he told his son not to testify since ‘His young life has already been unfairly disturbed and disrupted enough’
Eric Trump will not testify at his father’s fraud trial against the Trump Organization Wednesday despite being scheduled to take the stand for over a week.
“I told my wonderful son, Eric, not to testify tomorrow at the RIGGED TRIAL,” Donald Trump wrote late on Tuesday night in a rant against the trial. Trump said that his son “already testified PERFECTLY”.
Continue reading...President spoke about risks Trump poses to democracy at event amid fears a second term would be far more autocratic
The US president, Joe Biden, said on Tuesday that he is not sure he would be seeking re-election in next year’s election if he were not likely facing Republican Donald Trump.
“If Trump wasn’t running, I’m not sure I’d be running,” Biden said at a fundraising event for his 2024 campaign outside Boston. “We cannot let him win.”
Continue reading...The former president is proud of appointing the supreme court justices who overturned the right to abortion – now the issue is a vote loser for Republicans
A few months ago, the former president Donald Trump accused the Republican party of speaking “very inarticulately” on abortion. And yet, for the GOP presidential frontrunner, inarticulateness seems to be a feature, not a bug, of his own approach to abortion.
Trump thinks he can run in 2024 as a “moderate” on abortion, Rolling Stone reported this week – even though he’s currently running ads in Iowa, a crucial state in the Republican primary, proclaiming himself “the most pro-life president ever”. It’s a title to which Trump has a legitimate claim: his three nominees to the supreme court not only handed the nation’s highest court a definitive conservative majority, but all three voted to overturn Roe v Wade in summer 2022.
Continue reading...Former US president lays into Arthur Engoron’s wife on social media after being barred from making public statements about court staff
“I’m not running for re-election because I chose not to put myself, my family through this process because here’s the reality when it comes down… I would have an uphill battle against the press, I will have an uphill battle against the party,” said Santos.
“There’s a point in time where you just say, you know, enough is enough. I’m 35-years old which doesn’t mean that it’s goodbye forever,” he continued.
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