Yes, quite. The bold bit I was thinking that too, because if this trial shows that he's not untouchable, the others will snowball.This judge is in total control of this trial, yes, I've noticed that. The lawyers have so far been challenged by the selection of unbiased jurors. This trial, may be Trumps complete undoing.
Why is the former president’s case only coming to trial now? In part because the Trump administration politicized the legal process and perverted a federal investigation without cause.
The former president has the entire scandal backwards. He believes the real controversy is that the case wasn’t prosecuted sooner, when it reality, it would’ve been prosecuted sooner had partisans on his team not corrupted the process on his behalf.
Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Even before Donald Trump’s criminal trial in New York began, it was clear that the lengthy and demanding proceedings would fundamentally change his 2024 campaign.
But it only took a few days to show that Trump’s hush money trial will be even more damaging, more constraining, and more significant than anyone expected.
The headlines alone told the story. During the trial’s opening week, for instance, Trump arguably drew the most attention for appearing to fall asleep in the courtroom.
“I had sort of underestimated just the giant time-suck this is going to be for him as a candidate,” Alex Conant, a GOP strategist and a top aide on Marco Rubio’s 2016 campaign told The Daily Beast.
Crucially, it’s not just time, but money, being left on the table as the hush money case drags on.
“He could be raising six, seven figures pretty regularly at major-dollar events around the country at this point,” Conant said. “That’s literally what Biden is doing. So Trump’s fundraisers are probably frustrated that because he’s in New York, they can’t schedule that stuff.”
NEW YORK (AP) — He seems "selfish and self-serving,” said one woman.
The way he carries himself in public "leaves something to be desired," said another.
His “negative rhetoric and bias," said another man, is what is “most harmful."
Over the past week, Donald Trump has been forced to sit inside a frigid New York courtroom and listen to a parade of potential jurors in his criminal hush money trial share their unvarnished assessments of him.
It’s been a dramatic departure for the former president and presumptive GOP nominee, who is accustomed to spending his days in a cocoon of cheering crowds and constant adulation. Now a criminal defendant, Trump will instead spend the next several weeks subjected to strict rules that strip him of control over everything from what he is permitted to say to the temperature of the room.
“He’s the object of derision. It's his nightmare. He can't control the script. He can't control the cinematography. He can't control what's being said about him. And the outcome could go in a direction he really doesn't want," said Tim O'Brien, a Trump biographer and critic.
As the 45th president of the United States, Donald Trump isn't used to being reminded that he's now a criminal defendant. He got one stark reminder from Judge Juan Merchan on Friday, according to a new report.
The Daily Beast's Jose Pagliery reported that during Friday's jury selection, Merchan had to tell Trump to sit down after he abruptly stood up before the judge finished his sentence. Merchan had just gotten through more than an hour of back-and-forth arguments with both the prosecution and the defense about a contempt hearing scheduled for next week, where Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is alleging that Trump has repeatedly violated the court's gag order.
"Merchan turned his face to the former president and said in a firm voice: 'Sir, can you please have a seat,'" Pagliery wrote. "His long, black robes dangled from beneath his right hand as he waved it down, like a man addressing his dog."
Pagliery, who was present during the hearing, wrote that Trump then "went and plopped straight back down into his maroon leather chair at the defense table—and remained for another minute, fuming as the judge gathered his paperwork and strolled toward his chambers."
New York Attorney General Letitia James has asked the judge in Donald Trump’s civil fraud case to void the $175m bond posted previously by the former president, after questioning whether the insurance company has sufficient funds to back it up.
Mr Trump’s bond was posted by California-based Knight Specialty Insurance Company (KSIC), and Ms James raised concerns that the insurer was “not authorised” to write business in New York.
In a 26-page filing posted on Friday ahead of a pre-scheduled hearing next week, her office also argued that the collateral put up by the former president should be under the full control of the company.
Ms James said that the KSIC "had never before written a surety bond in New York or in the prior two years in any other jurisdiction, and has a total policy holder surplus of just $138 million,” according to the documents obtained by NBC.
Taylor also dispensed with the argument that the former president’s wealth is proof of his business acumen.
“Al Capone was incredibly rich,” he said. “You can be rich and not be a great businessman. You can be a fraud. And we’ve seen this with Donald Trump throughout his history. Even people who’ve been huge supporters of his have come away saying, ‘he’s a total fraud.’”
The former president’s legal strategy largely boils down to delaying, by any means necessary, the growing pile of criminal and civil threats against him in courtrooms across the country.
Supreme Court justices delivered him a key victory. The months of debate and delays – culminating in the Supreme Court slow walking one of the most important tests of presidential power in American history – have all but ensured that voters will not see a verdict in a trial to determine if he unlawfully conspired to overturn an election before they cast their ballots in the next one.
“The substance of this case is nothing less than a fork in the road on whether we will continue to have democracy, a constitutional republic, with checks and balances that have characterised the presidency, or whether we will embark on the road to autocracy,” according to Norm Eisen, a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution who served as co-counsel for the House Judiciary Committee during Mr Trump’s first impeachment.
A federal judge on Thursday upheld the verdict and award of more than $83m to the writer E Jean Carroll in a defamation case against Donald Trump after he called her a liar for accusing him of sexually assaulting her.
Judge Lewis Kaplan, a senior district judge on the US district court for the southern district of New York, denied Trump’s motion for a new trial and affirmed that Carroll suffered harm caused by Trump’s 2019 public statements.
“Mr Trump’s argument is entirely without merit both as a matter of law and as a matter of fact,” Kaplan wrote in his opinion released on Thursday.
Carroll, a journalist and advice columnist, first sued Trump in 2019 for sexually abusing her in a New York department store changing room around early 1996. A jury awarded her with $5m in compensatory and punitive damages last year.
Though some Republicans may blame House oversight committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) for their failure to impeach President Joe Biden, the real reason is simple: The whole party bought into long-debunked conspiracy theories peddled by their leader, Donald Trump.
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