Republican lawmakers reacted with immediate fury on Thursday as a New York jury convicted former President Donald Trump on 34 counts of falsifying business records to influence the 2016 election, speaking out with near unanimity in questioning the legitimacy of the trial and how it was conducted. House Speaker Mike Johnson said it was a shameful day in American history and the charges were purely political. Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance said the verdict was a disgrace to the judicial system. Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise, the No. 2 House Republican, said that the decision was a defeat for Americans who believe in the critical legal tenet that justice is blind. Within minutes of the verdict being read, Republicans who have in the past been divided over support for their presumptive GOP presidential nominee found common ground in attacking with few specifics the judge, the jury and President Joe Biden, even though the conviction came on state charges in a Manhattan court. As the nation's top
Despite this significant legal blow, former US President Donald Trump remains a prominent contender in the ongoing 2024 US presidential race
Being convicted of a felony - let alone 34 of them - is the kind of blow that would normally tank any politician's ambitions. Donald Trump will instead try to turn what might otherwise be a career-ending judgment into campaign fuel. Trump will return to the campaign trail Friday with a news conference at his namesake tower in Manhattan a day after he was convicted of trying to illegally influence the 2016 election through a hush money payment to a porn actor who claimed they had sex. His lawyers and allies described him as defiant and ready to fight a verdict they argue is illegitimate and driven by politics. No former president or presumptive party nominee has ever faced a felony conviction or the prospect of prison time, and Trump is expected to keep his legal troubles central to his campaign. He has long argued without evidence that the four indictments against him were orchestrated by Democratic President Joe Biden to try to keep him out of the White House. There is nobody who
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Donald Trump is accusing Joe Biden of offering a weak response to antisemitism, wielding the clashes on colleges campuses over the war in Gaza as a campaign issue. But Trump's attacks ignore his own long history of rhetoric that invokes the language of Nazi Germany and plays on stereotypes of Jews and politics. The latest example came over the weekend, when Trump accusing the White House of having a role in his multiple state and federal criminal prosecutions told Republican donors gathered for a private retreat at his Florida resort that Biden is running a Gestapo administration, referring to the secret police force of Nazi Germany. Amy Spitalnick, CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, called it a deliberate tactic to attack Biden and distract from his own track record. "It's wholly aligned with his long history of offensive and irresponsible comments when it comes to the Jewish community, including the normalization of antisemitism," Spitalnick said. Biden's campaign ..
Prosecutors in Donald Trump's hush money trial are moving deeper into his orbit following an inside-the-room account about the former president's reaction to a politically damaging recording that surfaced in the final weeks of the 2016 campaign. Hope Hicks, a former White House official and for years a top aide, is by far the closest Trump associate to have taken the witness stand in the Manhattan trial. Her testimony on Friday was designed to give jurors an insider's view of a chaotic and pivotal stretch in the campaign, when a 2005 recording showing Trump talking about grabbing women without their permission was made public and when he and his allies sought to prevent the release of other potentially embarrassing stories. That effort, prosecutors say, included hush money payments to a porn actor and Playboy model who both have said they had sexual encounters with Trump before he entered politics. I had a good sense to believe this was going to be a massive story and that it was .
Donald Trump's lawyers told a New York appellate court Monday that it's impossible for him to post a bond covering the full amount of his $454 million civil fraud judgment while he appeals. The former president's lawyers wrote in a court filing that obtaining an appeal bond in the full amount of the judgment is not possible under the circumstances presented. With interest, Trump owes $456.8 million. In all, he and co-defendants including his company and top executives owe $467.3 million. To obtain a bond, they would be required to post collateral worth $557 million, Trump's lawyers said. A state appeals court judge ruled last month that Trump must post a bond covering the full amount to pause enforcement of the judgment, which is to begin on March 25. Judge Arthur Engoron ruled in February that Trump, his company and top executives, including his sons Eric and Donald Trump Jr., schemed for years to deceive banks and insurers by inflating his wealth on financial statements used to .
The decision removes the possibility of a fresh showdown threatening Trump's appearance on a primary ballot, for now
Despite losing both Iowa and New Hampshire to Donald Trump,Nikki Haley is nevertheless trying to frame those losses as a victory and vowing to head off a coronation of Trump as the 2024 Republican nominee. The path through the next states to vote, however, may not be any easier. We were thrilled, Haley said during a rally before hundreds of sign-waving fans on Wednesday night in North Charleston, South Carolina, casting her second-place New Hampshire finish as a win given how little support her campaign had in its early days. We got out there, and we did our thing and we said what we had to say, and then Donald Trump got out there and just threw a temper tantrum," Haley added, referencing Trump's primary night remarks in which the former president repeatedly insulted her in a speech far angrier than his remarks after his Iowa victory. Haley did perform better in Tuesday's New Hampshire primary than she had in the Iowa caucuses a week earlier, where she finished third, well behind .
The decision made by the state court last month almost guaranteed that the justices would have to hear the contentious issue and decide whether or not Trump could be struck from the ballot
Latching on to either of those arguments to let Trump off the hook would be a mistake
To hear his lawyers tell it, Donald Trump was alarmed by Russia's interference in the 2016 election, motivated as president to focus on cybersecurity and had a good-faith basis four years later to worry that foreign actors had again meddled in the race. But to federal prosecutors, 2016 is significant as the year that Trump spread misinformation about voter fraud and proved himself resistant to accepting the outcome of elections that might not go his way. Even though a trial set for next year in Washington is centred on Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election, lawyers on both sides have signalled their desire for totally different purposes to draw attention to the tumultuous presidential contest four years earlier as a way to help explain his state of mind after his loss to Democrat Joe Biden. When we're talking about someone's belief or mental state, there is usually no one piece of evidence that is dispositive, said David Aaron, a former Justice Department national security
President Joe Biden went to Las Vegas on Friday to say he's "putting high-speed rail on the fast track," and he used the moment to blast Donald Trump his predecessor and likely 2024 challenger as a do-nothing politician. "Trump just talks the talk. We walk the walk," Biden said at a hall for unionized carpenters. "He likes to say America is a failing nation. Frankly, he doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. I see shovels in the ground, cranes in the sky. People hard at work rebuilding America together." The president showcased USD 8.2 billion in new federal funding for 10 major passenger rail projects across the country. He also emphasized the fundamental differences between Trump and himself, a sign that his policy speeches are taking an ever greater political bent with the election now roughly 11 months away. The Democrat said Trump "failed" to deliver on his promises to invest in US infrastructure. Biden countered that his rail funding could help to connect Las Vegas t
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 judge wrote
Campaigning in Iowa this year, Donald Trump said he was prevented during his presidency from using the military to quell violence in primarily Democratic cities and states. Calling New York City and Chicago crime dens, the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination told his audience, The next time, I'm not waiting. One of the things I did was let them run it and we're going to show how bad a job they do, he said. Well, we did that. We don't have to wait any longer. Trump has not spelled out precisely how he might use the military during a second term, although he and his advisers have suggested they would have wide latitude to call up units. While deploying the military regularly within the country's borders would be a departure from tradition, the former president already has signalled an aggressive agenda if he wins, from mass deportations to travel bans imposed on certain Muslim-majority countries. A law first crafted in the nation's infancy would give Trump as
Donald Trump pleaded not guilty on Thursday to trying to overturn the results of his 2020 presidential election loss, answering for the first time to federal charges that accuse him of orchestrating a brazen and ultimately failed attempt to block the peaceful transfer of presidential power. Trump appeared before a magistrate judge in Washington's federal courthouse two days after being indicted on four felony counts by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith. The charges accuse him of trying to subvert the will of voters and undo his election loss in the days before January 6, 2021, when supporters stormed the US Capitol in a violent and bloody clash with law enforcement. Trump, the 2024 Republican presidential primary front-runner, is facing charges including conspiracy to defraud the United States and obstruct Congress' certification of Democrat Joe Biden's victory. His appearance Thursday, and the rest of the court case, will unfold in a courthouse blocks in clear view of th
A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit Donald Trump filed against CNN in which the former US president claimed that references in news articles or by the network's hosts to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election as the Big Lie was tantamount to comparing him to Adolf Hitler. Trump had been seeking punitive damages of USD 475 million in the federal lawsuit filed last October in South Florida, claiming the references hurt his reputation and political career. Trump is a candidate for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination in what is his third run for the presidency. US District Judge Raag Singhal, who was appointed by Trump, said on Friday in his ruling that the former president's defamation claims failed because the references were opinions and not factual statements. Moreover, it was a stretch to believe that, in viewers' minds, that phrase would connect Trump's efforts challenging the 2020 election results to Nazi propaganda or Hitler's genocidal and authoritarian regime, the jud
Prosecutors described difficulties in obtaining an order defining guidelines for how the defendants and their attorneys will handle classified material in the case in a late Thursday filing
'US going to hell. Only crime I committed is to fearlessly defend our nation from those who seek to destroy it'
Addressing his supporters hours after he was arraigned, Donald Trump said that the only crime he has committed is fearlessly defending his country