In April, when Judge Juan Merchan first heard arguments about whether Donald Trump was violating a gag order in his criminal case in Manhattan, he sharply and skeptically questioned the former president’s attorneys, accusing one of “losing all credibility.” When he found Trump in contempt last week, he did so in a detailed, impassioned ruling that defended his gag order and the need for political speech.
The second time around, things were less tense.
For the past couple of weeks, the vortex of campus politics has threatened to suck Joe Biden in. Protesters at colleges have dubbed the president “Genocide Joe” and demanded that he act to stop Israeli actions in Gaza, while conservatives have sought to blame Biden for disorder at colleges and universities.
Here are a few things that Donald Trump’s lawyer says a president ought to be immune from prosecution for doing:
selling nuclear secrets
employing the U.S. military to assassinate a political rival
launching a coup
During a Supreme Court hearing this morning, John Sauer, representing the former president, argued that each of these actions could be understood as an “official act” of the president, and that no current or former president may be charged with crimes for doing them.
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“I JUST STORMED OUT OF BIDEN’S KANGAROO COURT!” Donald Trump wrote in an email to supporters late yesterday afternoon, shortly after the end of the first day of his trial on charges of hiding hush-money payments during the 2016 campaign.
The statement led off a fundraising appeal, and it was, somewhat predictably, a lie.
Updated at 4:12 p.m. ET on April 9, 2024
With less than a week to go before the start of his trial in New York on falsifying records, former President Donald Trump has sued Juan Merchan, the judge presiding over the case. The suit is sealed, but it is reportedly related to a gag order Merchan recently placed on Trump.
The suit seems highly unlikely to succeed, and it’s only the latest in a series of Trump broadsides against the judge.
Seven people working for a humanitarian aid group led by the chef José Andrés were killed in an Israeli air strike in the central Gaza Strip today. The strike is a black mark for the Israel Defense Forces, and likely to turn world opinion further against the Gaza campaign. But more than its geopolitical significance, the strike is a horrifying moment on a human level. Innocent people, doing good work to feed a starving population, have died for no reason at all.
Donald Trump loves the musical Cats, and like the titular creatures, the former president seems to have nine lives. Today, in the face of yet another near-death financial experience, Trump got his latest reprieve. An appeals-court panel in New York State reduced the bond he must post in a civil fraud case from more than $464 million to just $175 million.
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Not long ago, the idea that a former president—or a major-party presidential nominee—would face serious legal jeopardy was nearly unthinkable. Today, merely keeping track of the many cases against Donald Trump requires a law degree, a great deal of attention, or both.
An old journalism axiom says that if everyone’s mad at you, you must be doing something right. Since NBC announced that it had hired Ronna McDaniel, the recently deposed chair of the Republican National Committee, as a paid contributor, everyone’s been mad. NBC executives are sure to be consoling themselves that they’re doing something right. It’s just hard to see what.
On Sunday, Meet the Press host Kristen Welker rightly raked McDaniel over her past election denialism.
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Not long ago, the idea that a former president—or a major-party presidential nominee—would face serious legal jeopardy was nearly unthinkable. Today, merely keeping track of the many cases against Donald Trump requires a law degree, a great deal of attention, or both.
Donald Trump has long detested Barack Obama and sought to present himself as the opposite of his presidential predecessor in every way. But in his takeover of the Republican National Committee, he risks echoing one of Obama’s biggest political mistakes.
Last night, Trump’s handpicked leadership of the RNC took charge and conducted a purge.
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Not long ago, the idea that a former president—or a major-party presidential nominee—would face serious legal jeopardy was nearly unthinkable. Today, merely keeping track of the many cases against Donald Trump requires a law degree, a great deal of attention, or both.
Few leaders have so visibly enjoyed being president as Joe Biden. That might explain why he took so long getting down the aisle of the House chamber tonight, shaking hands and taking selfies. When he finally made it to the dais, he soaked up the applause and then grinned. “Good evening! If I were smart, I’d go home now,” he said.
The joke acknowledged the stakes of the evening’s State of the Union address.
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No one alive has seen a race like the 2024 presidential election. For months, if not years, many people have expected a reprise of the 2020 election, a matchup between the sitting president and a former president.
But that didn’t prevent a crowded primary.
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Not long ago, the idea that a former president—or a major-party presidential nominee—would face serious legal jeopardy was nearly unthinkable. Today, merely keeping track of the many cases against Donald Trump requires a law degree, a great deal of attention, or both.
Dour, somber Mitch McConnell was gleeful, if such a thing can be imagined. Surveying the aftermath of the January 6 riot, the longtime Kentucky senator concluded that Donald Trump was finished. “I feel exhilarated by the fact that this fellow finally, totally discredited himself,” he told a reporter. “He put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger.”
That was a little more than three years ago. Today, McConnell surrendered to Trump.
The parallel was striking—but perhaps no one wanted to see it.
Last week, corruption allegations that underpinned the House GOP’s push to impeach President Joe Biden collapsed after federal prosecutors charged Alexander Smirnov, the informant who’d brought them forward, with lying to the FBI.
The Biden impeachment was never about the substance of the allegations against him; it was revenge for what former President Donald Trump’s allies view as witch hunts against him.
For almost a decade, the country has been just one simple trick away from relegating Donald Trump to obscurity.
Most recently, Trump-skeptical Republicans wrung their hands that a too-large field of challengers in the 2024 presidential primary was preventing GOP voters from coalescing around a good alternative candidate. If a consensus anti-Trump candidate emerged, the hope went, the party could finally buck him.
So much for that.
A New York judge fined Donald Trump $355 million today, finding “overwhelming evidence” that he and his lieutenants at the Trump Organization made false statements “with the intent to defraud.”
Justice Arthur Engoron’s ruling in the civil fraud case is not fatal for Trump’s business empire, but it might be a near-death experience. The fine fell just short of the $370 million that New York Attorney General Letitia James sought.
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No one alive has seen a race like the 2024 presidential election. For months, if not years, many people have expected a reprise of the 2020 election, a matchup between the sitting president and a former president.
But that didn’t prevent a crowded primary.
Not long ago, the idea that a former president—or major-party presidential nominee—would face serious legal jeopardy was nearly unthinkable. Today, merely keeping track of the many cases against Donald Trump requires a law degree, a great deal of attention, or both.
In all, Trump faces 91 felony counts across two state courts and two different federal districts, any of which could potentially produce a prison sentence.
A special counsel’s report into Joe Biden’s handling of classified material released today has good news for the president, and very bad news.
The good news is that Robert Hur did not recommend charges against Biden, likely spelling the end of any legal jeopardy for sloppy storage of documents, though the report says that “the practice of retaining classified material in unsecured locations poses serious risks to national security.
Mardi Gras comes next Tuesday, but Republicans decided to throw a wild carnival a week early. With disarray on Capitol Hill, in the courts, and at the Republican National Committee, yesterday was a throwback to the vertiginous days of the Trump administration.
The Biden administration launched air strikes against Iranian interests in Syria and Iraq Friday, the latest volley in a growing proxy war across the Middle East.
But in a policy paradox, the move appears to be an attempt to deescalate by means of powerful air strikes. The White House felt a need to respond to a drone attack this week in Jordan that killed three U.S. service members, and which the U.S. has blamed on Kataib Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed militia in Iraq.
When Donald Trump was impeached, and then impeached again, some Republicans warned that repeated uses of the process would lead to it being degraded and meaningless. House Republicans are now determined to prove that was true.
Early this morning, the House Homeland Security Committee narrowly voted, along party lines, to advance articles of impeachment against Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of homeland security. The full body is expected to consider the impeachment next week.
A jury in New York today put a price on Donald Trump’s inability to keep his mouth shut, awarding the writer E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million in damages in a defamation lawsuit.
It’s the second time a jury has ordered Trump to pay Carroll. She alleged in 2019 that Trump raped her in a department-store dressing room in the 1990s. When Trump denied it, Carroll sued him for defamation and battery. Last May, a jury found Trump liable for assaulting her and awarded her $5 million.
Well, here it is.
With Donald Trump’s victory in tonight’s New Hampshire primary, the die is cast. Or rather, the public can no longer ignore that the die is cast. Really, it was cast months, even years, ago and it has landed on what most Americans consider a bad roll: a rematch of the 2020 election between Trump and President Joe Biden.
Dread of this outcome is perhaps the most unifying issue in an otherwise polarized political moment.
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No one alive has seen a race like the 2024 presidential election. For months, if not years, many people have expected a reprise of the 2020 election, a matchup between the sitting president and a former president.
That didn’t prevent a crowded primary. On the GOP side, more than a dozen candidates announced campaigns against Trump, but that’s down to just Nikki Haley.
Not long ago, the idea that a former president—or major-party presidential nominee—would face serious legal jeopardy was nearly unthinkable. Today, merely keeping track of the many cases against Donald Trump requires a law degree, a great deal of attention, or both.
In all, Trump faces 91 felony counts across two state courts and two different federal districts, any of which could potentially produce a prison sentence.
Donald Trump was determined to make one more scene in his fraud trial in New York today, and he succeeded.
After a Fox News town hall last night in Iowa, Trump flew to Manhattan, where he rose to speak during closing arguments in the trial—or perhaps more accurately, to rant.
“There wasn’t one witness against us,” Trump said, as The New York Times reported. He called the case a “political witch hunt” and said he was “an innocent man.” He said his financial statements were (naturally) “perfect.