Trump’s latest news-“Legal Showdown: Judge Slams Trump Lawyer, Citing Credibility Loss in Hush Money Trial”
The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s criminal hush money trial on Tuesday told Trump’s lawyer he is “losing all credibility” as he considered whether the former president should be punished for violating a gag order that prevents him from publicly criticizing witnesses and others involved in the case.
Prosecutors asked Justice Juan Merchan to fine Trump $10,000 for violating the order.
Defence lawyer Todd Blanche argued that Trump should not be punished for responding to political attacks. Merchan said he would not immediately rule on the prosecution’s request.
At a hearing to consider the issue, Merchan appeared to grow frustrated after Blanche did not provide specific examples of the attacks to which Trump was said to be responding.
The judge
Said Blanche had neither case law nor evidence to support his argument.
“You’ve presented nothing,” Merchan said. “I’ve asked you eight or nine times, show me the exact post he was responding to. You’ve not even been able to do that once.”
“Blanche, you’re losing all credibility. I have to tell you right now, you’re losing all credibility with the court,” the judge added.
After the session, Trump quickly went on social media to repeat his claim that the gag order violated his constitutional free speech rights.
“This is a kangaroo court and the judge should recuse himself!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
The judge’s gag order prevents Trump from publicly criticizing witnesses, court officials and their relatives.
New York prosecutor Christopher Conroy said Trump has run afoul of the order with Truth Social posts, pointing to an April 10 post that called porn star Stormy Daniels and his former lawyer Michael Cohen “sleazebags.”
Both are expected to testify in the first criminal trial of a former U.S. president.
Conroy said other posts led to media coverage that prompted a juror last week to withdraw over privacy concerns.
“He knows what he’s not allowed to do and does it anyway,” Conroy said of Trump. “His disobedience of the order is wilful. It’s intentional.”
The $10,000 fine sought by Conroy would be a relatively small penalty for Trump, who has posted $266.6 million in bonds as he appeals civil judgments in two other cases.
Conroy said he was not at this point asking Merchan to send Trump to jail for up to 30 days, as New York law allows.
“The defendant seems to be angling for that,” Conroy said.
Blanche said his posts were responses to political attacks by Cohen and not related to his former lawyer’s expected testimony.
“He’s allowed to respond to political attacks,” Blanche said.
Trump Falsifying Business
Trump was charged by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg with falsifying business records
to cover up a $130,000 payment shortly
Before the 2016 U.S. election to buy the silence Daniels about a sexual encounter she said they had in 2006.
Trump has pleaded not guilty and denies such an encounter took place.
Prosecutors have said it was part of a wider conspiracy to hide unflattering information from voters at a time when
He was facing multiple accusations of sexual misbehaviour.
Trump went on to win the 2016 election narrowly.
In his opening statement on Monday, defence lawyer Todd Blanche said Trump did not commit any crimes.
Blanche said Trump acted to protect his family and his reputation and accused Daniels of trying to profit from a false accusation that they had sex.
On Tuesday
Jurors heard more testimony from former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker,
who prosecutors say participated in a “catch and kill” scheme to suppress unflattering stories about Trump and help him get elected.
Pecker, 72, testified on Monday that his company paid for stories – an unusual practice in journalism.
American Media, which published the National Enquirer,
admitted in 2018 that it paid $150,000 to former Playboy magazine model Karen McDougal for
Her story about a months-long affair with Trump in 2006 and 2007.
American Media said it worked “in concert” with Trump’s campaign, and it never published a story.
The tabloid reached a similar deal to pay $30,000 to a doorman
who was seeking to sell a story about Trump allegedly fathering a child out of wedlock,
which turned out to be false, according to prosecutors.
Trump has said the payments were personal and did not violate election law. He has also denied an affair with McDougal.
The case may be the only one of the Republican Trump’s four criminal prosecutions
To go to trial before his Nov. 5 election rematch with Democratic President Joe Biden.
Tabloid publisher testifies
The first witness in Donald Trump’s criminal hush money trial,
Former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker testified on Tuesday that he used his supermarket tabloid to suppress stories that might have hurt Trump’s 2016 presidential bid.
Pecker, 72, testified in a New York court that the Enquirer paid two people
who were peddling stories of Trump’s sexual misbehaviour
but never published a practice known as “catch and kill.”
“When someone’s running for public office like this, it is widespread for these women to call up a magazine like the National Enquirer to try to sell their stories,” Pecker testified.
Pecker said the decision to bury the stories followed a 2015 meeting
At which he told Trump that the Enquirer would publish favourable stories about
The billionaire candidate and keep an eye out for people selling stories that might hurt him.
He said he told an editor to keep the arrangement secret.
Trump All credibility lost
Pecker’s testimony came after a hearing to consider prosecutors’ request to fine Trump $10,000 for violating a gag order prohibiting
He criticized witnesses, court officials and their relatives.
Justice Juan Merchan said he would not immediately rule on that request,
But he appeared unmoved by Trump’s defence lawyer Todd Blanche’s arguments
That Trump was responding to political attacks
Not intimidating witnesses.
“You’ve presented nothing,” Merchan said. “I’ve asked you eight or nine times, show me the exact post he was responding to. You’ve not even been able to do that once.”
“I have to tell you right now, you’re losing all credibility with the court,” the judge added.
After the session, Trump repeated his claim that the gag order violated his constitutional free speech rights.
“This is a kangaroo court and the judge should recuse himself!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
New York prosecutor Christopher Conroy said Trump has run afoul of the order, pointing to an April 10 Truth Social post that called Daniels and Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen “sleazebags.”
Both are expected to testify in the first criminal trial of a former U.S. president.
Conroy said other posts led to media coverage that prompted a juror last week to withdraw over privacy concerns.
“He knows what he’s not allowed to do and does it anyway,” Conroy said of Trump. “His disobedience of the order is wilful. It’s intentional.”
The $10,000 fine sought by Conroy would be a relatively small penalty for Trump, who has posted $266.6 million in bonds as he appeals civil judgments in two other cases.
Conroy said he was not at this point asking Merchan to send Trump to jail for up to 30 days, as New York law allows.
“The defendant seems to be angling for that,” Conroy said.
Blanche said Trump’s posts were responses to political attacks by Cohen and not related to his former lawyer’s expected testimony.
“He’s allowed to respond to political attacks,” Blanche said.
Trump seems to consider above the law
Trump feels that the rules don’t apply to him in the same way as others in all of his legal cases where he has pleaded not guilty, as well as in his other endeavours.
He’s the first president in history to lose an election but insist that he won based on false and debunked claims of mass fraud.
He saw nothing wrong, as president, with phoning officials in Georgia and asking them to “find” votes
That did not exist so he could try to overturn President Joe Biden’s win in the critical swing state in 2020.
The ex-president insisted the call was “perfect” the same phrase
he used to describe his attempt to coerce Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into announcing
an investigation into the Biden family in a conversation that led to his first impeachment.
The impulse to ignore gag orders and most accepted understandings of the limits of presidential power seems to spring from the same contempt.
For the rule of law that led Trump to allegedly mishandle troves of classified documents
At his Mar-a-Lago estate and to claim they belonged to him and not the country.
He’s also awaiting trial in this case in which he’s pleaded not guilty.
A sense that the law only applies to other people may have also informed
The ex-president’s overvaluing of his properties to secure preferential treatment.
From banks and insurance firms an assumption countermanded by his loss in a nearly
half-a-billion dollar civil fraud trial judgment against him,
the Trump Organization and his adult sons earlier this year.
While Trump’s obliviousness to constraints horrifies his opponents,
his willingness to tear down legal and political institutions is the key to his appeal to millions of supporters.
In his bid to win back the White House, Trump is appealing to Americans who distrust governing elites in politics, the
the law, the medical establishment and the media.
He’s posing as a champion who is enduring persecution so that they won’t have to.
“I am your justice … and for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution,”
Trump said at the Conservative Political Action Conference in March 2023, reviving his bond with his populist base voters.
But Trump’s willingness to trample the law and the principles of a democratic,
constitutional system has severed its links with more traditional conservatives.
George Conway, a conservative lawyer who before 2020 always voted for Republicans for president.
The headline is a fundraiser for Biden on Wednesday and will give nearly a million dollars to a joint fundraising committee to try to re-elect him
Because he’s worried about Trump’s pledge to devote his possible second term to retribution.
He warned Trump “doesn’t care a whit about the Constitution, about the rule of law.
He wants to undermine the country and its rule of law for his political purposes.”
Conway, who was in court for the Trump trial on Tuesday,
Became emotional as he explained his decision to donate the maximum amount possible in an interview with Burnett.
“Yeah, it’s going to come out of my kids’ inheritance, but the most important thing they can inherit is living in a constitutional democracy,” Conway said.
