NY Civil Lawsuit & Criminal Trial Against Donald Trump & Family

[tbm3fan]

Most defendants in a case like this would settle out of court, before it goes to a public trial, and have the settlement sealed.

[DOR]

I just received another of the many spam I get from He Who Shall Not Be Named.
The headline was "136 years in prison !"

Made my day.

[TopHatter]

Trump’s Moment of Accountability
Imagining the opening statement to the jury in ‘People of New York v. Trump.’



One way evaluate the strength of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s evidence against Donald Trump is to envision how a prosecutor would present the case in his opening statement to a jury. Judge for yourself from this hypothetical opening, drawn from the indictment, the accompanying statement of facts, and Bragg’s Tuesday press conference.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,

This is a case about hiding the truth from the people to get elected president. The coverup was worse than the crime.

The coverup involved the defendant, Donald J. Trump, making false entries in business records to keep the truth secret after he’d suppressed it on the eve of the 2016 election. The victims were the American people and American history.

Trump’s indictment may be tied to his hush money payments, but it’s also bound up…
The defendant set out to fool the voters, and he got himself elected. But accounts become due. This is his moment of accountability to the law and to you.

Testimony and documents will prove that the defendant ran a three-part “catch and kill” scheme on the eve of the 2016 election. He engaged in a pattern and practice of buying silence to deprive voters of knowledge of material facts as they exercised their sacred right to choose the nation’s leader.

Then, the evidence will show, the man sitting right over there <pointing to Trump> disguised “hush money” reimbursements as “legal fees.” Why cover up the repayments? The hush money had advanced the defendant’s candidacy and therefore, under campaign finance laws, should have been reported as contributions to his campaigns. Tax violations and false statements to the government were also part of the scheme.

You will hear testimony that in June 2015, the defendant held a meeting in Trump Tower with his friend, David Pecker, the National Enquirer’s publisher, and with the defendant’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen. They privately agreed to buy the silence of anyone circulating stories that could harm the defendant’s candidacy.

Mr. Pecker and Mr. Cohen will testify to their parts in the scheme. Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty in federal court to the unlawful plan, admitting that it was directed by the defendant. He served time in prison.

Step one: In the fall of 2015, a former Trump Tower doorman spread a rumor that the defendant had fathered an out-of-wedlock child. Mr. Pecker paid the doorman $30,000 to squelch that story, even before Pecker realized that it could not be verified. That’s how desperate the collaborators were to “catch and kill” potential scandals.

We wouldn’t be here if that were the end of it.

In June 2016, Karen McDougal alleged that she had an extramarital relationship with the defendant. Mr. Pecker, Mr. Cohen, and the defendant met again. They agreed that Pecker would pay her $150,000 for exclusive rights to her story.

You will hear a tape recording of that conversation, including the defendant’s own words.

Let me pause here. The defense will tell you that Cohen and Pecker cannot be believed—that they are motivated to lie. But tape recordings have no motivation to lie.

You can believe both men because documents, texts, emails, notes, checks, and tapes corroborate the truth of what they are telling you.

Now the third leg of the scheme, a $130,000 payment to the adult film actress Stormy Daniels. On the eve of the election, she let it be known that she could publicly tell all about her “one-night stand” with the defendant years earlier.

The agreement with her lawyer to pay for her silence occurred three days after the infamous Access Hollywood scandal broke, heightening the potential threat of Ms. Daniels’s information to the defendant’s candidacy. Two strikes and he could have been out.

Once the deal was arranged, the defendant instructed Cohen to delay the payment until after the election. That way, the defendant said, he could avoid paying because, win or lose, the story wouldn’t matter. So much for the tale the defense will tell you that the defendant was merely hiding the affair from his wife.

Meanwhile, Ms. Daniels was not about to be stalled past the election. She insisted and Cohen arranged a payment to her of $130,000 in October 2016.

You will see cancelled checks showing that over the next year, the defendant reimbursed Cohen for his payment to Daniels with multiple personal checks from the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust. You will hear Mr. Cohen’s testimony that the defendant’s notes on the check stubs characterizing the reimbursements as “legal services” were false.

And you will see repayments to Cohen totaling more than double the $130,000. That way, after Cohen declared them as income on his taxes, he would come out whole, and with a bonus to boot.

We will show you the notes from the Trump Organization’s Chief Financial Officer that corroborate Cohen’s testimony explaining the amount of the payment. Corroboration, corroboration, corroboration.

While the defendant is a politician, this case is about law, not politics. All politics must be set aside. Only when our evidence proves guilt beyond a reasonable doubt do we charge or convict individuals of crime. When we have that evidence, as we do here, it does not matter if you were president or if you are running for president. No one is above the law.
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[TopHatter]

Most defendants in a case like this would settle out of court, before it goes to a public trial, and have the settlement sealed.

I don't think that's possible in this case. It's criminal this time, not civil and the charges are felonies, not misdemeanors.

Trump would need to make a plea bargain and that would mean pleading guilty, even to lesser criminal charges.

He would thus become a convicted criminal and I can't imagine him agreeing to that.

On the other hand, if his lawyers are able to convince him, in the same way they clearly convinced him to plead the Fifth over 400 times during the Tish James civil fraud deposition, then it's entirely possible that Trump may resort to a plea bargain, to stave off even greater pain.

[TopHatter]

The Racial Element of Trump’s Attacks on His Prosecutors
Why it matters that he calls them “racist” and “animal.”
Indictment season is officially underway and Donald Trump’s legal Houdini act is closing after a fifty-year run. Yes, he’s making history. But let’s focus for just a moment on the prosecutors leading the investigations that may finally hold him to account. Who they are, and the disturbing nature of Trump’s attacks against them, will shape the 2024 campaign and American democracy itself.

Before Trump became the first former president to be indicted, there was the first black person elected district attorney of Manhattan, Alvin Bragg. There was the first woman (and first black woman) elected district attorney of Fulton County, Georgia, Fani Willis. And there was Letitia “Tish” James, who in 2018 shattered “a trio of racial and gender barriers,” as the New York Times put it: first woman to be elected New York attorney general, first black woman to be elected to statewide office, first black person to serve as attorney general.

Blood, sweat, and tears doesn’t even begin to describe what it’s taken to get here; the very date of Trump’s arraignment—on the 55th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s murder in Memphis—revives the painful past. You could, if you appreciated U.S. history, celebrate so many glass ceilings in fragments on the ground. Bragg, Willis, and James are proof that the American dream, and MLK’s dream, are alive.

James’s parents reportedly wanted her to marry a plumber. Instead she became a lawyer, a path she chose as a young teen in a courthouse watching her brother fight a false bike theft accusation. The former public defender vowed when she won the attorney general race in 2018 that she would not be shy about investigating Trump. He should know, she said of the then-president, that in New York, “we are not scared of you. And as the next attorney general of his home state, I will be shining a bright light into every dark corner of his real estate dealings, and every dealing, demanding truthfulness at every turn.”

Trump tweeted before James took office that she had “openly campaigned on a GET TRUMP agenda.” In September 2022, just before she won re-election, James filed a civil lawsuit against Trump and his family seeking a $250 million judgment and a ban on any Trumps leading a company in New York State. It alleged Trump and his family had engaged in “numerous acts of fraud and misrepresentations” for twenty years to enrich themselves and cheat lenders.

Willis was raised by her father, John C. Floyd III, a defense lawyer and former Black Panther. She was organizing his home office files at age 8 and absorbing unusual instructions on how to set a table. “I couldn’t remember what side the knife goes on. He told me the knife goes on the right side because that’s where you would stab someone,” she told USA Today. Willis became a tough prosecutor whose targets have included public school teachers in a cheating scandal as well as violent gangs.

Supporters let out a roar when Willis exclaimed at her 2020 victory party: “Y’all, we made herstory!” She came down to earth quickly when the top breaking news story on her first day in office was a recording of Trump asking Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” him 11,780 votes (one more than he needed to reverse Joe Biden’s win in the state). Eventually she realized her office was the only one available to investigate. She said in late January that a charging decision is “imminent” after an investigation into that phone call and other attempts by Trump and his allies to subvert the election.

Bragg was elected Manhattan D.A. in 2021. In his victory speech in Harlem, where he grew up, he told supporters he wouldn’t be simply the first black district attorney of Manhattan. “I think I’ll probably be the first district attorney who’s had police point a gun at him,” he said. “I think I’ll be the first district attorney who’s had a homicide victim on his doorstop. I think I’ll be the first district attorney in Manhattan who’s had a semiautomatic weapon pointed at him. I think I’ll be the first district attorney in Manhattan who’s had a loved one reenter from incarceration and stay with him. And I’m going to govern from that perspective.”

On the day of Trump’s arraignment last week, that commitment was clear. “No amount of money and no amount of power” changes the principle that “everyone stands equal before the law,” Bragg told reporters. He said his office has prosecuted many white-collar cases that, like Trump’s, are rooted in allegations that “someone lied again and again to protect their interests” and evade the law. This case, he said, is about “34 false statements made to cover up other crimes. These are felony crimes in New York State no matter who you are. We cannot and will not normalize serious criminal conduct.”

A jury had earlier convicted the Trump Organization of multiple charges of criminal tax fraud and falsifying records in another case Bragg’s office handled, and the company was fined the maximum $1.6 million. Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s former chief financial officer, pleaded guilty to evading taxes on $1.7 million in compensation and is serving five months in jail.

Trump contended Bragg “hand picked” Juan Merchan, the judge from those cases, to preside over the arraignment and potentially a criminal trial. But in fact it was a coincidence that occurred “randomly through an assignment wheel” for overseeing grand juries, Politico reported. “I have a Trump-hating judge, with a Trump-hating wife and family,” Trump said Tuesday night of Merchan, who came to the United States at age 6 from Bogota, Colombia.

Shades of 2016, when Trump repeatedly lashed out at a judge overseeing a class-action fraud lawsuit against Trump University in San Diego. The case was eventually settled for $25 million, but not before Trump had called Judge Gonzalo Curiel a “hater” who would be “extremely unfair” to Trump because Curiel, born in Indiana, was Hispanic and Mexican and Trump wanted to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border. Why were we shocked? In his first speech as a candidate in 2015, Trump said Mexico sends America criminals and rapists instead of “their best.”

Trump’s brand is spewing abuse, and he certainly has not spared Jack Smith, the Justice Department special counsel handling the investigations into the Mar-a-Lago documents and efforts to overturn the 2020 election, including the January 6th Capitol attack. Trump has called Smith, who is white, “a terrorist,” a “THUG,” a “fully weaponized monster,” a “Mad Dog Psycho,” and a “hit man” for Democrats “who may very well turn out to be a criminal.”

But the way Trump goes after black and Hispanic prosecutors and judges poses a special menace because of the example he sets—the permission structure he creates—for white nationalism, white supremacy, racism, antisemitism, and immigrant-bashing. There’s no forgetting any of it, from “very fine people on both sides,” to “shithole countries” like Haiti and African nations, to insulting black people as low-IQ, to “stand back and stand by,” to dining at Mar-a-Lago with Nick Fuentes, an antisemitic white supremacist.

---

With his trademark self-owning projection, Trump has attacked all three black prosecutors investigating him as “racist.” In his post-arraignment Mar-a-Lago rant, he referred to Willis as “a local racist Democrat district attorney in Atlanta who is doing everything in her power to indict me over an absolutely perfect phone call.” James, he added, is “another racist in reverse.” He spared Bragg that particular word that night, but he had already called him an “animal” and warned of “potential death and destruction” if he were to be charged. He was back at it Sunday night with a Truth Social post that started, “Just like New York, the Racist District Attorney in Atlanta . . . ”

Who says things like that? Who says, out loud, that they want more immigrants from Norway, fewer from Haiti? Who even thinks that?

Probably someone whose father was Woody Guthrie’s despised landlord in the early 1950s at Beach Haven apartments in Brooklyn, and ended up in a 1954 Guthrie lyric as “Old Man Trump”—who drew a “color line” and stirred up “racial hate.” Someone whose astonishingly litigious life began when the federal government sued him, his father, and their company, alleging they wouldn’t rent apartments to black people, exactly fifty years ago.

Last week’s rule-of-law breakthrough almost certainly previews more to come. And for Trump, these reckonings are not just threats to his personal future and liberty. They involve three prosecutors who embody a national racial transformation that Trump has exploited from the start to raise money, inflame resentments, and win support. Let’s not lose sight of them amid the legal storms and all-cap Trump onslaughts ahead.
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bUt tRuMp'S nOt a rAcIsT aNd wHaTaBoUt jOe bIdEn??

[TopHatter]

Donald Trump returning to New York for deposition in $250M civil lawsuit: Sources


Former President Donald Trump attends the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) 287 mixed martial arts event at the Kaseya Center in Miami, Florida, on April 8, 2023.

Former President Donald Trump is scheduled to return to New York City Thursday to sit for a second deposition as part of New York Attorney General Letitia James' $250 million civil fraud lawsuit, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.

Trump previously sat for an hourslong deposition in August, prior to James filing her lawsuit that accused Trump, his eldest children and his company of fraudulently inflating the value of the Trump real estate portfolio and his net worth.

The attorney general's office has the right to depose relevant parties after the filing of the lawsuit as part of the discovery process.

Trump is expected to sit for this new deposition Thursday at the attorney general's downtown office. The former president has been seeking to delay the start of the trial in the civil case, but the judge has said the October start is firm "come hell or high water."

The former president did not answer many questions in the first deposition other than affirming he understood the ground rules and the procedures.

When Kevin Wallace, the attorney general's senior counsel, asked what Trump did to prepare for the deposition, he answered: "very little."

When asked questions about his finances, Trump repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment and continued to do so for the next several hours.

The suit claims that Trump's Florida estate and golf resort, Mar-a-Lago, was valued as high as $739 million, but should have been valued at $75 million. Trump is also alleged to have overvalued assets such as his Trump Tower apartment; Trump Turnberry, his golf course in Scotland; and 40 Wall Street.

Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr., the president's eldest children, also previously sat for depositions in the case.

Trump had initially countersued James for filing the lawsuit against him. But Trump withdrew the lawsuit in January after U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks warned Trump's legal team that the lawsuit appeared to verge on frivolous.
__________

He'll invoke the Fifth again throughout the deposition, opening himself wide open to losing this suit....but theoretically protecting himself against further charges that are criminal rather than civil.

[Monash]

Donald Trump returning to New York for deposition in $250M civil lawsuit: Sources

He'll invoke the Fifth again throughout the deposition, opening himself wide open to losing this suit....but theoretically protecting himself against further charges that are criminal rather than civil.

He should just sit through the deposition with a paddle board sign in one hand that simply says 'I plead the fifth'. Then he can just flip the sign up every time a question is asked. That way he can save his voice for the outraged media rants afterwards.

[TopHatter]

He should just sit through the deposition with a paddle board sign in one hand that simply says 'I plead the fifth'. Then he can just flip the sign up every time a question is asked. That way he can save his voice for the outraged media rants afterwards.

Heh, he'll always have enough "voice" left for those.

He did get told to just say "same answer" in interest of saving time during his last deposition. I wonder what that sounds like...over four hundred times...

[TopHatter]

Manhattan DA sues Rep. Jordan over Trump indictment inquiry

NEW YORK (AP) — Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg sued Rep. Jim Jordan on Tuesday, an extraordinary move as he seeks to halt a House Judiciary Committee inquiry that the prosecutor contends is a “transparent campaign to intimidate and attack” him over his indictment of former President Donald Trump.

Bragg, a Democrat, is asking a judge to invalidate subpoenas that Jordan, a Republican who chairs the Judiciary Committee, has or plans to issue as part of an investigation of Bragg's handling of the case, the first criminal prosecution of a former U.S. president.

Bragg's lawsuit, a forceful escalation after weeks of sparring with Jordan and other Republican lawmakers in letters and media statements, seeks to end what it says is a “constitutionally destructive fishing expedition” that threatens the sovereignty and sanctity of a state-level prosecution.

“Congress lacks any valid legislative purpose to engage in a free-ranging campaign of harassment in retaliation for the District Attorney’s investigation and prosecution of Mr. Trump under the laws of New York," the lawsuit says, citing the lack of authority in the Constitution for Congress “to oversee, let alone disrupt, ongoing state law criminal matters.”

In response, Jordan tweeted Tuesday: “First, they indict a president for no crime. Then they sue to block congressional oversight when we ask questions about the federal funds they say they used to do it.”

The Judiciary Committee recently issued a subpoena seeking testimony from a former prosecutor, Mark Pomerantz, who previously oversaw the Trump investigation and sparred with Bragg over the direction of the probe before leaving the office last year. The committee has also sought documents and testimony from Bragg and his office. Bragg has rejected those requests.

The House Judiciary Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing in Manhattan on Monday on crime in New York City and what it alleges are Bragg’s “pro-crime, anti-victim” policies. The D.A.’s office, however, points to statistics showing that violent crime in Manhattan has dropped since Bragg took office in January 2022.

In response, Bragg said that if Jordan, who is from Ohio, “really cared about public safety,” he would travel to some of the major cities in his home state, where crime is reportedly higher than in New York.

Bragg is represented in the lawsuit by Theodore Boutrous, a well-known First Amendment lawyer who has also represented Trump’s estranged niece, Mary Trump, in legal clashes with her famous uncle. The case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil, a Trump appointee who previously served as a federal bankruptcy court judge.

Bragg, in his lawsuit, said he’s taking legal action “in response to an unprecedently brazen and unconstitutional attack by members of Congress on an ongoing New York State criminal prosecution and investigation of former President Donald J. Trump.”

Trump was indicted March 30 on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to hush-money payments made during the 2016 campaign to bury allegations that he had extramarital sexual encounters. He has denied wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty at an arraignment last week in Manhattan.

Republicans have been railing against Bragg even before Trump’s indictment.

Jordan has issued a series of letters and subpoenas to individuals involved with the case. Pomerantz refused to voluntarily cooperate with the committee’s request last month at the instruction of Bragg’s office, citing the ongoing investigation.

Jordan sees Pomerantz and Carey Dunne, who were top deputies tasked with running the investigation on a day-to-day basis, as catalysts for Bragg’s decision to move ahead with the hush money case.

Bragg's lawsuit sets up what is an already tenuous fight over the scope and limits of congressional oversight powers into new territory. House Republicans have argued that because the Manhattan case involves campaign finance and what prosecutors say was a conspiracy to undermine the integrity of the 2016 election, Congress has direct oversight.

Many expected that Jordan would subpoena Bragg by now but it appears the forceful back-and-forth between the two elected officials have come to a head. Jordan’s committee has come at Bragg hard in recent weeks, but a court fight over a committee subpoena could impede its momentum and amplify criticism among Democrats that the panel is playing politics instead of addressing substantive issues.

__

It's about goddamn time!

[Albany Rifles]

Jordan may have run afoul of a New York State law by his actions.

https://www.newsweek.com/jim-jordan-...schner-1793301

[TopHatter]

Trump expected to answer questions in deposition in New York City, source says

Former President Donald Trump is expected to answer questions Thursday during his second deposition at the offices of New York Attorney General Letitia James, according to a source familiar with his legal team's planning.

Trump previously invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 400 times during an August 2022 deposition, about a month before James' office sued Trump, three of his children, and their company, alleging years of fraud.

This deposition, which is part of the civil pretrial discovery process, is expected to go differently, with Trump declining to invoke the Fifth, the source said.

Alina Habba, an attorney for Trump, said in a Thursday morning statement to CBS News that "President Trump is not only willing but also eager to testify before the Attorney General today."

"He remains resolute in his stance that he has nothing to conceal, and he looks forward to educating the Attorney General about the immense success of his multi-billion dollar company," Habba said.

The deposition will mark Trump's first return to New York since April 4, when he was arraigned on 34 felony counts of falsification of business records in a Manhattan criminal case related to hush money payments made before the 2016 election.

News of the scheduled deposition was first reported by the New York Post.

In the New York Attorney General's civil case, Trump, three of his children, and the Trump Organization are accused of orchestrating an extensive fraudulent scheme. James' suit is seeking $250 million and a raft of sanctions that would effectively cease the company's operations in New York. The Trumps and the company have vehemently denied wrongdoing.


Former President Donald Trump arrives at Trump Tower on April 03, 2023 in New York City.

Portions of that previous videotaped deposition were obtained by CBS News via a freedom of information request in January, showing him repeatedly responding "same answer" to every question after he first invoked the Fifth.

A spokesperson for James' office did not respond to a request for comment.

The civil case is scheduled to go to trial on Oct. 2. The state court judge in that case, Arthur Engoron, has rejected repeated attempts by Trump attorneys to push that date back.

The lawsuit is proceeding as Trump is facing mounting legal issues on different fronts.

Trump entered a not guilty plea in his Manhattan criminal case, which revolves around alleged attempts to hide reimbursements to his former lawyer and "fixer" Michael Cohen, who paid adult film star Stormy Daniels $130,000 before the 2016 election in exchange for her silence about an alleged affair with Trump years earlier. Trump denied having a sexual relationship with Daniels and has repeatedly said he did nothing wrong.

In Fulton County, Georgia, the district attorney is considering charges in connection with an investigation into efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the election results in the state after his defeat in 2020.

Trump is also under scrutiny in Washington, D.C., where a special counsel is reviewing his handling of sensitive government documents found at his Mar-a-Lago home, and possible obstruction of government efforts to retrieve them, and, separately, efforts to interfere with the lawful transfer of power following the 2020 presidential election.

Trump has denied wrongdoing in connection with all of the investigations.
_________________

Yes! Trump should absolutely use his "best words" to "educate" that uppity woman.

If he does indeed respond to AG James' questions, we'll know when we hear a couple of loud sharp "cracks" that sound suspiciously like gunshots.

That'll be Trump's lawyers offing themselves.

[TopHatter]

Trump’s House GOP allies take fight to Manhattan DA’s turf

NEW YORK (AP) — Republicans upset with Donald Trump’s indictment are escalating their war on the prosecutor who charged him, trying to embarrass him on his home turf partly by falsely portraying New York City as a place overrun by crime.

The House Judiciary Committee, led by U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican, is holding a field hearing Monday near the offices of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

The committee’s Republican majority is billing it as an examination of the Democrat’s “pro-crime, anti-victim” policies. One committee member, U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs, an Arizona Republican, tweeted that Bragg has “turned NYC into a wasteland,” and that “lawlessness is completely out of control.”

Democrats say the hearing is a partisan stunt aimed at amplifying conservative anger at Bragg, Manhattan’s first Black district attorney.

New York City officials have urged Jordan to cancel the hearing. C-SPAN has declined to air it on TV.

“This is simply an in-kind donation or contribution to the Trump campaign,” Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat and former police captain told CNN Friday. “This is really a charade and it’s just unfortunate, during a time like this, they will use taxpayers dollars to host this charade.”

Monday’s hearing is the latest salvo in Jordan’s weekslong effort to use his congressional powers to defend Trump from what he says is a politically motivated prosecution.

Jordan has sent letters to Bragg demanding testimony and documents, claiming his office is subject to congressional scrutiny because it gets federal grants. He subpoenaed a former prosecutor, Mark Pomerantz, who previously oversaw the Trump investigation.

Bragg sued Jordan last week to try to block the subpoena, calling it a “brazen and unconstitutional attack” and a “transparent campaign to intimidate” him over the Trump case. A federal judge scheduled an initial hearing for Wednesday.

Monday brings a House hearing designed to pump up the argument that Bragg is so focused on Trump, he is letting street crime flourish.

Attacking New York City, and its mostly Democratic leaders, over crime is an old trick for politicians who represent rural and suburban districts. It is a punch that can still land with some audiences, though in reality the city’s violent crime rate remains substantially below the U.S. average.

In 2022, Bragg’s first year in office, there were 78 homicides in Manhattan, a borough of 1.6 million people. That was a drop of 15 percent from the year before. By comparison, Palm Beach County, Florida, where Trump is one of about 1.5 million residents, had 96 killings.

“People hear New York and they think crime, and that’s because they’ve been trained to think that way,” said Dr. Jeffrey Butts, the director of the Research & Evaluation Center at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan. “It’s not real. It’s just the stories that people tell.”

“If you’re living in some predominantly small, white county in Iowa, you hear New York and you just imagine all the scary movies and TV shows you’ve seen,” Butts said. “I think that’s what Congress is playing off of.”

For Bragg, scrutiny from Republicans — and even some Democrats — is nothing new.

A Harvard-educated, former federal prosecutor, chief deputy state attorney general and civil rights lawyer, Bragg won an eight-way Democratic party primary and then soared to victory with 83% of the general election vote.

Soon after taking office, Bragg authored an internal memo that, among other things, said his office would not prosecute certain low-level misdemeanors.

That set up some early clashes with the New York Police Department leadership and also got the attention of Republicans outside the city, who quickly made Bragg a poster child for Democratic permissiveness.

Republican Lee Zeldin, then representing eastern Long Island in Congress, made Bragg a focal point of his campaign for governor, repeatedly promising to remove the independently elected prosecutor from office.

Zeldin lost, but his rhetoric about crime resonated in the suburbs, helping Republicans defeat Democrats in a number of key New York seats.

New York, in fact, wasn’t immune from the nationwide spike in crime that took place during the COVID-19 pandemic. Most categories of crime in the city are still above 2019 levels. Several types of crime, including burglaries, car thefts and assaults, rose in Manhattan during Bragg’s first year in office, though they have been falling again this year.

Despite focusing on Bragg, the House Judiciary Committee has not invited him to testify, nor is anyone from his office expected to participate. Instead, the committee is planning to hear from at least six witnesses.

Among them: Jose Alba, a former convenience store clerk arrested after he stabbed an attacker to death in his shop. Bragg’s office dropped the charges but critics say he should have dismissed them sooner; Madeline Brame, who blames Bragg for seeking long prison sentences only for two of the four people involved in her son’s killing; and Jennifer Harrison, a victim advocate whose boyfriend was killed in New Jersey in 2005 — outside Bragg’s jurisdiction and long before he took office.

Bragg’s campaign sent an email to supporters Friday deriding the hearing as a “politically motivated sham.” U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., the committee’s ranking Democrat, told the news outlet Gothamist the hearing is “an attack on our system of justice.”

On Sunday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called the planned hearing “a circus if there ever was one.”

Since taking power in the House, Republicans have launched a sweeping oversight agenda delving into the far reaches of President Joe Biden’s administration, his family and the workings of the federal government.

While conducting oversight is a key function of Congress, the House GOP’s wide-ranging probes have often delivered more sizzle than substance. Long on allegations, committees led by Jordan and others have been slow to produce findings that resonate and sometimes have diverged into conspiracy theories.

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[TopHatter]

Trump might use trial docs to scorch witnesses, DA says

NEW YORK (AP) — New York prosecutors have asked a judge to bar Donald Trump from using evidence from his criminal case to attack witnesses, citing what they say is the former president’s history of making “harassing, embarrassing, and threatening statements” about people he’s tangled with in legal disputes.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office filed court papers Monday asking Judge Juan Manuel Merchan for a protective order that would put strict guardrails around Trump’s access to and use of evidence turned over by prosecutors prior to trial. That kind of evidence sharing, called discovery, is routine in criminal cases, and is intended to help ensure a fair trial.

Prosecutors want to block Trump from posting evidence to social media or providing it to third parties. They also want to restrict how he views certain sensitive material, asking that he do so only in the presence of his lawyers — and that he not be able to copy, photograph or transcribe those records.

Trump “has a longstanding and perhaps singular history of attacking witnesses, investigators, prosecutors, trial jurors, grand jurors, judges, and others involved in legal proceedings against him,” Assistant District Attorney Catherine McCaw wrote.

That behavior, she said, has put “those individuals and their families at considerable safety risk.”

Merchan did not immediately rule on the prosecution’s request. McCaw, in her filing, asked him to schedule a hearing on the matter next week.

Email messages seeking comment were left with Trump’s lawyers.

Prosecutors first raised concerns about Trump potentially weaponizing the discovery process at his April 4 arraignment on charges that he falsified records at his company as part of a broader 2016 scheme to make secret hush-money payments to bury allegations of extramarital sexual encounters. Trump has denied wrongdoing — or having extramarital affairs — and pleaded not guilty.

With Trump sitting at the defense table just feet away from her, McCaw told Merchan that a protective order was needed to “ensure the sanctity of the proceedings as well as the sanctity of the discovery materials.”

At the time, McCaw said prosecutors and Trump’s lawyers were close to a joint agreement with many of the restrictions prosecutors are now asking Merchan to impose. Negotiations later broke down, leading prosecutors to seek the judge’s intervention.
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"might"?

[TopHatter]

Ivanka Trump splits from brothers by abandoning legal team in Trump Organization lawsuit fight


Ivanka Trump splits from brothers by abandoning legal team in Trump Organization lawsuit fight

Ivanka Trump is pursuing a new legal strategy in her defence against allegations levied against the Trump Organization and its executives – Donald Trump and members of his family – by New York’s attorney general.

The resort and hotel chain business stands accused in New York civil court of defrauding banks and other financial interests by falsely inflating and deflating the value of their assets in order to obtain loans, reap tax benefits, secure better insurance rates, and for a whole host of reasons that enriched the Trump Organization’s coffers.

The lawsuit comes as the company was found guilty in New York criminal court just last December of running a decade-long criminal tax fraud scheme.

On Friday, Forbes reports that Ms Trump replaced a pair of attorneys who represented the three elder Trump children, Donald Jr, Eric and Ivanka, with attorney Bennet Moskowitz of Troutman Pepper; Mr Moskowitz’s hiring also coincided with the departure of two other attorneys Ivanka Trump had retained separately from her brothers.

It comes as her legal team argued just before the shakeup that Ms Trump’s civil trial should be delayed given that “[t]he complaint does not contain a single allegation that Ms. Trump directly or indirectly created, prepared, reviewed or certified any of her father’s financial statements. The complaint affirmatively alleges that other individuals were responsible for those tasks.” That argument was authored by the two attorneys retained by Ms Trump who did not represent her brothers, shortly before all were replaced.

Altogether, her new legal defence centres around an effort to distance Ms Trump from the activities of the Trump Organization, the same strategy she has taken in her public life since the launch of her father’s 2024 presidential campaign. Despite serving in the White House for four years, Ms Trump has remained apart from her father’s bid to retake the presidency.

New York state attorneys want the Trump Organization to pay back millions in supposedly ill-gotten gains as well as for a court to bar the company from further operating in the state; that would affect and likely lead to the closure or sale of the numerous Trump-branded properties which remain in the state, including Trump Tower in Manhattan as well as the ex-president’s golf course in the Hudson Valley.

Letitia James, the attorney general of New York, previously led the criminal prosecution of the Trump Organization’s CFO, Alan Weisselberg, and has become a top target for the former president’s furious rantings as a result of her efforts to investigate Trump-connected entities for criminal activity. He has frequently dubbed Ms James, who is Black, a racist and claimed that her efforts are part of a political campaign to deny him the presidency.
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Rotten fruit doesn't fall from the rotten tree and no amount of distancing can change that fact.

Also, why do rats desert a ship? Asking for a friend....

The big question now is, how far does she distance herself? Will it extend all the way to turning state's? The world wonders....

[TopHatter]

Trumps Fail To Turn Over Documents In Fraud Case, New York Attorney General Claims


Then-President-elect Donald Trump along with his children Eric, Ivanka and Donald Jr. arrived for a press conference on January 11, 2017 at Trump Tower in New York.

Donald Trump, his three eldest children and the Trump Organization failed to turn over emails and other communications in a fraud lawsuit, the New York attorney general’s office claimed in a letter submitted in court last week. The office singled out “an unexplained drop-off in emails for Ivanka Trump” as one of the more significant issues.

The refusal to provide material goes back to the investigation into the Trumps’ business practices that preceded the lawsuit, the letter notes. In May 2022, the former president paid a $110,000 fine after Judge Arthur Engoron found Trump in contempt for failing to comply with a subpoena from the attorney general’s office. “For years, Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization have tried to thwart our lawful investigation, but today’s decision makes clear that no one can evade accountability,” Attorney General Letitia James said when a judge ordered Trump ordered to pay the fine last year.

The attorney general’s office is now saying the Trumps’ evasiveness has continued into the discovery process of the $250 million lawsuit, which alleges Donald Trump, his children, the Trump Organization and some of its top executives inflated property values to obtain economic benefits, such as securing cheaper loans. The defendants have denied the charges.

Last week, the attorney general’s office asked Engoron to intervene, saying the Trumps had started turning over documents but have not provided a timeline for when they will hand over everything. According to the attorney general, the Trumps also have not answered questions about how they are collecting the materials.

The letter notes a significant decline in emails turned over from Ivanka Trump, dropping from an average of 1,200 emails per month in the first nine months of 2014 to just 37 emails a month in 2016. The attorney general’s office asked Ivanka’s lawyers about the issue and was unimpressed by their response. “Not only have defendants failed to offer any substantive response to this inquiry, but there have been no documents produced by Ms. Trump,” the attorney general’s office told the judge on Friday.

Ivanka Trump recently replaced the attorneys representing her in this lawsuit, although some of them continue to defend Don Jr. and Eric.

In response to the letter, Engoron granted some of the attorney general’s requests on Monday, requiring all defendants to submit affidavits detailing how they have compiled with discovery and setting a deadline of May 12 for the Trumps to turn over all outstanding documents.

The Trumps, their attorneys and the New York attorney general’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

T
The New York attorney general's office asked the judge to intervene in discovery, citing the Trumps' "failure to preserve, collect and produce documents and materials in a timely and transparent fashion."
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https://www.documentcloud.org/docume...correspond_623

Another day, another obstruction of justice