President Trump was hit with another hefty verdict at New York on Friday afternoon. A state supreme court justice, Arthur Engoron, published his long-awaited damages decision in the civil fraud case against the Trump Organization, ordering the former president and his family businesses to pay more than $355 million to the state of New York. As devastating as that amount may be, the ruling is not a complete loss for the defense.
A New York judge on Friday handed Donald J. Trump a crushing defeat in his civil fraud case, finding the former president liable for conspiring to manipulate his net worth and ordering him to pay a penalty of more than $350 million that could wipe out his entire stockpile of cash.
The decision by Justice Arthur F. Engoron caps a chaotic, yearslong case in which New York’s attorney general put Mr. Trump’s fantastical claims of wealth on trial. With no jury, the power was in Justice Engoron’s hands alone, and he came down hard: The judge delivered a sweeping array of punishments that threatens the former president’s business empire as he simultaneously contends with four criminal prosecutions and seeks to regain the White House.
Imagine you’re a muckety-muck editor at the once-vaunted New York Times, and the following results of a spanking-new Times focus group show up on your computer screen.
On Monday, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) warned that the latest Senate proposal to provide funding for Ukraine and Israel has a provision buried inside it designed to trigger Trump’s impeachment should he win reelection in November.
Well that should drain support for Ukraine.
Former US President Donald Trump said on Saturday that he would “encourage” Russia to attack members of NATO who had not met their financial obligations, in remarks that the White House rejected as “appalling and unhinged.”
Speaking at a campaign rally in South Carolina Saturday, the Republican presidential nomination frontrunner appeared to recount a conversation with a fellow head of state at an unspecified NATO meeting.
“One of the presidents of a big country stood up and said, ‘Well, sir, if we don’t pay, and we’re attacked by Russia, will you protect us?’ I said, ‘You didn’t pay, you’re delinquent?'”
“No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You got to pay. You got to pay your bills.”
This is why people love Trump.
A Friday filing accusing the district attorney of Fulton County, Fani Willis, of lying about the timing of her romantic relationship with her special prosecutor, Nathan Wade, threatens to further submerge the case against President Trump in scandal.
The 122 page tome comes from Ashleigh Merchant, who represents one of Mr. Trump’s co-defendants, Michael Roman, in the sprawling racketeering case against the 45th president and 18 others for allegedly conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Mr. Roman, along with Mr. Trump, wants Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade disqualified, and the charges in the indictment dismissed.
I will have more detail later on this morning’s Supreme Court argument in Trump v. Anderson regarding whether the Colorado Supreme Court was right to throw Donald Trump off the ballot on the theory that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment disqualifies him from serving in federal office again after he “engaged in insurrection.” The short summary, for now: It seems very unlikely that the Court is inclined to let a state remove Trump from the ballot before Election Day, the Court is unlikely to reach the merits question of what it means to engage in insurrection, and the decision isn’t likely to be a close one — but it is very possible that we get a fractured decision, with different justices citing different reasons to throw out the Colorado ruling. That’s by no means a certain outcome; with a huge number of legal issues to address, the fact that different justices were thinking about different things doesn’t preclude them from coming together on at least one conclusion that commands a majority. The work of building that consensus may yet lie ahead in chambers and in the exchange of draft opinions.
In the sad annals of Trump Derangement, perhaps the bizarre vengeance porn fantasies of New York magazine’s Ankush Khardori stands alone in coming from a very very dark place. The typical sufferer of TDS might hope for the imprisonment of Donald Trump and leave it at that.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal appeals panel ruled Tuesday that Donald Trump can face trial on charges that he plotted to overturn the results of the 2020 election, rejecting the former president’s claims that he is immune from prosecution.
OTTAWA — A former Canadian ambassador to Washington says Justin Trudeau should ditch the anti-Trump “MAGA Conservative” rhetoric directed at the Liberals’ Canadian political rivals.
David MacNaughton, who co-chaired the Ontario campaign for Trudeau’s 2015 election victory, says it’s neither a wise domestic political strategy nor is it smart for Canada-U.S. relations.
In an interview Friday, MacNaughton said the prime minister is taking a risk by being seen to take swipes at Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, in a U.S. presidential election year.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis acknowledged in a court filing on Friday that she had a personal relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade, but she claimed that the “salacious” allegations against her provide no basis for her to be disqualified from the 2020 election-fraud case in Georgia against former president Donald Trump and more than a dozen other co-defendants.
After a brief, unintentional hiatus to close out January, my new favorite column to write is back to kick off February in style.
Speaking of hiatuses, we will also be taking a break from the “Trump is Hitler!” stuff for this column. There are other conservatives who deserve a chance to be called “Hitler” by the unstable leftists in media, after all. Donald Trump can’t hog all of the goose step epithets.
The J6 case against Donald Trump has been removed from the Washington, D.C. circuit court’s public calendar.
There are now outstanding appeals in the case, which was brought forward by Special Counsel Jack Smith and presided over by Judge Tanya Chutkan.
h/t Mauser
Last week, a jury awarded E. Jean Carroll a ridiculous $83.3 million in damages for alleged defamation by Donald Trump after she made dubious allegations that he sexually assaulted her in the 1990s.
The troubles for Fulton County, Ga., District Attorney Fani Willis just keep piling up.
The state Senate of Georgia is establishing a committee to investigate Willis for “various forms of misconduct relating to the prosecution of cases related to the 2020 Presidential Election.” The investigative committee, which will be made up of six Republicans and three Democrats, will have full subpoena power and the authority to compel testimony under oath.
