Page 474 - Donald Trump

Judge sets a trial date for next May in Trump's classified documents case

A federal judge in Florida has scheduled a trial date for next May for former President Donald Trump in a case charging him with illegally retaining hundreds of classified documents. The May 20, 2024, trial date, set Friday by US District Judge Aileen Cannon, is a compromise between a request from prosecutors to set the trial for this December and a bid by defense lawyers to put it off indefinitely until sometime after the 2024 presidential election. If the date holds, it would follow close on the heels of a separate New York trial for Trump on dozens of state charges of falsifying business records in connection with an alleged hush money payment to a porn actor. It also means the trial would not start until deep into the presidential nominating calendar and probably well after the Republican nominee is clear though before that person is officially nominated at the Republican National Convention. In pushing back the trial from the December 11 start date that the Justice Department

Judge sets trial date for next May in Trump's classified documents case

A federal judge in Florida has set a trial date for next May for former President Donald Trump in a case charging him with illegally retaining hundreds of classified documents. The May 20, 2024, trial date is a compromise between a request from prosecutors to set the trial for this December and a request from defense lawyers to schedule it after the 2024 presidential election.

Federal judge nixes Donald Trump's bid to move hush-money criminal case

Donald Trump can't make a federal case out of this one. U.S. District Judge Alvin K Hellerstein on Wednesday rejected the former president's bid to move his hush-money criminal case from New York state court to federal court, ruling that Trump's lawyers had failed to meet a high legal bar for changing jurisdiction. Hellerstein found that the allegations pertained to Trump's personal life, not presidential duties that would have merited a move to federal court. The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the matter was a purely a personal item of the President a cover-up of an embarrassing event, Hellerstein wrote in a 25-page ruling. Hush money paid to an adult film star is not related to a President's official acts. It does not reflect in any way the color of the President's official duties. Hellerstein's decision sets the stage for Trump to stand trial in state court in Manhattan as early as next spring, overlapping with the 2024 presidential primary season in what could be a ...

Donald Trump 'target in Capitol riots probe', faces another arrest

He further said, expects to be arrested by a federal investigation into the January 6 riot at the Capitol and efforts to challenge the results of the 2020 election

Trump's classified documents case set for first pretrial conference hearing

A Florida judge who issued a court ruling last year that critics said was unduly favourable to Donald Trump is set to preside Tuesday over the first pretrial conference in his landmark criminal case concerning the mishandling of classified documents. Prosecutors and defense lawyers are scheduled to appear before U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon to discuss the rules and procedures that will govern how classified evidence is used in the case. It's a routine subject for any prosecution that concerns classified information, but it's notable because it will be Cannon's first time hearing arguments in the case since the former president's indictment last month. At issue during Tuesday's arguments is a 1980 law known as the Classified Information Procedures Act. That statute governs how classified information is handled by the parties in a criminal prosecution. It's meant to balance a defendant's right to access evidence that prosecutors intend to use in a case against the government's ...

Court rejects Trump attempt to thwart prosecutor in election investigation

Georgia's highest court Monday rejected a request by former President Donald Trump to block a district attorney from prosecuting him for his actions in wake of the 2020 election. The Georgia Supreme Court unanimously shot down a petition that Trump's attorneys filed last week asking the court to intervene. Trump's legal team argued that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and her office should be barred from seeking charges and that a special grand jury report that is part of the inquiry should be thrown out. Willis has been investigating since early 2021 whether Trump and his allies broke any laws as they tried to overturn his narrow election loss in Georgia to Democrat Joe Biden. She has suggested she is likely to seek charges in the case from a grand jury next month. The state Supreme Court noted in its five-page ruling Monday that Trump has a similar petition pending in Fulton County Superior Court. The justices unanimously declined to overstep the lower court, writing .

Judge in Donald Trump documents case under spotlight as arguments near

A month after former President Donald Trump was charged with mishandling classified documents, the judge presiding over the case is set to take on a more visible role as she weighs competing requests on a trial date and hears arguments this week on a procedural, but potentially crucial, area of the law. A pretrial conference Tuesday to discuss procedures for handling classified information will represent the first courtroom arguments in the case before US District Judge Aileen Cannon since Trump was indicted five weeks ago. The arguments could provide insight into how Cannon intends to preside over the case while she also confronts the unresolved question of how to schedule Trump's trial as he campaigns for president. Those issues would be closely watched in any trial involving a former president. But Cannon could face additional scrutiny in light of a much-dissected ruling she issued last year that granted the Trump team's request for a special master to conduct an independent rev

Biden closes out his Europe trip by showcasing new NATO member Finland

Finland joined as NATO's newest member earlier this year, an entry that effectively doubled the alliance's border with Russia

Trump lashes out after Justice Dept no longer says presidency shields him

Former President Donald Trump lashed out on social media against the U.S. Justice Department on Wednesday after it stopped supporting his claim that the presidency shields him from liability against a defamation lawsuit brought by a woman who says he sexually attacked her in the mid-1990s. Trump said in a post on his social media platform that the department's reversal a day earlier in the lawsuit brought by advice columnist E. Jean Carroll was part of the "political Witch Hunt" he faces while campaigning for the presidency as a Republican. The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Carroll, 79, sued Trump, 77, for defamation months after he vehemently denied her claims first made publicly in a 2019 memoir that a chance encounter between the pair at a Bergdorf Goodman store began with flirtations but ended in a violent encounter inside a dressing room in a desolate section of the store. The progression of the lawsuit, filed in 2020, was delayed for

Trump must face E. Jean Carroll defamation suit as DOJ reverses course

The DOJ revisited the issue after an appeals court clarified that workers are only protected by the law if their actions were intended to help the government

FBI director set to clash with Republicans on Trump, Hunter Biden case

The director of the FBI will face some of his harshest critics in Congress on Wednesday as he testifies before a House committee that is leading several investigations into claims that the law enforcement agency unfairly targets conservatives. FBI Director Chris Wray's appearance before the House Judiciary Committee is expected to be contentious. Republicans are prepared to aggressively question the director on several fronts, including the recent indictment of former President Donald Trump, the ongoing investigation into President Joe Biden's son and the push for a new FBI headquarters. It's just the latest display of the new normal on Capitol Hill, where Republicans who have long billed themselves as the champions of police and law and order are growing deeply at odds with federal law enforcement and the FBI, accusing the bureau of bias dating back to investigations of Trump when he was president. The new dynamic has forced Democrats into a new position of defending these law ...

Trump can be held accountable in lawsuit after Justice dept reverses course

The Justice Department on Tuesday said that Donald Trump can be held personally liable for remarks he made about a woman who accused him of rape a reversal of its position that Trump was protected because he was president when he made the remarks. In a letter filed with the judge presiding over a defamation lawsuit that columnist E. Jean Carroll brought in Manhattan federal court in 2020, the department says it no longer has a sufficient basis to conclude that Trump was motivated in his statements about Carroll's claims by more than an insignificant desire to serve the United States. Previously, the department had agreed with Trump's attorneys that he was protected from the lawsuit by the Westfall Act, which provides federal employees absolute immunity from lawsuits brought over conduct occurring within the scope of their employment. In May, a jury awarded Carroll $5 million in damages after concluding that Trump sexually abused her in 1996 at a midtown Manhattan Bergdorf Goodman .

Jury to decide whether Trump will be charged over Georgia's 2020 election

A grand jury being seated Tuesday in Atlanta will likely consider whether criminal charges are appropriate for former President Donald Trump or his Republican allies for their efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has been investigating since shortly after Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in early 2021 and suggested the state's top elections official could help him find 11,780 votes, just enough needed to beat Democrat Joe Biden. The 2 1/2-year investigation expanded to include an examination of a slate of Republican fake electors, phone calls by Trump and others to Georgia officials in the weeks after the 2020 election and unfounded allegations of widespread election fraud made to state lawmakers. Willis, a Democrat, is expected to present her case before one of two new grand juries being seated Tuesday. She has previously suggested that any indictments would likely come in August. Here's how th

Trump lawyers to delay pretrial conference in classified documents case

Lawyers for former President Donald Trump say they agreed with federal prosecutors to delay to next week a pretrial hearing to discuss how classified information is handled in court as he faces federal charges that he illegally hoarded classifed documents at his Florida estate. The hearing to discuss the Classified Information Procedures Act had previously been set for Friday. But an attorney for Trump's valet Walt Nauta, who was charged alongside the former president, said he has another bench trial this week in Washington preventing him from appearing Friday in South Florida. The attorneys said in their filing that they can appear at the pretrial conference to go over the 1980 law on July 18, adding they had also checked with U.S. attorneys on moving the date. The judge in the case, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, still needs to agree to the new date. Trump and Nauta were charged in a 38-count indictment with conspiring to hide classified documents at Mar-a-Lago from federal .

Trump is unelectable, says $3.6 mn ad campaign tied to influential group

The 60-second ad features a former Trump supporter named John sitting on his front porch steps and describing Trump as a losing bet for Republicans

DeSantis defends anti-LGBTQ video shared by campaign, calls it fair game

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is defending an anti-LGBTQ video his campaign shared online that attacks rival Donald Trump for his past support of gay and transgender people, despite some of his fellow Republicans calling it homophobic. DeSantis, in an interview Wednesday on the podcast of conservative commentator Tomi Lahren, did not address accusations that the video was homophobic but said the intent was identifying Donald Trump as really being a pioneer in injecting gender ideology into the mainstream where he was having men compete against women in his beauty pageants. I think that's totally fair game because he's now campaigning, saying the opposite, that he doesn't think that you should have men competing in women's things like athletics, DeSantis said. His presidential campaign shared the video on Twitter last week, on the last day of June's LGBTQ+ Pride Month, saying, To wrap up Pride Month,' let's hear from the politician who did more than any other Republican to celebrate ...

US, India withdraw 6 trade disputes: Will this bonhomie sustain over time?

India and the US, despite their robust diplomatic ties, have quibbled on trade issues over the years and across administrations

'Affirmative action' ends: US SC bans use of race in university admissions

Affirmative action, also known as positive discrimination, aims to reverse long-standing prejudices against underrepresented groups

Trump, DeSantis trade barbs while staging duelling New Hampshire campaign

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former President Donald Trump traded barbs on Tuesday as the two leading Republican White House candidates staged duelling events in the critical early voting state of New Hampshire. Addressing a town hall in Hollis, DeSantis vowed to actually build the US-Mexico border wall that Trump tried but failed to complete in his first term while pledging to tear down Washington's traditional power centres in ways that Trump fell short. Speaking later at a Republican women's luncheon in the state capital of Concord, Trump countered that DeSantis was being forced to settle for second place in the primary and accused the governor of supporting cuts to Social Security, Medicare and other entitlement programs as a way to tame federal spending. Beyond the rhetoric, the conflicting events demonstrated each candidate's evolving strategy. DeSantis took extensive audience questions a trademark in New Hampshire politics that he eschewed during his previous visit to the .

Audio emerges with details of Trump's conversation on classified documents

An audio recording that includes new details from a 2021 meeting at which former President Donald Trump discusses holding secret documents he did not declassify has been released. The recording, from a July 2021 interview Trump gave at his Bedminster, New Jersey, resort for people working on the memoir of his former chief of staff Mark Meadows, is a critical piece of evidence in special counsel Jack Smith's indictment of Trump over the mishandling of classified information. The recording first aired Monday on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360. The special counsel's indictment alleges that those in attendance at the meeting with Trump a writer, a publisher and two of Trump's staff members were shown classified information about a Pentagon plan of attack on an unspecified foreign country. These are the papers, Trump said in a moment that seems to indicate he was holding a secret Pentagon document with plans to attack Iran. This was done by the military, given to me. Trump's reference to