At issue is how to handle the classified materials at the center of the case.
The judge overseeing the probe into former President Donald Trump’s handling of classified documents has paused any litigation involving the classified materials in question as she considers a request from Trump to extend deadlines in the case, according to a new order.
At issue is how the classified materials at the center of the case are to be handled by the defendants and their attorneys, based on national security requirements.
After Judge Aileen Cannon established several deadlines for ruling on those issues, Trump’s legal team last month filed a motion asking her for a three-month extension, saying that Trump and his co-defendants have still not had access “to significant portions of the materials that the Special Counsel’s Office has characterized as classified and conceded are discoverable — much less the additional classified materials to which President Trump is entitled following anticipated discovery litigation.”
Cannon’s order on Friday temporarily pauses the upcoming deadlines as she considers Trump’s motion.
Former President Donald Trump sits in the courtroom before the continuation of his civil business fraud trial at New York Supreme Court, Oct. 3, 2023, in New York. Seth Wenig/AP, FILE
Special counsel Jack Smith’s ‘s office said in a recent filing that some documents are so sensitive that they cannot be stored in a secure facility in Florida with the other documents in the case. Smith’s team has told the court that the documents can be made available in a secure facility in Washington, D.C., for review.
Former President Donald Trump revealed Thursday that he would accept a short-term role as speaker of the House “if necessary” to unite the Republican Party.
Trump, 77, told Fox News Digital that if Republicans struggle to reach a consensus on a replacement for Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), he’d be willing to fill the role for a “30, 60, or 90-day period.”
“I have been asked to speak as a unifier because I have so many friends in Congress,” the former president said. “If they don’t get the vote, they have asked me if I would consider taking the speakership until they get somebody longer-term because I am running for president.”
“They have asked me if I would take it for a short period of time for the party, until they come to a conclusion,” he added. “I’m not doing it because I want to — I will do it if necessary, should they not be able to make their decision.”
Trump told Fox that he will travel to Washington and meet with Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill Tuesday, when the GOP conference will hold a candidate forum to discuss potential options for the vacant speakership position.
Former President Donald Trump revealed Thursday that he would accept a short-term role as speaker of the House “if necessary” to unite the Republican Party. AP
The full House is expected to begin the election process the following day and continue until a new speaker is chosen.
“I would only do it for the party,” Trump said of the possibility of becoming speaker, insisting that his priority is his presidential campaign.
Trump is ineligible for the speakership post under current House GOP rules, which bars Individuals with felony indictments from serving in the role — but the rules could be altered to clear the way for him to possess the gavel.
Kevin McCarthy was ousted as speaker of the House Tuesday. AP
Trump is facing a total of 91 charges across four criminal cases — and up to 712 years and six months behind bars if convicted of all of them.
In the aftermath of McCarthy’s unprecedented removal, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) have both thrown their hats into the ring for the speakership.
However, several GOP lawmakers – including Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Troy Nehls (R-Texas) and Greg Steube (R-Fla.) – have called for Trump to be nominated and elected House speaker.
Judge Arthur Engoron issued a gag order on making public remarks about his staff members, after former President Donald Trump blasted the judge, his top law clerk and New York Attorney General Letitia James on the second day of the business fraud trial against Trump and his company.
James accuses Trump, two of his adult sons, the Trump Organization and top executives of fraudulently overvaluing their real estate properties.
Trump said that he will testify in the trial.
Former President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media while arriving for the second day of his civil fraud trial in New York on Oct. 3, 2023. Kena Betancur | AFP | Getty Images
A judge issued a gag order Tuesday after Donald Trump attacked the judge’s law clerk on social media and in comments to reporters covering his New York business fraud trial.
“Consider this a gag order on all parties with respect to posting or publicly speaking about any member of my staff,” Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron said on the second day of the former president’s civil trial.
Engoron said personal attacks on his staff were unacceptable and intolerable.
The judge was angered by Trump’s post earlier Tuesday on his Truth Social site that included disparaging comments about the clerk alongside a photo of her posing with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.
Trump in that post had called the clerk “Schumer’s girlfriend” and accused her of “running this case against me.”
Former President Donald Trump and Judge Arthur Engoron of New York Supreme Court listen to opening arguments by Kevin Wallace (not seen), a lawyer in state Attorney General Letitia James’ office, during the trial of Trump, his adult sons, the Trump Organization and others in a civil fraud case brought by James, at a Manhattan courthouse, in New York, Oct. 2, 2023, in this courtroom sketch. Jane Rosenberg | Reuters
“How disgraceful!” Trump wrote in the post, which included the clerk’s full name. “This case should be dismissed immediately!!”
Trump mentioned Schumer and the clerk again during a break in the proceedings later that day, as he claimed that the trial was “rigged” and “fraudulent.”
The clerk is seated almost directly across from Trump in court.
Trump later deleted the post.
Also on Tuesday, Trump’s presidential campaign sent out a lengthy email criticizing Engoron as a “Far-Left Democrat.”
The email, entitled “Meet Judge Arthur F. Engoron,” cited numerous stories in conservative media accusing Engoron of political bias.
Trump had already slammed New York Attorney General Letitia James as a “fraud” and called for the case to be dismissed before the trial resumed Tuesday morning.
“And she should probably be dismissed also,” he said of James, whose lawsuit is the subject of the case.
Special Counsel Jack Smith submitted a new filing in support of his proposed gag order against ex-President Donald Trump citing his rant about executing Gen. Mark Milley and his attacks on people like the judge in the case, Federal District Judge Tanya Chutkan.
Two weeks ago, Smith’s team filed a motion for a limited gag order, but late Friday, a new motion in support of that proposed order responded to opposition from Trump attorneys and cited a raft of more recent events to underscore the urgency — including his now-infamous remarks about General Mark Milley.
“The Government’s proposed order restricting the parties’ statements under Local Criminal Rule 57.7(c) is necessary and appropriate to protect the due administration of justice in this case. The defendant’s opposition to it is based on several faulty premises: that the defendant need not face even the most limited imposition in order to protect the public interest in the due administration of justice; that the legal standard for imposing reasonable restrictions on extrajudicial statements in a criminal case is higher than it actually is; that the defendant’s statements to date have not been intimidating or prejudicial; and that the proposed order would impose sweeping restrictions that it plainly would not. In fact, the proposed order readily meets the relevant legal standard set forth below,” the filing reads.
Among the events cited were the Milley remark, as well as attacks on the judge and other principles in the cases against Trump:
On September 5, shortly before the Government filed its motion, the defendant posted an article on the social media platform Truth Social, on which the defendant has more than 6 million followers, making claims about the Court with the sarcastic caption, “Oh, I’m sure she will be very fair” and an article circulating a false accusation against a Special Counsel’s Office prosecutor with the caption, “Really corrupt!”
• On September 6, on Truth Social, the defendant issued two posts attacking the former Vice President, a witness identified in the indictment, in relation to this case, saying that he had seen the Vice President “make up stories about me, which are absolutely false,” and that the witness had gone to the “Dark Side”;
• In an interview aired on NBC’s Meet the Press on September 17,5 the defendant answered questions for more than an hour, and said, among other things:
o That the Georgia Secretary of State, a witness identified in the indictment, recently said things that he had not, including that the defendant “didn’t do anything wrong” during a phone call constituting an overt act in the indictment;
o That another witness identified in the indictment, the former Attorney General, “didn’t do his job” during the charged conspiracy because he was afraid of being impeached;
On September 22, on Truth Social, the defendant falsely claimed that the retiring Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a witness cited in the indictment, had committed treason and suggested that he should be executed:
“The defendant’s baseless attacks on the Court and two individual prosecutors not only could subject them to threats—it also could cause potential jurors to develop views about the propriety of the prosecution, an improper consideration for a juror prior to trial,” the filing says.
Charles Littlejohn also allegedly stole tax information associated with some of the nation’s wealthiest people, the DOJ said in a federal complaint
A former consultant with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has been charged with disclosing former President Trump’s tax returns to the New York Times while he was in office, federal prosecutors said Friday.
The Justice Department identified the suspect as Charles Littlejohn, 38, a Washington D.C. resident. In a federal complaint, the DOJ said Littlejohn disclosed the tax returns of “thousands of the nation’s wealthiest individuals” to news organizations and tax information associated with a “high-ranking government official” to a different news outlet.
Fox News was told the second news organization that received stolen tax information is Pro Publica, a New York City-based nonprofit investigative journalism group.
The returns dated back more than 15 years, court documents said. He allegedly stole the tax returns between 2018 and 2020, federal prosecutors said. Trump is not named in the complaint.
Former President Donald Trump arrives at Trump Tower in New York. A consultant for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has been charged with disclosing Trump’s tax return to the New York Times. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura/File/Fox News)
“Littlejohn is charged with one count of unauthorized disclosure of tax returns and return information. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison,” the DOJ said in a news release.
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), the IRS’s internal watchdog, is investigating the case. The DOJ declined to comment on the case.
Fox News was told a guilty plea is in the works. Littlejohn was working as a contractor for the tax agency when he allegedly stole Trump’s tax returns and gave them to the New York Times. The newspaper published several stories on Trump’s taxes before he left office.
FILE – Former President Donald Trump speaks with reporters before departure from Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Aug. 24, 2023, in Atlanta. A liberal group has filed a lawsuit to bar Trump from the primary ballot in Colorado. The lawsuit contends Trump is ineligible to run for the White House again under a rarely used clause in the U.S. Constitution aimed at candidates who have supported an “insurrection.” (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
A liberal group on Wednesday filed a lawsuit to bar former President Donald Trump from the primary ballot in Colorado, arguing he is ineligible to run for the White House again under a rarely used clause in the U.S. Constitution aimed at candidates who have supported an “insurrection.”
The lawsuit, citing the 14th Amendment, is likely the initial step in a legal challenge that seems destined for the U.S. Supreme Court. The complaint was filed on behalf of six Republican and unaffiliated Colorado voters by the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
It will jolt an already unsettled 2024 primary campaign that features the leading Republican candidate facing four separate criminal cases.
Liberal groups have demanded that states’ top election officials bar Trump under the clause that prohibits those who “engaged in an insurrection or rebellion” against the Constitution from holding higher office. None has taken that step, looking for guidance from the courts on how to interpret a clause that has only been used a handful of times since the 1860s.
While a few fringe figures have filed thinly written lawsuits in a few states citing the clause, the litigation Wednesday was the first by an organization with significant legal resources. It may lead to similar challenges in other states, holding out the potential for conflicting rulings that would require the Supreme Court to settle.
Colorado’s secretary of state, Democrat Jena Griswold, said in a statement that she hoped “this case will provide guidance to election officials on Trump’s eligibility as a candidate for office.”
The lawsuit contends the case is clear, given the attempt by then-President Trump to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden and his support for the assault of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The Republican has said he did nothing wrong in his actions.
The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, helped ensure civil rights for freed slaves — and eventually for all people in the United States. But it also was used to prevent former Confederate officials from becoming members of Congress after the Civil War and taking over the government against which they had just rebelled.
Donald Trump and 18 allies were indicted in Georgia on Monday over their efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss in the state, with prosecutors using a statute normally associated with mobsters to accuse the former president, lawyers and other aides of a “criminal enterprise” to keep him in power.
The nearly 100-page indictment details dozens of acts by Trump or his allies to undo his defeat, including beseeching Georgia’s Republican secretary of state to find enough votes for him to win the battleground state; harassing an election worker who faced false claims of fraud; and attempting to persuade Georgia lawmakers to ignore the will of voters and appoint a new slate of electoral college electors favorable to Trump.
In one particularly brazen episode, it also outlines a plot involving one of his lawyers to access voting machines in a rural Georgia county and steal data from a voting machine company.
“The indictment alleges that rather than abide by Georgia’s legal process for election challenges, the defendants engaged in a criminal racketeering enterprise to overturn Georgia’s presidential election result,” Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, whose office brought the case, said at a late-night news conference.
It comes just two weeks after the Justice Department special counsel charged him in a vast conspiracy to overturn the election, underscoring how prosecutors after lengthy investigations that followed the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol have now, two-and-a-half years later, taken steps to hold Trump to account for an assault on the underpinnings of American democracy.
The Georgia case covers some of the same ground as Trump’s recent indictment in Washington, including attempts he and his allies made to disrupt the electoral vote count at the Capitol. But in its sprawling web of defendants — 19 in total — the indictment stands apart from the more tightly targeted case brought by special counsel Jack Smith, which so far only names Trump as a defendant.
In charging close Trump aides who were referenced by Smith only as unindicted co-conspirators, the Georgia indictment alleges a scale of criminal conduct extending far beyond just the ex-president.
The indictment, with charges under the state’s racketeering law and language conjuring the seedy underworld of mob bosses and gang leaders, accuses the former president, his former chief of staff, Trump’s attorneys and the ex-New York mayor of being members of a “criminal organization” and “enterprise” that operated in Georgia and other states.
The indictment capped a chaotic day at the courthouse caused by the brief but mysterious posting on a county website of a list of criminal charges that were to be brought against the former president. Reuters, which published a copy of the document, said the filing was taken down quickly.
A Willis spokesperson said in the afternoon that it was “inaccurate” to say that an indictment had already been returned but declined to comment further on a kerfuffle that the Trump legal team jumped on to attack the investigation’s integrity.
Trump and his allies, who have characterized the investigation as politically motivated, immediately seized on the apparent error to claim that the process was rigged. Trump’s campaign aimed to fundraise off it, sending out an email with the since-deleted document embedded.
In a statement after the indictment was issued, Trump’s legal team said “the events that have unfolded today have been shocking and absurd, starting with the leak of a presumed and premature indictment before the witnesses had testified or the grand jurors had deliberated and ending with the District Attorney being unable to offer any explanation.”
The lawyers said prosecutors presenting their case “relied on witnesses who harbor their own personal and political interests — some of whom ran campaigns touting their efforts against the accused.”
Trump responded to the indictment Tuesday by announcing a news conference for next week to present yet another “almost complete” report on the alleged fraud he has yet to prove nearly three years after the 2020 election.
Former President Donald Trump, bent on staying in power, undertook a “criminal scheme” to overturn the results of the 2020 election, including repeatedly pushing lies about the results despite knowing his claims were false, and doubling down on those falsehoods as the Jan. 6 riot raged, a sweeping federal indictment alleges.
This is the third indictment faced by the former president, who — as the Republican front-runner in the 2024 presidential race — continues to insist that the vote was rigged.
Prosecutors say the alleged scheme, which they say involved six unnamed co-conspirators, included enlisting a slate of so-called “fake electors” targeting several states; using the Justice Department to conduct “sham election crime investigations”; enlisting the vice president to “alter the election results”; and doubling down on false claims as the Jan. 6 riot ensued — all in an effort to subvert democracy and stay in power.
The six alleged co-conspirators include several attorneys and a Justice Department official.
The sweeping indictment, based on the investigation by special counsel Jack Smith, charges Trump with four felony counts: conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights.
The indictment alleges that Trump knew that the claims he advanced about the election, specifically in Arizona and Georgia, were false — yet he repeated them for months.
It also highlights Trump’s alleged pressure campaign on his own vice president, Mike Pence, alleging that he asked Pence during a Christmas Day phone call to reject the electoral votes on Jan. 6, that he told Pence on Jan. 1 that he was “too honest,” and that he lied to Pence about election fraud to get him to accept a slate of fake electors. “Bottom line — won every state by 100,000s of votes,” Trump allegedly told Pence, according to the indictment. “We won every state.”
Former President Donald Trump speaks at a meeting in Philadelphia, June 30, 2023. Matt Rourke/AP, FILE
When that didn’t succeed, the indictment says, Trump pushed the crowd of supporters to pressure Pence into action on Jan. 6.
“Despite having lost, the Defendant was determined to remain in power,” the indictment reads. “So for more than two months following election day on November 3, 2020, the Defendant spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won.”
“These claims were false, and the Defendant knew that they were false. But the Defendant repeated and widely disseminated them anyway — to make his knowingly false claims appear legitimate, create an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger, and erode public faith in the administration of the election,” reads the indictment.
Trump, speaking to ABC News after the indictment was unsealed, described the new charges as a “pile-on.”
“It’s election interference,” he told ABC News, saying he is “doing very well in the polls” and that he believes he will defeat President Joe Biden in 2024.
The former president has been summoned to appear in court on Thursday in Washington, D.C.
Former U.S. President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at the Republican Party of Iowa’s Lincoln Day Dinner in Des Moines, Iowa, U.S., July 28, 2023. REUTERS/Scott Morgan/File Photo
A federal judge has thrown out Donald Trump’s $475 million defamation lawsuit against CNN, in which the former president claimed the network’s description of his election fraud as the “big lie” associated him with Adolf Hitler.
In a ruling late on Friday night, U.S. Judge Raag Singhal, who was nominated by Trump in 2019, said CNN’s words were opinion, not fact, and therefore could not be the subject of a defamation claim.
“CNN’s statements while repugnant, were not, as a matter of law, defamatory,” wrote Singhal, who sits in federal court in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, near Trump’s home at his Mar-a-Lago resort.
In a statement, a Trump spokesperson said: “We agree with the highly respected judge’s findings that CNN’s statements about President Trump are repugnant. CNN will be held responsible for their wrongful mistreatment of President Trump and his supporters.”
The statement did not say whether Trump would appeal the decision.
The lawsuit, which was filed in October 2022, highlighted five instances in which CNN either published stories or aired comments referring to Trump’s assertions about the 2020 election as his “big lie.” The phrase is also associated with the Nazi regime’s use of propaganda.
The wording, the lawsuit said, constituted “a deliberate effort by CNN to propagate to its audience an association between the plaintiff and one of the most repugnant figures in modern history.”
