Former President Donald Trump is still the dominant force in conservative politics and it shows in national polling, where he continuously demonstrates majority support among Republican voters. Haley, however, has been steadily gaining ground on her ex-boss where others are flagging.

“With Nikki Haley in second place in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, the presidential race is now a two-person race between one man and one woman,” her campaign said Tuesday morning.

In most national surveys, Trump leads the full field of Republicans by 46 points while Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis still holds second place. Haley has occasionally tied the Sunshine State’s governor in those polls, but averages under 9% to DeSantis’ about 12.5%.

However when you boil it down to the states which will first hold their primaries — and where the majority of media attention will shift for a few short weeks — voters pick the former South Carolina Governor over DeSantis, if still not as often as Trump.

In Iowa, where the first caucusing will occur, Trump’s polling average stands at just 48% — less than a majority — with Haley in second at 17.3% and DeSantis at 11.5%. That’s an improvement for both Trump and Haley since the start of summer, when she polled just over 5% and he just over 40%, but a huge loss for DeSantis, who is down from 28%.

New Hampshire will hold the first official Republican Primary and Trump’s polling majority again slips away when surveys are limited to just Granite Staters. Voters in New Hampshire, on average, would choose him 46.5% of the time to Haley’s almost 15%. DeSantis polls under 11% in New Hampshire, losing half his support since the summer.

Haley has been endorsed by former New Hampshire Governor and U.S. Senator Judd Gregg.

South Carolina, which Democrats tried to push to the front of the primary schedule, will hold their primary after New Hampshire. Trump has a near majority of support among Republicans in the Palmetto State, polling at an average of 49%. Haley, who spent six years as the state’s governor, polls behind him at just under 19%. DeSantis again draws less than 11%, down from about 20% to start the summer.

DeSantis said the cause of his decline is spending on the part of other candidates.

“Donald Trump is spending a million dollars attacking me in Iowa. Haley’s Super PAC is spending big money to attack me in Iowa. You don’t do that unless you view me as the threat, so I think it’s fine,” he said during a recent radio interview.

U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan, late Sunday, ordered Trump not to attack federal prosecutors, court staff and potential witnesses involved in the legal proceedings over his alleged efforts to interfere with the 2020 election.

It’s fair to say the real-estate mogul was not pleased by the order.

“The Obama appointed Federal Judge in D.C, a TRUE TRUMP HATER, is incapable of giving me a fair trial. Her Hatred of President DONALD J. TRUMP is so great that she has been diagnosed with a major, and incurable, case of TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME,” the former president said Monday via his Truth Social platform.

Trump was indicted by a grand jury on four charges after an investigation by Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team allegedly showed he was at the center of efforts to subvert the will of the voters following his defeat by President Biden.

Chutkan had previously issued the gag order, but issued a temporary stay while she considered a motion by Trump’s legal team to dismiss it pending an appeal and on grounds it would violate the First Amendment’s free speech clause.

In a nine-page order denying Trump’s motion, the judge didn’t necessarily disagree, but said those concerns were not valid in this circumstance.

“First Amendment rights of participants in criminal proceedings must yield, when necessary, to the orderly administration of justice,” she wrote.

“This court has found that even amidst his political campaign, Defendant’s statements pose sufficiently grave threats to the integrity of these proceedings that cannot be addressed by alternative means, and it has tailored its order to meet the force of those threats,” she wrote, citing the original gag order.

According to the former president, the charges and subsequent gag order come about at the direction of the man he will most likely face in another general election and in an attempt to prevent Trump from conducting a campaign. Trump warned the sitting president over the precedent he sets.

“The Corrupt Biden Administration just took away my First Amendment Right To Free Speech. NOT CONSTITUTIONAL! MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN,” he wrote.

“You’re setting a BAD precedent for yourself, Joe,” Trump declared.

Within hours of Chutkan declaring Trump is subject to her limited gag order, he took aim at a potential witness, former Attorney General Bill Barr.

“I called Bill Barr Dumb, Weak, Slow Moving, Lethargic, Gutless, and Lazy, a RINO WHO COULDN’T DO THE JOB. He just didn’t want to be Impeached, which the Radical Left Lunatics were preparing to do. I was tough on him in the White House, for good reason, so now this Moron says about me, to get even, “his verbal skills are limited.” Well, that’s one I haven’t heard before. Tell that to the biggest political crowds in the history of politics, by far. Bill Barr is a LOSER,” he wrote.

This, and posts that were still on Trump’s social media pages about his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, violate the order, according to legal experts.

Trump still has posts about Meadows & Bill Barr on Truth Social–a continuing violation of the reimposed gag order. https://t.co/NSq2KriaRJ

— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) October 30, 2023

“Trump still has posts about Meadows & Bill Barr on Truth Social — a continuing violation of the re-imposed gag order,” former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance wrote.

“It’s become clear to me: This is not my time,” Pence said at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual gathering in Las Vegas. “So after much prayer and deliberation, I have decided to suspend my campaign for president effective today.”

“We always knew this would be an uphill battle, but I have no regrets,” Pence went on to tell the friendly audience, which reacted with audible surprise to the announcement and gave him multiple standing ovations.

Pence is the first major candidate to leave a race that has been dominated by his former boss-turned-rival, Donald Trump, and his struggles underscore just how much Trump has transformed the party. A former vice president would typically be seen as a formidable challenger in any primary, but Pence has struggled to find a base of support.

Pence did not immediately endorse any of his rivals, but continued to echo language he has used to criticize Trump.

“I urge all my fellow Republicans here, give our country a Republican standard-bearer that will, as Lincoln said, appeal to the better angels of our nature, and not only lead us to victory, but lead our nation with civility,” he said.

Pence’s decision, more than two months before the Iowa caucuses that he had staked his campaign on, saves him from accumulating additional debt, as well as the embarrassment of potentially failing to qualify for the third Republican primary debate, on Nov. 8 in Miami.

But his withdrawal is a huge blow for a politician who spent years biding his time as Trump’s most loyal lieutenant, only to be scapegoated during their final days in office when Trump became convinced that Pence somehow had the power to overturn the results of the 2020 election and keep both men in office — a power Pence did not possess.

While Pence averted a constitutional crisis by rejecting the scheme, he drew Trump’s fury, as well as the wrath of many of Trump’s supporters, who still believed his lies about the election and see Pence as a traitor.

Among Trump critics, meanwhile, Pence was seen as an enabler who defended the former president at every turn and refused to criticize even Trump’s most indefensible actions time and again.

As a result, an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research from August found that the majority of U.S. adults, 57%, viewed Pence negatively, with only 28% having a positive view.

Throughout his campaign, the former Indiana governor and congressman had insisted that while he was well-known by voters, he was not “known well” and set out to change that with an aggressive schedule that included numerous stops at diners and Pizza Ranch restaurants.

Pence had been betting on Iowa, a state with a large white Evangelical population that has a long history of elevating religious and socially conservative candidates such as former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and former Pennsylvania Rick Santorum.

Pence often campaigned with his wife, Karen, a Christian school teacher, and emphasized his hard-line views on issues such as abortion, which he opposes even in cases when a pregnancy is unviable. He repeatedly called on his fellow candidates to support a minimum 15-week national ban and he pushed to ban drugs used as alternatives to surgical procedures.

He tried to confront head-on his actions on Jan. 6, 2021, explaining to voters over and over that he had done his constitutional duty that day, knowing full well the political consequences. It was a strategy that aides believed would help defuse the issue and earn Pence the respect of a majority of Republicans, whom they were were convinced did not agree with Trump’s actions.

But even in Iowa, Pence struggled to gain traction.

He had an equally uphill climb raising money, despite yearslong relationships with donors. Pence ended September with just $1.18 million in the bank and $621,000 in debt, according to his most recent campaign filing. That debt had grown in the weeks since and adding to it would have taken Pence, who is not independently wealthy, years pay off.

The Associated Press first reported earlier this month that people close to Pence had begun to feel that remaining a candidate risked diminishing his long-term standing in the party, given Trump’s dominating lead in the race for the 2024 nomination. While they said Pence could stick it out until the Jan. 15 Iowa caucuses if he wanted — campaigning on a shoestring budget and accumulating debt — he would have to consider how that might affect his ability to remain a leading voice in the conservative movement, as he hopes.

Some said that Hamas’ attack on Israel in October, which pushed foreign policy to the forefront of the campaign, had given Pence a renewed sense of purpose given his warnings throughout the campaign against the growing tide of isolationism in the Republican Party.

Pence had argued that he was the race’s most experienced candidate and decried “voices of appeasement” among Republican, arguing they had emboldened groups such as Hamas.

But ultimately, Pence concluded that he could continue to speak out on the issue without continuing the campaign. He chose the Las Vegas event to announce his decision, in part, so he could address the topic one last time before formally leaving the race.

He is expected to remain engaged, in part through Advancing American Freedom, the conservative think tank he founded after leaving the vice presidency and that he envisions it as an alternative to the The Heritage Foundation.

Pence’s group is expected to continued to advocate for policies that he supported in his run, including pushing for more U.S. support for Ukraine’s defense against the Russian invasion and proposed cuts to Social Security and Medicare to rein in the debt. Such ideas were once the bread-and-butter of Republican establishment orthodoxy but have fallen out of a favor as the party has embraced Trump’s isolationist and populist views.

The president’s campaign has made a calculated risk that Granite State voters will forget Biden’s snub of refusing to put his name on the primary ballot.

Chances are they won’t forget. New Hampshire has four electoral votes and in a close election losing them could be a major blow to Democrats’ hopes of holding on to the White House.

But Biden has chosen South Carolina over New Hampshire and Iowa by endorsing the Palmetto State primary first in line – rewarding the place that rescued his 2020 campaign.

South Carolina is now the leadoff voting state in the selection process under Democratic National Committee rules, but New Hampshire is ignoring that DNC list, vowing to hold its primary first under its own state law. Iowa Democrats are also working to preserve their early January caucus.

“While the president wishes to participate in the primary, he is obligated as a Democratic candidate for president to comply with the Delegate Selection Rules for the 2024 Democratic National Convention promulgated by the Democratic National Committee,” Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said in a letter advising New Hampshire officials he won’t be on the ballot.

Baloney. Biden is picking South Carolina over New Hampshire for strictly political reasons and for payback for embarrassing him four years ago.

Biden finished fifth in the New Hampshire primary and wants to punish the state that kicked his butt.

His campaign is likely instead to mount a write-in campaign and finish first that way – the same strategy President Lyndon Johnson used in 1968.

“The reality is that Joe Biden will win the NH FITN (first-in-the-nation) primary in January, win renomination in Chicago and will be re-elected in November. NH voters know and trust Joe Biden that’s why he is leading Trump in NH by double digits,” NH Democratic chair Ray Buckley said in a blustery statement.

The only problem is Johnson dropped out of the race after Democrat Eugene McCarthy finished a closer-than-expected second. So, if Biden doesn’t earn a resounding write-in victory, it could be viewed as a loss.

The move by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to abandon the Democratic race and run for president as an independent makes it easier for Biden to slide by. But the president could now face Democratic opposition from U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips, who decided Friday to launch a primary challenge. The moderate Minnesota Democrat has argued that Biden is too old to run again and filed papers on Friday to get on the ballot in New Hampshire.

Phillips’s surprise decision could complicate Biden’s plan for a write-in win in the Granite State.

“I think it’s a mistake that he’s not putting his name on the ballot,” New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan said.

Consider that a warning.

The 45th president was in a New York court Tuesday when news broke that Mark Meadows, the former North Carolina representative who served as Trump’s last chief of staff, had apparently met with Special Counsel Jack Smith’s legal team several times in connection with Trump’s election denial.

According to ABC, citing “sources familiar with the matter,” Meadows met with government lawyers three times, once in the presence of a grand jury. Citing the same sources, the news organization claims that Meadows was offered limited immunity in order to reveal potentially incriminating information about Trump’s efforts to see the presidential election overturned.

Meadows apparently told Smith’s team he rebuffed his bosses’ claims of election fraud, and that the former president’s assertion he won the 2020 election was “dishonest.”

Trump responded to the news with disbelief.

“I don’t think Mark Meadows would lie about the Rigged and Stollen 2020 Presidential Election merely for getting IMMUNITY against Prosecution (PERSECUTION!) by Deranged Prosecutor, Jack Smith,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social media platform, misspelling and capitalization included.

Trump went on to offer a reason as to why Meadows might have worked with Smith.

“When you really think about it, after being hounded like a dog for three years, told you’ll be going to jail for the rest of your life, your money and your family will be forever gone, and we’re not at all interested in exposing those that did the RIGGING — If you say BAD THINGS about that terrible ‘MONSTER,’ DONALD J. TRUMP, we won’t put you in prison, you can keep your family and your wealth,” Trump wrote.

The cooperation of Trump’s former chief of staff would be key to Smith’s prosecution of the former president, who a grand jury has charged with conspiring to overturn the 2020 election and obstruct an official proceeding.

Meadows’ lawyer later told another news outlet that reporting on his client’s time with Smith “was largely inaccurate.”

Trump said that Meadows never told him the 2020 election wasn’t rigged against him, a claim the former president has maintained, without providing any evidence, since the day following the election.

“Mark Meadows NEVER told me that allegations of significant fraud (about the RIGGED Election!) were baseless. He certainly didn’t say that in his book,” Trump wrote.

No court has accepted any of the former president’s assertions of election fraud or any made by lawyers representing his claims. Trump lost the 2020 election to President Joe Biden after netting 74,223,975 votes to the now-sitting president’s 81,283,501, and following an electoral college defeat of 232 – 306.

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump was abruptly called to the witness stand and then fined $10,000 on Wednesday after the judge in his civil fraud trial said the former president had violated a gag order. It was the second time in less than a week that Trump was penalized for his out-of-court comments.

Before imposing the latest fine, Judge Arthur Engoron summoned Trump from the defense table to testify about his comment to reporters hours earlier about “a person who’s very partisan sitting alongside” the judge.

Engoron had already ordered all participants in the trial not to comment publicly about his staff. That restriction from Oct. 3 followed a Trump social media post that maligned the judge’s principal law clerk, who sits next to him.

Trump and his lawyers insisted that his comment Wednesday was not about the clerk. They said he was referring to Michael Cohen, a former Trump attorney who had been testifying.

Engoron said Trump’s claim was “not credible,” noting that he sat closer to the clerk than to Cohen.

“The idea that the statement would refer to the witness,” Engoron said, “doesn’t make any sense to me.”

Five days earlier, Trump had been fined $5,000 after Engoron learned that the offending social media post from early October had lingered on Trump’s campaign website for weeks after being taken down — on the judge’s orders — from Trump’s Truth Social media platform.

Then, on Wednesday, the Republican presidential front-runner complained in a courthouse hallway that Engoron, a Democrat, is “a very partisan judge, with a person who’s very partisan sitting alongside of him, perhaps even much more partisan than he is.”

Under oath on the witness stand, Trump told the judge that the remark was aimed at “you and Cohen.”

But Trump did not conceal his frustration with the clerk. “I think she’s very biased against us. I think we’ve made that clear,” Trump said during his roughly two minutes on the stand.

Three of Trump’s lawyers objected to the $10,000 fine, and they reiterated Trump’s claim that the clerk was partial.

Not long after he was fined and moments after one of his lawyers finished questioning Cohen, Trump stood up and walked out of the courtroom, trailed by his son Eric. Donald Trump has attended the trial voluntarily, and he can leave whenever he likes.

The episodes raise questions about whether Trump can abide by court directives that are aimed at reining in his rhetoric while respecting his free speech rights as he campaigns to return to the White House.

Last week in Washington, the judge in Trump’s federal election interference criminal case imposed a gag order barring public statements targeting prosecutors, court staff and potential witnesses. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan’s order came after prosecutors raised concerns that Trump’s remarks could inspire his supporters to threaten or harass his targets.

Chutkan temporarily lifted the order Friday so she could consider a defense request to pause the restrictions while Trump appeals it.

In the New York case, Cohen returned to the witness stand on Wednesday as the defense team tried to undermine his credibility and question his motives.

After a decade of working as Trump’s fixer, Cohen came under federal scrutiny and broke with his boss in 2018. Cohen soon pleaded guilty to and went to prison for tax evasion, making false statements on a bank loan application, lying to Congress and making illegal contributions to Trump’s campaign. The contributions were in the form of payouts to women who said they had extramarital sexual encounters with Trump, who denied it.

Cohen became an outspoken Trump foe and a key witness in the New York trial, which stems from a lawsuit brought by the state’s attorney general, Letitia James. She alleges that Trump habitually exaggerated the value of his real estate holdings on financial documents that helped him get loans and insurance and make deals.

Trump denies any wrongdoing and says James, a Democrat, is targeting him for partisan reasons.

Cohen testified Tuesday that he and other executives at Trump’s company worked to inflate the estimated values of their employer’s holdings so his financial statements would match a net worth that Trump had set “arbitrarily.”

On cross-examination Wednesday, Trump lawyer Alina Habba confronted Cohen with comments he had made praising Trump, before turning on him, and asked whether he had “significant animosity” toward Trump.

“Do I have animosity toward him? Yes, I do,” Cohen replied.

“You have made a career out of publicly attacking President Trump, haven’t you?” Habba asked.

After a long pause, Cohen said, “Yes.”

Trump’s lawyers also emphasized Cohen’s federal criminal convictions and worked to portray him as a liar. The defense pounced on Cohen’s testimony Tuesday that he had lied when he pleaded guilty to tax evasion and loan application falsehoods — rather, he maintained, his conduct was just a matter of omissions and failure to correct paperwork.

Trump attorney Clifford Robert pressed Wednesday on whether Cohen also lied in congressional testimony in which he said he did not recall being asked by Trump to inflate Trump’s net worth.

Cohen repeatedly declined to answer, but eventually said he stood by the earlier testimony. Robert said the state’s key witness was not credible and asked the judge immediately to issue a verdict in Trump’s favor. Engoron denied the request, and soon Trump left the court.

After Cohen’s testimony wrapped up Wednesday, he said outside court that he had seen “a defeated man” when looking at Trump across the courtroom.

Trump, for his part, said Cohen “was caught lying.”

Trump is expected to testify later in the trial about the allegations in the lawsuit.

___

Associated Press writers Jill Colvin in New York and Alanna Durkin Richer in Boston contributed to this report.

Chutkan is hearing the Jan. 6 case against Trump brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith and has decided to partially muzzle Trump with an order that is nonsensical and possibly unconstitutional.

It stipulates that Trump can still criticize the Biden administration and the Department of Justice and the “campaign platforms and policies” of his GOP rivals, including former Vice President Mike Pence. And Trump can continue to say he’s “innocent of the charges against him.”

Chutkan has forbidden Trump from statements targeting the special counsel, Jack Smith, who brought the charges against him, or “any reasonably foreseeable witness or the substance of their testimony.”

There’s no doubt that Trump’s commentary about the case has been lurid, at best. He shouldn’t call Jack Smith “deranged” or a “thug,” but this, alas, is how the former president expresses himself. And he has the right to comment on an inherently political case with massive political implications.

It’s not as though Trump is charged with a random personal offense. The alleged crimes have to do with his conduct after the 2020 election. Everything about the case is a matter of hot political dispute.

It is absurd to try to ban Trump from attacking the special counsel when he is the Justice Department’s instrument for bringing the charges. Besides, such prosecutors are always criticized by their targets. If, for some reason, attacks on Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr had been ruled out of bounds during the Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky investigations, Bill Clinton’s defenders would have been rendered practically mute.

As for the potential witnesses, one of them is Mike Pence, who is running against Trump for president. It is mighty generous of Judge Chutkan to allow Trump to address Pence’s policy plans. The chief political dispute between the two candidates, though, has to do with Jan. 6 and their clashing interpretations of who was right on that day.
Pence discusses this on the campaign trail, and Trump should be able to offer his rival interpretation. Welcome to life in a free society.

Chutkan wants to shut up Trump about questions that will be absolutely central to the 2024 campaign if he’s the Republican nominee. Joe Biden will run, to a large extent, on Jan. 6, and Trump will run, to a large extent, on the justice system being manipulated against him by the likes of Jack Smith.

Chutkan may think she has no choice. But the decision to charge Trump in this case was discretionary; the decision to schedule the trial in the midst of a presidential election was discretionary; and her unwillingness to see the obvious flaws in her order is discretionary, too.

A federal judge shouldn’t be the one setting the rules of the road for a presidential election.

Rich Lowry is editor in chief of the National Review

Julie Chavez Rodriguez, manager of Biden’s reelection campaign, wrote in a letter to New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair Raymond Buckley that “while the president wishes to participate in the primary, he is obligated to comply” with party rules.

“The president looks forward to having his name on New Hampshire’s general election ballot as the nominee of the Democratic Party after officially securing the nomination at the 2024 Democratic National Convention, where he will tirelessly campaign to earn every single vote in the Granite State next November,” Rodriguez wrote.

Biden last year urged the Democratic National Committee to shake up the order of the 2024 primary, replacing Iowa’s leadoff caucus with the South Carolina primary to better empower Black and other minority voters crucial to the party’s base. In February, the DNC approved a new 2024 calendar, beginning with South Carolina’s primary on Feb. 3, followed three days later by New Hampshire and Nevada.

But New Hampshire has balked at the plan, arguing that it has traditionally held the nation’s opening primary — a rule that Iowa only got around by having caucuses. Top New Hampshire Democrats say state law there mandates hosting the nation’s first primary, and officials have vowed to have a primary prior to South Carolina’s regardless of what the DNC says.

The DNC has warned that such a move would lead to an unsanctioned primary that could trigger sanctions, including New Hampshire potentially losing delegates to the 2024 Democratic convention in Chicago. In the meantime, New Hampshire voters will still be able to write in Biden’s name even during an unsanctioned primary, and some of the state’s top Democrats have organized an effort to encourage write-in support for the president.

New Hampshire has yet to set a formal date for its 2024 primary. But, in response to Chavez’s letter, Buckley released a statement saying, “The reality is that Joe Biden will win the New Hampshire first-in-the-nation primary in January, win renomination in Chicago and will be re-elected next November.”

Biden isn’t the first sitting president to forgo appearing on New Hampshire’s primary ballot. In 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson didn’t file for the state’s primary and still won via write-in, though Minnesota Sen. Eugene McCarthy’s strong second-place finish in the state helped push Johnson to announce mere weeks later that he wouldn’t seek reelection.

NEW YORK (AP) — In a courtroom showdown five years in the making, Donald Trump’s fixer-turned-foe Michael Cohen testified Tuesday that he worked to boost the supposed value of the former president’s assets to “whatever number Trump told us to.”

Trump’s lawyers — and outside court, Trump himself — by turn sought to portray Cohen as a serial deceiver who pleaded guilty to crimes that include tax evasion and telling falsehoods to Congress and a bank. During a fractious cross-examination, Cohen, a disbarred attorney, even floated his own lawyerly objections, responding to some queries with “asked and answered!”

It was a fraught face-to-face encounter between Trump and a man who once pledged to “take a bullet” for him. Cohen eventually ended up in prison and became a prominent witness against his former boss in venues from courthouses to Congress.

Now, Cohen is a key figure in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit alleging that Trump and his company duped banks, insurers and others by giving them financial statements that inflated his wealth.

“I was tasked by Mr. Trump to increase the total assets, based upon a number that he arbitrarily elected,” Cohen testified, saying that he and former Trump finance chief Allen Weisselberg labored “to reverse-engineer the various different asset classes, increase those assets, in order to achieve a number that Mr. Trump had tasked us.”

Asked what that number was, Cohen replied: “Whatever number Trump told us to.”

Trump denies James’ allegations. Outside court, Trump dismissed Cohen’s account as the words of “a proven liar.”

“The witness is totally discredited,” Trump said. “He’s a disgraced felon, and that’s the way it’s coming out.”

The former president and Republican 2024 front-runner voluntarily came to court for a sixth day this month. Cohen has said he hadn’t seen Trump for five years until now.

“Heck of a reunion,” Cohen said outside court. He insisted that “this is not about Donald Trump vs. Michael Cohen or Michael Cohen vs. Donald Trump. This is about accountability, plain and simple.”

Cohen testified that Trump would summon him and Weisselberg and say, for example: “I’m actually not worth four and a half billion dollars. I’m really worth more like six.”

Cohen said he and the finance chief would then inflate the value of Trump properties by pegging them to “comparable” real estate that was actually different — brand-new developments with higher ceilings, more sweeping views and no rent regulation, for instance.

Insurance company executives were shown the exaggerated statements, where the combination of extremely high values and low liabilities could net Trump more favorable premiums, Cohen testified. Plus, he said, Trump would deliberately show up about three-quarters of the way through his deputies’ meetings with insurers and spark a conversation to the effect that he was rich enough to self-insure if he couldn’t get a good premium.

As Cohen testified, Trump at times whispered to his lawyers or shook his head. At other points, the former president hunched forward in his seat, watching intently, or leaned back with crossed arms. He took a keen interest in Cohen’s cross-examination, gesturing to his attorneys and craning his neck to get a better view.

Trump lawyer Alina Habba hammered at Cohen’s 2018 federal guilty pleas and his effort now to distance himself from some of them. Although he pleaded guilty to tax evasion and to making false statements to a bank on a loan application, he said Tuesday he’d lied when he made those admissions. He suggested he’d only engaged in “tax omission” and failed to correct inaccuracies on the loan paperwork.

“You’re not going to lie to me, as well?” Habba asked pointedly. And when Cohen objected to certain questions and rattled off cases he said allowed him to do so, Habba snapped back that he was mistaken.

“If you still had your law license, you’d understand that,” she said. Another Trump lawyer, Christopher Kise, complained that Cohen was a “serial liar” who was “out of control” and seeking to “play judge.”

The actual judge, Arthur Engoron, told Cohen to answer most of the questions.

Engoron already has ruled that Trump and his company committed fraud. The trial involves remaining claims of conspiracy, insurance fraud and falsifying business records.

Trump says his assets were actually undervalued, and he maintains that disclaimers on his financial statements essentially told recipients to check the numbers out for themselves.

He has derided the case as a “sham,” a “scam” and part of an effort by James and other Democrats to drag down his campaign.

Cohen spent a decade as Trump’s fiercely loyal personal lawyer before famously breaking with him in 2018 amid a federal investigation that sent Cohen to federal prison. He is also a major prosecution witness in Trump’s separate Manhattan hush-money criminal case, scheduled for trial next spring.

James has credited Cohen as the impetus for her civil investigation, which led to the fraud lawsuit and trial. She cited Cohen’s testimony to Congress in 2019 that Trump had a history of misrepresenting the value of assets to gain favorable loan terms and tax benefits.

Earlier this month, Trump dropped a $500 million lawsuit that accused Cohen of “spreading falsehoods” and breaking a confidentiality agreement. A Trump spokesperson said the former president was only pausing the lawsuit, while campaigning and fighting four criminal cases.

In one of those criminal cases, co-defendant Jenna Ellis, an attorney, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to a felony charge over efforts to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia. She’s the fourth defendant to take a plea deal in the case.

Trump’s attorneys sought to delay the New York trial Tuesday, arguing that coronavirus cases among James’ staff put the former president’s health at risk. The attorney general’s office, in a statement, said it had taken all steps to notify the relevant parties and had followed health guidance.

Trump later complained outside court that “what they did with COVID in the courtroom was a disgrace,” but he and the attorneys beside him didn’t don masks.

___

Associated Press writer Michael R. Sisak contributed to this report.

ATLANTA (AP) — Attorney and prominent conservative media figure Jenna Ellis pleaded guilty Tuesday to a felony charge over efforts to overturn Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia, tearfully telling the judge she looks back on that time with “deep remorse.”

Ellis, the fourth defendant in the case to enter into a plea deal with prosecutors, was a vocal part of Trump’s reelection campaign in the last presidential cycle and was charged alongside the Republican former president and 17 others with violating the state’s anti-racketeering law.

Ellis pleaded guilty to one felony count of aiding and abetting false statements and writings. She had been facing charges of violating Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, known as RICO, and soliciting the violation of oath by a public officer, both felonies.

She rose to speak after pleading guilty, fighting back tears as she said she would not have represented Trump after the 2020 election if she knew then what she knows now, claiming that she relied on lawyers with much more experience than her and failed to verify the things they told her.

“What I did not do but should have done, Your Honor, was to make sure that the facts the other lawyers alleged to be true were in fact true,” the 38-year-old Ellis said.

The guilty plea from Ellis comes just days after two other defendants, fellow attorneys Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro, entered guilty pleas. That means three high-profile people responsible for pushing baseless legal challenges to Democrat Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory have agreed to accept responsibility for their roles rather than take their chances before a jury. A lower-profile defendant pleaded guilty last month.

Responding to a reporter’s shouted question in the hallway of a New York City courthouse, where a civil case accusing him of inflating the value of his assets is being held, Trump said he didn’t know anything about Ellis’ plea deal but called it “too bad” and said he wasn’t worried by it.

“Don’t know anything, we’re totally innocent of everything, that’s political persecution is all it is,” he said.

Steve Sadow, Trump’s lead attorney in the Georgia case, used Ellis’ plea to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the racketeering charges Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis brought against all 19 defendants.

“For the fourth time, Fani Willis and her prosecution team have dismissed the RICO charge in return for a plea to probation,” he said. “What that shows is this so-called RICO case is nothing more than a bargaining chip for DA Willis.”

He also noted that Ellis pleaded guilty to a charge that wasn’t in the original indictment and doesn’t include Trump.

She was sentenced to five years of probation along with $5,000 in restitution, 100 hours of community service, writing an apology letter to the people of Georgia and testifying truthfully in trials related to this case.

The early pleas and the favorable punishment — probation rather than prison — could foreshadow similar outcomes for additional defendants who may see an admission of guilt and cooperation as their best hope for leniency. Even so, their value as witnesses against Trump is unclear given that their direct participation in unfounded schemes will no doubt expose them to attacks on their credibility and bruising cross-examinations should they testify.

The indictment in the sweeping case details a number of accusations against Ellis, including that she helped author plans on how to disrupt and delay congressional certification of the 2020 election’s results on Jan. 6, 2021, the day a mob of Trump supporters eventually overran the U.S. Capitol.

Ellis is also accused of urging state legislators to unlawfully appoint a set of presidential electors loyal to Trump at a hearing in Pennsylvania, and she later appeared with some of those lawmakers and Trump at a meeting on the topic at the White House. The indictment further says she similarly pushed state lawmakers to back false, pro-Trump electors in Georgia as well as Arizona and Michigan.

Prosecutor Daysha Young said in court Tuesday that Ellis attended a December 2020 meeting of Georgia state senators with Trump attorney and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and with Georgia-based attorney Ray Smith. Ellis “intentionally aided and abetted” the other two as they made false statements to the lawmakers, including that more than 2,500 people convicted of felonies, more than 66,000 people who were under 18 and more than 10,000 dead people voted in the 2020 election in Georgia, Young said.

Before her plea, Ellis, who lives in Florida, was defiant, posting in August on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, “The Democrats and the Fulton County DA are criminalizing the practice of law. I am resolved to trust the Lord.”

But she has been more critical of Trump since then, saying on conservative radio in September that she wouldn’t vote for him again, citing his “malignant, narcissistic tendency to simply say that he’s never done anything wrong.”

Along with Giuliani, Ellis was a leading voice in the Trump campaign’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, appearing frequently on television and conservative media to tell lies about widespread fraud that did not occur and spread misinformation and conspiracy theories.

She was censured in Colorado in March after admitting she made repeated false statements about the 2020 election.

That punishment was due in part to a Nov. 20, 2020, appearance on Newsmax, during which she said, “With all those states (Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Georgia) combined we know that the election was stolen from President Trump, and we can prove that.”

Powell pleaded guilty to six misdemeanors and was sentenced to serve six years of probation and was ordered to pay a fine of $6,000. Chesebro pleaded guilty to one felony and was ordered to serve five years of probation, pay $5,000 in restitution and do 100 hours of community service. Bail bondsman Scott Graham Hall pleaded guilty to five misdemeanor charges and got five years of probation. All of them were ordered to write apology letters to the people of Georgia and to testify truthfully in any other trial in the case.

Ellis and the other three pleaded guilty under Georgia’s first offender law. That means that if they complete their probation without violating the terms or committing another crime, their records will be wiped clean.

Trump and the other defendants, including his White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, have pleaded not guilty.

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Weissert reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.

The room where Trump would speak, a gymnasium covered in folding chairs, filled to capacity with “MAGA” bedecked voters well before the 45th president took the stage around 3 p.m. on Monday. Some chanted and danced in the aisles as they waited for the former president.

“Vote for Trump and solve your problems,” Trump told an audience of more than 2,500.

The former president seemed full of energy as he delivered a wide-ranging, nearly two-hour address that brought the crowd to its feet on several occasions. Trump more than once took specific aim at President Biden, who Trump said was left with a roaring economy that the current president has not maintained.

“I will end Joe Biden’s inflation disaster and we will quickly rebuild the greatest economy in the history of the world,” he said.

According to the former reality TV star, the war Israel is waging against Hamas and the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian military could have both been avoided, had Trump been elected to a second term in 2020.

The Associated Press reports more than 1,400 Israeli citizens were killed when Hamas launched a surprise attack against the U.S. ally on October 7. The Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza claims over 4,300 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli Defense Force’s response, though those numbers have not been independently verified.

Russia has been waging a stalled war in Ukraine for more than 18 months.

Both conflicts would end swiftly if he returned to the White House, Trump told the Granite State crowd.

“I make this promise to you: as president, I will restore peace through strength,” he said. “Crooked Joe is not feared, he’s not respected, and he’s regarded by our enemies as a joke.”

Trump is by far and away the leading contender for the Republican nomination. According to recent polling he leads the closest contender, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, by about 50 points.

The 45th President officially added his name to the New Hampshire ballot on Monday, joining the likes of DeSantis, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum.

The State’s Democratic leadership responded to Trump’s visit, the third to the first-in-the-nation primary state in as many weeks, with a morning press call in which they decried his brand of politics as at odds with voters in New Hampshire.

“At a time when our country confronts significant problems at home and around the world, and when our global leadership is as indispensable as ever, we need to be united. But Trump is incapable of bringing us together,” U.S. Sen. Maggie Hassan said. “We are the Live Free or Die State: we have no use for a man who would overturn our elections or praise dictators. I know that as Granite Staters and Americans, we will reject Trump and we will win next November.”

Biden’s attempt to tie the Israel-Hamas conflict to support for Ukraine has drawn the ire of Republicans and presidential candidates looking to separate themselves from the crowded field. And the Democratic president’s strong stance for Israel is prompting blowback in his own party — potentially siphoning away badly-needed progressive voters.

Some candidates and their super PACs are jumping into war footing, flooding the airwaves with new ads about the Israeli-Hamas war.

“The shame of it all is that we wouldn’t be in this terrible position if Joe Biden hadn’t been so weak in Afghanistan, so slow in Ukraine, so pandering to Iran, and so absent from the border,” GOP presidential candidate and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said on X. “The world is on fire and America needs strong new leadership to deal with it.”

GOP candidate Sen. Tim Scott said in a radio interview the U.S. needs to “stand shoulder to shoulder” with Israel with “no daylight” between the two countries.

“We’re seeing the devastation and the human carnage brought to the Jewish people by Hamas,” Scott said. “We have to be very, very clear that we stand with Israel.”

Republicans in Congress are vowing to block further funding for Ukraine, leading to a likely future showdown with Biden.

Sen. J.D. Vance called Biden’s attempt to tie the Israel-Hamas war to aid for Ukraine as “completely disgraceful.”

“What Biden is doing is disgusting,” Vance said. “He’s using dead children in Israel to sell his disastrous Ukraine policy to skeptical Americans. They are not the same countries; they are not the same problems, and this effort to use Israel for political cover is offensive. Hell no.”

The war is already spilling over into the campaign. Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis are feuding over whether the U.S. should take in Palestinian refugees, with DeSantis accusing the surging Haley of flip-flopping on the issue. Haley has strongly denied making the remarks about refugees being accepted into the U.S.

The former U.N. Ambassador is running second to Donald Trump in New Hampshire, where the former president is making a campaign stop on Monday.

DeSantis’s willingness to engage in a skirmish with Haley indicates both are fighting to be Trump’s main opposition, with Haley surging ahead in recent weeks.

The U.S.’s involvement in supplying aid and arms to Israel could also bring the threat of surging oil prices, making that a major 2024 issue.

It’s all fun and games until the price of gas hits $10 a gallon.

Or the supply chain gets disrupted and causes inflation to skyrocket.

These potential ramifications could trigger trouble for Biden, who is already struggling with weak job approval ratings and tied or behind Trump in most polls.

Biden’s strong stance in support of Israel may win him some votes with moderates and Jewish voters but could cost him votes with progressives who are mounting protests in support of the Palestinian people.

He’s even under pressure from some far-left lawmakers like the Squad and Sen. Edward Markey to support a cease-fire in Gaza, but so far the president isn’t biting.

Powell, of “unleash the kraken” fame, pleaded guilty to six misdemeanor charges in connection with the wide ranging criminal conspiracy case centered around the 45th President playing out in the Peach State. On Sunday, Trump used his social media platform to declare that Powell was not his attorney, but rather was serving as legal counsel for his disgraced former National Security Advisory, Michael Flynn.

“Sidney Powell was one of millions and millions of people who thought, and in ever increasing numbers still think, correctly, that the 2020 Presidential Election was RIGGED & STOLLEN, AND OUR COUNTRY IS BEING ABSOLUTELY DESTROYED BECAUSE OF IT!!! Despite the Fake News reports to the contrary, and without even reaching out to ask the Trump Campaign, MS. POWELL WAS NOT MY ATTORNEY, AND NEVER WAS,” Trump wrote.

The former president’s effort to put distance between himself and the Texas attorney comes after Powell agreed to serve six years of probation, pay a $6,000 fine, and to testify truthfully regarding the activities of her co-defendants. Powell had been charged, along with Trump and more than a dozen others, for their alleged efforts to interfere with elections in Georgia.

Trump’s assertion Powell did not serve as part of his legal team is at odds with previous declarations made by the former president. In November of 2020, Trump wrote on X, the social media platform then known as Twitter, that Powell would join a team spearheaded by his personal attorney, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

I look forward to Mayor Giuliani spearheading the legal effort to defend OUR RIGHT to FREE and FAIR ELECTIONS! Rudy Giuliani, Joseph diGenova, Victoria Toensing, Sidney Powell, and Jenna Ellis, a truly great team, added to our other wonderful lawyers and representatives!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 15, 2020

“I look forward to Mayor Giuliani spearheading the legal effort to defend OUR RIGHT to FREE and FAIR ELECTIONS! Rudy Giuliani, Joseph diGenova, Victoria Toensing, Sidney Powell, and Jenna Ellis, a truly great team, added to our other wonderful lawyers and representatives,” he wrote then.

No court accepted any of the arguments made by Powell or any other lawyer representing the former president’s claims the election was rigged or stolen. Trump lost the 2020 election to President Joe Biden after netting 74,223,975 votes to the now-sitting president’s 81,283,501, and following an electoral college defeat of 232 – 306.

Powell is listed, though not named, as one of six unindicted co-conspirators in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s federal case charging Trump with plotting to overturn the 2020 election.

The D.C. grand jury indictment charging the former president indicates Trump told others that Powell’s unfounded claims of election fraud were “crazy” while simultaneously promoting a lawsuit that Powell filed seeking to overturn the election results in Georgia.

Herald wire services contributed.

NEW YORK (AP) — Former President Donald Trump was fined $5,000 on Friday after his disparaging social media post about a key court staffer in his New York civil fraud trial lingered on his campaign website for weeks after the judge ordered it deleted.

Judge Arthur Engoron avoided holding Trump in contempt for now, but reserved the right to do so — and possibly even put the 2024 Republican front-runner in jail — if he again violates a limited gag order barring case participants from personal attacks on court staff.

Engoron said in a written ruling that he is “way beyond the ‘warning’ stage,” but that he was only fining Trump a nominal amount because this was a “first time violation” and Trump’s lawyers said the website’s retention of the post had been inadvertent.

“Make no mistake: future violations, whether intentional or unintentional, will subject the violator to far more severe sanctions, which may include steeper financial penalties, holding Donald Trump in contempt of court, and possibly imprisoning him,” Engoron wrote in a two-page order.

Messages seeking comment on the ruling were left with Trump’s lawyers and a campaign spokesman.

Trump lawyer Christopher Kise earlier blamed the “very large machine” of Trump’s White House campaign for allowing the post to remain on the website after Trump had deleted it from social media, as ordered, calling it an unintentional oversight. It was removed from the website late Thursday after Engoron flagged it to Trump’s lawyers.

Trump wasn’t in court Friday. He’d been at the trial Tuesday and Wednesday after attending the first three days in early October. Outside court this week, he aimed his enmity at Engoron and New York Attorney General Letitia James, whose fraud lawsuit is being decided at the civil trial. Neither are covered by Engoron’s gag order.

Engoron, however, said the buck ultimately stops with Trump — even if it was someone on his campaign who failed to remove the offending post. He gave Trump 10 days to pay the fine.

“I want to be clear that Donald Trump is still responsible for the large machine even if it’s a large machine,” Engoron said after discussing the matter with Trump’s lawyers before testimony resumed Friday morning.

Engoron issued a limited gag order Oct. 3 barring all participants in the case from smearing his staff after Trump maligned principal law clerk Allison Greenfield in a post on Trump’s Truth Social platform. The judge ordered Trump to delete the post, which made a baseless insinuation about the clerk’s personal life, and warned of “serious sanctions” for violations.

“In the current overheated climate, incendiary untruths can, and in some cases already have, led to serious physical harm, and worse,” Engoron wrote Friday.

Before Trump deleted the post from Truth Social, as ordered, his campaign copied the message into an email blast. That email, with the subject line “ICYMI,” was automatically archived on Trump’s website, Kise said.

The email was sent to about 25,800 recipients on the campaign’s media list and opened by about 6,700 of them, Kise told Engoron after obtaining the statistics at the morning break. In all, only 3,700 people viewed the post on Trump’s campaign website, the lawyer said.

“What happened appears truly inadvertent,” Kise said. The lawyer pleaded ignorance to the technological complexities involved in amplifying Trump’s social media posts and public statements, calling the archiving “an unfortunate part of the campaign process.”

New York law allows judges to impose fines or imprisonment as punishment for contempt. Last year, Engoron held Trump in contempt and fined him $110,000 for being slow to respond to a subpoena in the investigation that led to the lawsuit.

James’ lawsuit accuses Trump and his company of duping banks and insurers by giving them heavily inflated statements of Trump’s net worth and asset values. Engoron has already ruled that Trump and his company committed fraud, but the trial involves remaining claims of conspiracy, insurance fraud and falsifying business records.

Trump denies wrongdoing, arguing that a disclaimer on his financial statements absolves him of any culpability and that some of his assets are worth far more than what’s listed on the documents. He’s called the trial a “sham,” a “scam” and “a continuation of the single greatest witch hunt of all time.”

The contempt discussion brought unexpected drama to a sleepy Friday ahead of what’s shaping up to be a busy week at the Manhattan trial. Trump’s onetime lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen, now a key state witness, said he’ll likely be on the witness stand Tuesday after postponing this week because of a health issue.

Trump and his two eldest sons, Eric and Donald Trump Jr., are expected to testify in a few weeks. His daughter Ivanka Trump is fighting a subpoena for her testimony. Engoron set a hearing on that dispute for next week.

Ivanka Trump was initially a defendant, but an appeals court dropped her from the case in June after finding that claims against her were outside the statute of limitations. Her lawyer argued in court papers Thursday that state lawyers failed to properly serve her subpoena and that she shouldn’t be forced to testify because she isn’t a party to the case and lives outside the court’s New York jurisdiction.

James’ office never questioned Ivanka Trump at a deposition and is now “effectively trying to force her back into this case,” her lawyer, Bennet Moskowitz, wrote.

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Associated Press writers Jennifer Peltz and Jill Colvin contributed to this report.

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Follow Sisak at x.com/mikesisak and send confidential tips by visiting https://www.ap.org/tips.

ATLANTA (AP) — Lawyer Sidney Powell pleaded guilty to reduced charges Thursday over efforts to overturn Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election in Georgia, becoming the second defendant in the sprawling case to reach a deal with prosecutors.

Powell, who was charged alongside Trump and 17 others with violating the state’s anti-racketeering law, entered the plea just a day before jury selection was set to start in her trial. She pleaded guilty to six misdemeanors accusing her of conspiring to intentionally interfere with the performance of election duties.

As part of the deal, she will serve six years of probation, will be fined $6,000 and will have to write an apology letter to Georgia and its residents. She also recorded a statement for prosecutors and agreed to testify truthfully against her co-defendants at future trials.

Powell was initially charged with racketeering and six other counts as part of a wide-ranging scheme to keep the Republican president in power after he lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden. Prosecutors say she also participated in an unauthorized breach of elections equipment in a rural Georgia county elections office.

The plea deal makes Powell the most prominent known person to be working with prosecutors investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn the election. Her cooperation in the case and participation in strategy talks threaten to expose the former president and offer insight on what he was saying and doing in the critical period after the election.

Above all, the guilty plea is a remarkable about-face for a lawyer who, perhaps more than anyone else, strenuously pushed baseless conspiracy theories about a stolen election in the face of extensive evidence to the contrary. She also has important knowledge about high-profile events, including a news conference she participated in on behalf of Trump and his campaign shortly after the election and on a White House meeting she attended in mid-December of 2020 in which prosecutors say ways to influence the outcome of the election were discussed.

Powell’s only comments in court came in response to routine questions from prosecutor Daysha Young and the judge.

There was a moment of levity when Young asked, “How old are you, ma’am?”

“Oh gosh,” Powell said with a chuckle. “Sixty-eight, despite my astonishingly youthful countenance.”

But Powell was solemn and succinct when Young asked, “How do you plead to the six counts of conspiracy to commit intentional interference with performance of election duties?”

“Guilty,” Powell said, her hands folded in front of her on the defense table.

John Fishwick, a former U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia, called Powell’s plea a “significant win” for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.

“This is somebody who was at ground zero of these allegations and a lawyer who is pleading guilty,” he said. “This is very significant.”

Fishwick also said Powell’s plea is helpful to Jack Smith, the Justice Department’s special counsel.

Powell is referenced, though not by name, as one of six unindicted co-conspirators in Smith’s federal case charging Trump with plotting to overturn the election. That indictment notes how Trump had privately acknowledged to others that Powell’s unfounded claims of election fraud were “crazy,” yet nonetheless he promoted and embraced a lawsuit that Powell filed against the state of Georgia that included what prosecutors said were “far-fetched” and baseless assertions.

Barry Coburn, a Washington-based lawyer for Powell, declined to comment Thursday.

Powell gained notoriety for threatening in a Fox Business interview in November 2020 to “release the Kraken,” invoking a mythical sea monster when talking about a lawsuit she planned to file to challenge the results of the presidential election. Similar suits she filed in several states were promptly dismissed.

She was about to go on trial with lawyer Kenneth Chesebro after each filed a demand for a speedy trial. Jury selection was still set to begin Friday for Chesebro to go on trial by himself, though prosecutors said earlier that they also planned to look into the possibility of offering him a plea deal.

Jury selection was set to start Friday. Chesebro’s attorneys didn’t immediately respond to messages seeking comment Thursday on whether he would also accept a plea deal.

A lower-profile defendant in the case, bail bondsman Scott Graham Hall, last month pleaded guilty to five misdemeanor charges. He was sentenced to five years of probation and agreed to testify in further proceedings.

Steve Sadow, the lead attorney for Trump in the Georgia case, expressed confidence that Powell’s plea wouldn’t hurt his own client’s case.

“Assuming truthful testimony in the Fulton County case, it will be favorable to my overall defense strategy,” he said.

Prosecutors allege that Powell conspired with Hall and others to access election equipment without authorization and hired computer forensics firm SullivanStrickler to send a team to Coffee County, in south Georgia, to copy software and data from voting machines and computers there. The indictment says a person who is not named sent an email to a top SullivanStrickler executive and instructed him to send all data copied from Dominion Voting Systems equipment in Coffee County to an unidentified lawyer associated with Powell and the Trump campaign.

Trial dates have not been set for the 16 remaining defendants, including former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who was a Trump lawyer, and Mark Meadows, who was the Trump White House’s chief of staff.

Willis has faced some criticism over her wide-ranging indictment and use of the state’s anti-racketeering law to charge so many defendants. Some people had speculated that, if her case did not go well, it could undermine Smith’s case, Fishwick said.

“This certainly shows that at least, as of today, it’s not undermining it. In fact, it’s strengthening his case,” Fishwick said.

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Associated Press writers Eric Tucker in Washington and Sudhin Thanawala in Atlanta contributed to this report.

Donald Trump’s relatively crisis-free presidency in foreign affairs has created a sense, perhaps an accurate one, that he cowed enemies into not challenging the U.S.

As Sen. Tom Cotton has pointed out, Kabul didn’t collapse on Trump’s watch, Russia didn’t invade Ukraine and Hamas didn’t launch a historic terror attack on Israel.

Now this may have just been good fortune. Four years isn’t a large sample size. But the argument that adversaries feared him, and therefore acted with a measure of restraint, is quite intuitive.

No one is going to mistake Trump for Henry Kissinger. His view of the world was highly personal and reflected a few obsessions, especially the notion that we were getting ripped off by foreigners.

Yet, despite the feeling of chaos created by his constant shoot-from-the-hip bombast, things basically stayed on the rails.

The fact that Trump was erratic and took perceived slights so seriously made it difficult to know how he would react to any given provocation. It was personal unpredictability elevated to the level of game theory.

Maybe he was just blustering.  But who would want to find out?

It’s worth noting that he followed through on his promise to bomb ISIS into near-oblivion, and when given the chance to hit a committed enemy of the United States, the notorious Iranian operative Qasem Soleimani, he targeted him for killing despite the considerable risks.

The New York Times reported at the time: “After initially rejecting the Suleimani option on Dec. 28 and authorizing airstrikes on an Iranian-backed Shiite militia group instead, a few days later Mr. Trump watched, fuming, as television reports showed Iranian-backed attacks on the American Embassy in Baghdad, according to Defense Department and administration officials.

“By late Thursday, the president had gone for the extreme option. Top Pentagon officials were stunned.”

If U.S. officials were stunned, how must anyone around the world with American blood on his hands have felt? And wouldn’t it have made adversaries think twice about doing anything to set the president to “fuming”?

In an interview with Bret Baier back in June, Trump made vague reference to a threat he issued to Vladimir Putin about a prospective invasion of Ukraine that supposedly stayed Putin’s hand. Who knows the accuracy of this? But Trump characterized Putin as believing his threat only about 10 percent, and that gets at what was probably a key element of the Trump deterrent effect — a nagging sense that he might not be bluffing, even if it seemed likely he was.

In short, when Trump says that Hamas wouldn’t have done this on his watch, many Republicans, and perhaps independents in a general election, will tend to believe him.

To his credit, Biden has said the appropriate things in the wake of the Hamas attack, but sentiments go only so far. A more important question is whether the right people fear President Biden as they appeared to be scared of his predecessor.

Rich Lowry is editor in chief of the National Review

WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump’s political fundraising machine is raking in donations at a prodigious pace, but he’s spending tens of millions of dollars he’s bringing in to pay attorneys to deal with the escalating costs of the various criminal cases he is contending with as he moves further into the 2024 presidential campaign.

Campaign finance experts say using the money to pay for lawyers in cases not related to the campaign or officeholder duties appears to conflict with a federal ban on the personal use of donor dollars, even though the Federal Election Commission has ruled the prohibition doesn’t apply to so-called leadership political action committees. The massive amount of money going to lawyers also amplifies the urgency Trump is feeling to raise money both for the campaign and his legal defense, which is unfolding on multiple fronts.

Trump’s Save America political action committee has paid nearly $37 million to more than 60 law firms and individual attorneys since January 2022, Federal Election Commission records show. That amounts to more than half of the PAC’s total expenditures, according to an Associated Press analysis of campaign finance filings.

During the first half of 2023, Save America spent more on legal-related costs, over $20 million, than any other political committee that discloses to the FEC — more than the Republican National Committee, Democratic National Committee and National Republican Senatorial Committee spent during that period combined.

The bulk of the Trump PAC money went to law firms that have defended Trump against criminal charges or in civil lawsuits. Other attorneys paid with the contributions worked on behalf of Trump’s businesses, his children, former White House aides and employees of the ex-president.

Footing the legal bills for co-defendants and potential witnesses raises additional thorny ethical questions: Will the attorneys paid by Trump be more loyal to him or their clients? If clients feel indebted to Trump, will they be less forthcoming about what they know?

“The way these cases get built is you persuade the little fish to testify against the big fish,” said Randall Eliason, a former federal prosecutor and criminal law professor at George Washington University Law School. “Well, if the little fish’s lawyer is being paid by the big fish that’s less likely to happen potentially.”

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump’s status as the first former president to be criminally indicted, his run for another White House term while defending himself in multiple court cases, and the loads of donor money flowing to lawyers are a trifecta unparalleled in U.S. history. Trump has denied any wrongdoing and he and his allies have blasted the long list of felony charges and lawsuits as political attacks meant to derail his 2024 campaign.

But the legal jeopardy has become his most potent fundraising tool. Trump’s claim that he’s the victim of a corrupt justice system determined to silence him and his supporters is a primary plank in his platform. And he’s turned the courthouse into a campaign stage to pound that message and fire up his supporters.

As Trump’s civil fraud trial in New York got underway earlier this month, he used the heavy media coverage as a megaphone. To the cameras stationed in the courthouse hallways, Trump denounced state Attorney General Letitia James’ case as “a witch hunt and a disgrace.” He and his company are accused by James of inflating the value of his real estate empire to deceive banks and insurers.

Trump also turned his surrender in Georgia on charges that he illegally schemed to overturn the 2020 election into a fundraising bonanza. His presidential campaign said it has sold about 47,000 T-shirts, coffee mugs and posters featuring the mug shot of the former president when he was booked in August at the Fulton County Jail. Overall, the campaign said it raised $9.4 million in the days following the photo’s release. That money is earmarked for political and campaign activities, not for legal expenses, according to the campaign. To help pay the legal fees, Trump’s political operation has also moved millions from his super PAC, MAGA Inc.

“The indictments are probably not expanding his coalition, but it’s certainly giving it greater intensity,” said Anthony Michael Kreis, a law professor at Georgia State University. “So people who are already supporting Donald Trump are probably going to dig in their heels and support him more.”

That’s true of at least some donors, who say they have no problem with their money going to lawyers.

“First thing I thought: What a crock,” said Robert Lee, a motorcycle repairman in Boca Raton, Florida, who made a small donation after the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago search. “None of this ever happened to anyone who wasn’t Trump.”

Asked about a campaign that spends so much on legal expenses, Lee said, “That would be fine with me.”

In addition to the New York business fraud case and the Georgia election case, Trump is battling federal felony counts arising from the Mar-a-Lago records case in Florida and the 2020 election subversion case in Washington, D.C. In a separate New York state case, he’s accused of making hush money payments during the 2016 presidential campaign to keep a sexual relationship from becoming public. Trump has denied the affair and pleaded not guilty to charges involving the payment.

The FEC declined to comment for this story, but it seems unlikely to act anytime soon. The agency is led by six commissioners, evenly split between Republicans and Democrats. Trump nominated all the GOP commissioners. One of the Democratic commissioners joined with the Republicans to declare in March the personal use ban didn’t apply to leadership PACs.

Saurav Ghosh, director of federal campaign finance reform at the non-profit Campaign Legal Center, criticized what he called the FEC’s “ blinkered and narrow view of the personal use prohibition.”

“The FEC is a dysfunctional agency that often fails to enforce the law because several commissioners don’t genuinely support the mission of the agency and favor a deregulatory approach to campaign finance laws,” Ghosh said.

The hands-off approach, he added, has allowed Trump to exploit people who give him money.

“It does feel like donors are being taken advantage of to advance Donald J. Trump’s personal interests,” Ghosh said.

In a recently unsealed court filing, Smith and his team of prosecutors described Trump’s decision to pay legal fees of co-defendants and potential witnesses as part of a pattern of “obstructive conduct.”

None of that matters to donors contacted by the AP. Dawn Smelcer of Fayetteville, North Carolina, a frequent donor to Trump’s 2024 campaign, said she’s backing Trump because of the “mistreatment” he’s endured.

“He’s fighting an evil and we’re helping him to fight that evil,” she said.

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Associated Press writers Eric Tucker and Jill Colvin in Washington contributed to this report.

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump returned Tuesday to the civil fraud trial that imperils his real estate empire, watching and deploring the case as an employee and an outside appraiser testified that his company essentially put a thumb on the scale when sizing up his properties’ value.

Incensed by a case that disputes his net worth and could strip him of such signature holdings as Trump Tower, the former president is due to testify later in the trial. But he chose to attend the first three days and came back Tuesday to observe — and to protest his treatment to the news cameras waiting outside the Manhattan courtroom.

Star witness Michael Cohen, a onetime Trump fixer now turned foe, postponed his scheduled testimony because of a health problem.

Instead, Trump company accountant Donna Kidder testified that she was told to make some assumptions favorable to the firm on internal financial spreadsheets. Outside appraiser Doug Larson said he didn’t suggest or condone a former Trump Organization comptroller’s methods of valuing properties.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Larson said of the way the ex-controller reached a $287.6 million value for a prominent Trump-owned retail space in 2013.

Trump, outside court, reiterated his insistence that he’s done nothing wrong and that New York Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit is a political vendetta designed to drag down his 2024 presidential campaign as he leads the Republican field.

“We built a great company — a lot of cash, it’s got a lot of great assets, some of the greatest real estate assets anywhere in the world,” Trump said outside the courtroom. He dismissed the case as “a disgrace,” the legal system as “corrupt” and the Democratic attorney general as a “radical lunatic.”

James’ lawsuit alleges that Trump and his company deceived banks, insurers and others by massively overvaluing his assets and inflating his net worth on his financial statements. She also attended Tuesday but didn’t comment.

Trump says his assets were actually undervalued and maintains that disclaimers on his financial statements amounted to telling banks and other recipients not to accept his numbers but to check them out for themselves.

Larson, a real estate brokerage executive and professional appraiser, assessed Trump properties for lenders. He was taken aback when told on the stand that he was repeatedly cited as an outside expert in former Trump Organization controller Jeffrey McConney ’s valuation spreadsheets.

“It’s inappropriate and inaccurate,” Larson testified. “I should have been told, and an appraisal should have been ordered.”

When it came to valuing a storefront formerly known as Niketown, McConney relied on rates of return for a different type of property, rather than for comparable retail space, Larson testified. He also said he appraised a Trump-owned Wall Street building at $540 million in 2015, while McConney valued it at $735.4 million on Trump’s financial statement.

Outside court, Trump attorney Alina Habba suggested that appraisers’ valuations routinely come in lower than what owners believe their properties are worth.

Kidder, the Trump company accountant, provided a window into Trump Organization accounting practices.

She testified that as she filled out internal spreadsheets documenting the value of a Trump-owned Wall Street office building, longtime former Trump Organization finance chief Allen Weisselberg told her to act as if the skyscraper would be completely leased by a certain date, even if some space was currently vacant. For a Park Avenue residential tower, she was told to project that unsold units “would all sell out” in a certain timeframe.

Kidder said she wasn’t aware that those assumptions would be used to improve Trump’s bottom line on financial statements that helped his company make deals and get financing and insurance.

Trump lawyer Christopher Kise objected to what he deemed “very granular” testimony from Kidder, who also alluded to a prior Trump tangle with New York state’s lawyers.

In explaining a spreadsheet, she noted an entry about a $12 million loan to pay a $25 million settlement of lawsuits from former state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and others over the now-defunct Trump University real estate seminar program.

Judge Arthur Engoron is hearing the current case without a jury. The suit was brought under a state law that doesn’t allow for one.

Trump has repeatedly criticized both the statute and the judge, a Democrat. The ex-president said Tuesday that he had come to like and respect Engoron but believed that Democrats were “pushing him around like a pinball.”

After Trump maligned a key court staffer on social media during the trial’s first days, the judge ordered him to delete the post and issued a limited gag order, warning participants in the case not to smear members of his staff.

In a pretrial decision last month, Engoron resolved the case’s top claim, ruling that Trump and his company committed years of fraud by exaggerating the value of his assets and net worth on his financial statements.

As punishment, Engoron ordered that a court-appointed receiver take control of some Trump companies, putting the future oversight of Trump Tower and other marquee properties in question. An appeals court has since blocked enforcement of that aspect of the ruling for now.

The trial concerns six remaining claims in the lawsuit, including allegations of conspiracy, insurance fraud and falsifying business records.

The House plans to return for a second vote at 11 a.m. Wednesday.

Jim Jordan’s rapid rise has been cheered by Trump and the far right

How the vote for a new speaker works

Scalise ends bid to become speaker as holdouts refuse to back him

Kevin McCarthy was an early architect of the GOP majority that became his downfall

Speaker McCarthy ousted in historic House vote

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries is calling on Republicans to work with Democrats to elect a speaker.

Jeffries said Tuesday evening after Jim Jordan lost the speaker’s vote that it’s fine if the next speaker is a Republican. But he made clear that Democrats would want rule changes that would allow them to advance legislation that has bipartisan support.

Jeffries described Jordan as “the poster child for MAGA extremism” and said he was a “clear and present danger to our democracy.”

The Democrat said informal conversations that had been going on for the last few days could begin in earnest now that it’s become clear Jordan does not have the votes to be speaker.

Republicans plan to return for a second round of voting at 11 a.m. Wednesday.

The House adjourned Tuesday evening after Jordan failed to garner enough Republican support to clinch the gavel in the first ballot for House speaker.

He said the House will return for a second vote at 11 a.m. Wednesday as he and his supporters work to persuade the remaining holdouts to flip in his favor.

Twenty Republicans voted for alternatives to Jordan on Tuesday, and he must pick up most of those to reach the 217 majority threshold.

Jordan said he won’t work with Democrats to elect a speaker and will go “as many rounds as it takes.”

After being rejected on the first ballot for House speaker, Jordan said he was “not really” surprised at the tally and expected to do better in the next round, possibly later Tuesday.

In all, 212 Democrats voted unanimously for their House leader, Hakeem Jeffries of New York, while 200 Republicans voted for Jordan and 20 for someone else. Jordan must pick up most of the GOP holdouts to reach the 217 majority threshold.

“We feel confident,” he said, ducking into a leadership office. “We’ve already talked to some members who are going to vote with us on the second ballot.”

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says it appears Jordan underestimated the number of opponents he had.

The California Democrat was the first female speaker of the House and was known for her ability to coalesce her members behind her. She famously never took a vote to the floor without knowing what the outcome would be.

The several times she ran for speaker, she faced a number of detractors in a closed-door conference vote but was able to clinch the gavel each time her nomination came to the floor vote.

Pelosi told reporters after Jordan lost the first round of voting that Republicans were “taking lessons on mathematics and how to count.”

A congressman who has opposed Jordan’s quest for speakership from the start says the conference made a decision in January in backing Kevin McCarthy and should stick to it.

Rep. Carlos Gimenez of Florida was among 20 Republicans who voted for alternatives to Jordan in Tuesday’s House speaker vote, dooming his bid on the first round of balloting. Gimenez cast his vote for McCarthy, who was ousted from the job two weeks ago.

Gimenez said, “We should go back to what we had.” He asked, “Why would we change our horse in midstride?

He added, “I’m not going to be a part of a coup.”

Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican and Jordan ally who has resisted party leadership in the past, said the holdouts on the House speaker vote would now be put through a “meat grinder” of pressure.

He predicted they would cave and support Jordan by the end of the week after pressure from conservative voters who are being told to call member offices and close friends.

“I don’t think any of these 20 have the stomach for forcing that vote over and over,” Massie said.

That strategy has the potential to backfire.

Leading up to the vote, some Republicans were resentful of the pressure put on them by Jordan’s allies and complained they were being threatened with primary opponents if they didn’t support him as speaker.

McCarthy says he does not expected another vote on House speaker right away.

The House went into recess shortly Tuesday afternoon after Jordan lost the first round of voting to become the chamber’s leader.

McCarthy said the Republican conference would regroup and talk to the members who have “differences of opinion” on who the next House speaker should be.

He noted that Jordan’s first round of balloting looked similar to his. McCarthy lost 19 votes back in January in his first election for speaker. Jordan lost 20.

Jordan has come up short in the first round of voting for House speaker.

The Ohio congressman did even worse than Kevin McCarthy did on the first balloting of his election back in January.

Jordan lost 20 Republican votes, well more than the three he could spare to win the speaker’s gavel.

More rounds of voting are expected as Jordan works to shore up support to replace McCarthy for the job and the leader of the GOP’s hard-right flank moves to take a central seat of U.S. power. But it’s unclear when the next vote will take place.

The Jordan holdouts are a mix of pragmatists, ranging from seasoned legislators and committee chairs worried about governing to newer lawmakers from districts where their voters back home prefer President Joe Biden to former President Donald Trump.

Jordan appears to be talking to some Republicans about switching their vote after he came up short on the first round.

Twenty Republicans have voted against Jordan, an outcome way worse than his allies were hoping for.

For his part, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is smiling and joking with colleagues as he no longer bears the weight of cajoling them to unite. He had earlier predicted that Jordan would clinch the gavel on the first round.

The vote hasn’t yet closed, and members can still change their ballots.

Republicans gave Rep. Steve Scalise a standing ovation after he cast his vote for Jordan for speaker.

Scalise was first nominated to the speakership last week before withdrawing his name when it became clear he would come up short.

But Scalise’s support was likely cold comfort to Jordan, who is on the brink of losing the first round unless votes change before the end.

Fifteen Republicans have so far voted against Jordan. He could afford to lose no more than three votes and still win the speaker’s gavel.

A dozen Republicans have now voted against Jordan for House speaker.

They have instead backed Rep. Kevin McCarthy, Rep. Steve Scalise, former Rep. Lee Zeldin or others. All the Democrats have voted for their leader, Hakeem Jeffries.

The voting continues.

The votes against Jordan for House speaker are looking to be more than his allies were expecting.

Jordan has so far lost nine GOP votes, well more than the three he could spare.

For now, it denies Jordan the speaker’s gavel, but votes can still be changed while the roll is being called.

Jordan has now lost well over the three GOP votes he could spare in his quest to become House speaker.

For now, it denies Jordan the speaker’s gavel, but votes can still be changed while the roll is being called.

Reps. Don Bacon, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, Anthony D’Esposito, Mario Diaz-Balart and Jake Ellzey are among the Republicans who have voted against Jordan.

Loud murmurs arose after each of the votes for an alternative speaker, and were especially loud after Diaz-Balart cast a potentially decisive fourth vote against Jordan.

Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer of Oregon is now the second Republican to vote for McCarthy.

With one Republican absent Tuesday, Jordan cannot afford to lose more than three GOP votes.

She joined Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, who was the first GOP lawmaker to vote for McCarthy.

One key holdout, Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., did not appear to be in the chamber when his name was called.

Buck has held out against supporting Jordan. He has said he wants Jordan to clearly state that Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election. He can still cast a vote at the end of the roll call.

The roll call vote is underway.

With one Republican absent Tuesday, Jordan cannot afford to lose more than three GOP votes.

Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska voted for Kevin McCarthy, the first Republican to break from Jordan. Murmurs rose after he voted.

Democratic Rep. Pete Aguilar is nominating Hakeem Jeffries as House speaker.

In his remarks before Tuesday’s vote, Aguilar pointedly called Jordan, the Republican pick for speaker, an “insurrection insider.”

The No. 3-ranked Democrat pointed to Jordan’s role in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and the fact that he has yet to pass a bill into law in his 16 years in office.

The chamber was lively during Aguilar’s speech. He ticked through Jordan’s record to note how he had consistently voted against government aid. The Democratic half of the chamber chanted, “He said no!” along with Aguilar.

A reference to Jordan’s wrestling career during Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik’s nominating speech received an audible gasp and groan from Democrats across the aisle.

Stefanik said ahead of Tuesday’s vote: “Whether on the wrestling mat or in the committee room, Jim Jordan is strategic, scrappy, tough and principled.

Jordan has denied allegations from former wrestlers during his time as an assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State University who accused him of knowing about claims they were inappropriately groped by an Ohio doctor. Jordan has said he was never aware of any abuse.

One of Trump’s most fervent supporters in the House is nominating Jordan for House speaker.

“Our colleague Jim Jordan is a patriot,” said Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y. “Jim is the voice of the American people who have been left voiceless far too long.”

Democrats are openly scoffing and jeering at certain points during Stefanik’s speech.

Arriving to the vote Tuesday, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told reporters that he believes Jordan can clinch the gavel on the first ballot.

McCarthy had been helping Jordan’s lobbying efforts over the last week. The two men became close in recent years, and Jordan proved to be instrumental in the California Republican’s becoming speaker in January.

Jordan typically skips a suit jacket, but he was donning one Tuesday as his colleagues prepared to vote on whether to elect him House speaker.

The Ohio Republican’s garb was a notable departure from his usual style as he shook hands with GOP lawmakers on the House floor.

Ahead of the election, he appeared to be short of the Republican votes needed to win the gavel, but he has sounded confident that he can pressure the holdouts to eventually vote for him.

Members of the House are getting settled in for what is expected to be multiple rounds of votes for speaker.

A handful of Republicans are still opposed to Jordan, but his allies think they will break from their opposition as they go through multiple rounds and come under intense pressure to elect a speaker.

The House chaplain, Margaret Kibben, gave an opening prayer alluding to the upcoming vote. “On this day of choice, give us the vision to see how you have picked each one,” she said. “Out of many may one emerge.”

Rep. Patrick McHenry is presiding over the chamber. He was abruptly appointed as speaker pro tempore last week following the unprecedented ouster of Kevin McCarthy from the top spot.

The House is gaveling into session at noon and beginning with a prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance.

Then work will get underway on a House speakership vote.

To seize the gavel, Jordan will need almost the full majority of his colleagues behind him in a House floor vote, as Democrats are certain to back their own nominee, Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York.

With the House Republican majority narrowly held at 221-212, he can only afford to lose a few votes to reach the 217 majority threshold, if there are no absences. While eight hard-right ousted McCarthy, the holdouts this time range from seasoned legislators worried about governing, to newer lawmakers from swing districts whose voters prefer Biden to Trump.

SAN DIEGO (AP) — The federal government would be barred from immigration policies that separate parents from children for eight years under a proposed court settlement announced Monday that also provides families that were split under the Trump administration with temporary legal status and short-term housing aid.

The settlement between the Biden administration and the American Civil Liberties Union, if approved by a judge, would at least temporarily prohibit the type of “zero-tolerance” policy on illegal immigration under which former President Donald Trump separated thousands of families at the border with Mexico.

“It is our intent to do whatever we can to make sure that the cruelty of the past is not repeated in the future. We set forth procedures through this settlement agreement to advance that effort,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told The Associated Press.

Trump, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, hasn’t ruled out reviving the highly controversial tactic at the southern border if he wins next year’s election.

His administration separated children from their parents or guardians they were traveling with as it moved to criminally prosecute people for illegally crossing the border. The children, who could not be held in criminal custody, were transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services and then typically sent to live with a sponsor, often a relative or someone else with a family connection.

Faulty tracking systems caused many to be apart for an extended time or never reunited with their parents. Facing strong opposition, Trump eventually reversed course in 2018, days before U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw in San Diego halted the practice and ordered immediate reunification in the lawsuit brought by the ACLU.

During a CNN town hall in May, Trump was noncommittal on whether he would again separate families if elected. “When you say to a family that if you come we’re going to break you up, they don’t come,” he said when pressed.

Lee Gelernt, lead counsel for the ACLU, said the ban on any future attempts to separate families as a deterrent to illegal immigration was crucial.

“This settlement means that babies and toddlers will finally get to see their parents after years apart and that these suffering families will have an opportunity to seek lawful status,” he said. “Nothing can make these families whole again but this is at least a start.”

Under the settlement, it would still be possible to separate children from parents or guardians, but under limited scenarios, as has been the case for many years. They include if the child is being abused or the parent committed a much more serious crime than crossing the border illegally.

President Joe Biden issued an executive order on his first day in office to reunite families. According to figures released by the Department of Homeland Security in February, 3,881 children were separated from their families from 2017 to 2021. About 74% of those have been reunited with their families: 2,176 before a Biden administration task force was created and 689 afterward.

Hundreds of families sued the federal government, seeking both monetary damages and policy changes.

In 2021, the government was discussing a possible payment of hundreds of thousands of dollars to each parent and child separated under Trump’s policies but talks stalled on that point.

But the proposed settlement provides key benefits including authorization for parents of separated children to come to the U.S. under humanitarian parole for three years and work in the United States. The families receive housing aid for up to a year and medical and behavioral health benefits designed to address some of the trauma associated with the separations.

Mayorkas described how he’d met with a woman who had been separated from her daughter and how after they had been reunited, her daughter still struggled with the experience.

“We need to help these families heal. And that is an obligation that we carry because of the pain that we inflicted upon them,” he said.

Attorney General Merrick Garland said the practice of separating families was “shameful” and that the proposed settlement will provide those affected with critical support to recover.

They’ll also get access to legal services which will be vital as they may file asylum applications to stay in the United States on a permanent basis. The settlement also waives the usual one-year timeline limiting when someone can apply for asylum, and the parents can apply even if they were previously denied. A special team of supervisors will review their cases.

Some of these benefits were already available to families under a Biden-administration created task force designed to reunite separated families. But Gelernt said the settlement goes beyond the task force’s purview in key ways such as the asylum assistance.

The settlement requires the government to keep detailed documentation when it separates children from parents so as to avoid the chaos that erupted during the Trump-era family separations where parents and children could not be quickly reunited.

Now that the government and the ACLU have agreed on a settlement plan, the judge will hold a hearing to decide whether to accept it. Before that, people opposed to the settlement can raise objections to the judge.

___

Santana reported from Washington.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The federal judge overseeing the 2020 election interference case against Donald Trump in Washington imposed a narrow gag order on him on Monday, barring the Republican former president from making statements targeting prosecutors, possible witnesses and court staff.

The order from U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan marks a milestone moment in the federal case that accuses Trump of illegally conspiring to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden. It’s the most serious restriction a court has placed on Trump’s incendiary rhetoric, which has become a centerpiece of his grievance-filled campaign to return to the White House while fighting criminal charges in four cases.

The order may end a line of attack that Trump has made central to his campaign for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. But it may be only the beginning of an unprecedented fight over what limits can be a placed on the speech of a defendant who is also campaigning for America’s highest public office.

In a social media post shortly after the hearing in Washington’s federal court, Trump vowed to appeal. During a campaign appearance in Iowa later Monday, Trump decried the order as unconstitutional, and claimed it would only help him in the polls.

Speaking from the bench, Chutkan said Trump is entitled to criticize the Justice Department generally and assert his belief that the case is politically motivated but can’t mount a “smear campaign” against prosecutors and court personnel.

“No other criminal defendant would be allowed to do so, and I’m not going to allow it in this case,” Chutkan said.

Chutkan, who was nominated to the bench by President Barack Obama, said she would impose “sanctions as may be necessary” if the gag order is violated, but she wasn’t more specific. Judges can threaten gag order violators with fines or jail time, but jailing a presidential candidate could prompt serious political blowback and pose logistical hurdles.

While ending the stream of Trump’s harsh language may make the case easier to manage, the court order is likely to also fuel Trump’s claims of political persecution. Trump’s campaign quickly seized on the gag order in a fundraising appeal email Monday afternoon, falsely claiming that it was requested by Biden.

At rallies and in social media posts, Trump has repeatedly sought to vilify Smith and other prosecutors, casting himself as the victim of a politicized justice system working to deny him another term. His disparaging remarks have continued since prosecutors requested the gag order last month, including in a media post on Sunday in which he called Smith “deranged” and called Chutkan “highly partisan.”

Gag orders are not unheard of in high-profile cases, but there is little legal precedent for court orders limiting the speech of defendants running for public office and none addressing presidential candidates. Legal experts have said the issue may end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Trump’s lawyer John Lauro fiercely opposed any gag order, saying Trump is entitled to criticize prosecutors and “speak truth to oppression.”

“He is allowed to make statements the prosecution doesn’t like. That’s part of living with the First Amendment,” said Lauro, who declined to comment on the ruling after the hearing.

The ruling came as Trump was onboard his plane traveling to early-voting Iowa for a pair of campaign events. It is unclear whether Trump will abide by the new restrictions, and for how long. In a statement, a Trump spokesperson called the judge’s decision “an absolute abomination.”

Smith’s team argued that Trump knows that his incendiary remarks — calling the justice system “rigged,” Chutkan a “Trump-hating judge,” and prosecutors a “team of thugs” — could inspire his supporters to threaten or harass his targets. Prosecutors said it is part of Trump’s effort to erode the public’s faith in the judicial system just like they say he sought to undermine confidence in the 2020 election by spreading lies of fraud after he lost to Biden.

“What Mr. Lauro is saying is the defendant is above the law and he is not subject to the rules of this court like any other defendant is,” prosecutor Molly Gaston told the judge. “All this order would do is prevent him from using the campaign as an opportunity to make materially prejudicial statements about this case.”

The judge repeatedly pushed back against claims from the defense that prosecutors were seeking to censor the Trump’s political speech. Chutkan said Trump “does not have a right to say and do exactly as he pleases.”

“You keep talking about censorship like the defendant has unfettered First Amendment rights. He doesn’t,” Chutkan told Lauro. “We’re not talking about censorship here. We’re talking restrictions to ensure there is a fair administration of justice on this case.”

She also cut off Trump’s lawyer when he suggested the case was politically motivated, telling him: “Obviously, you have an audience other than me in mind.” And she rejected a defense bid to delay the trial, currently scheduled to begin in March, until after the 2024 election, saying “this trial will not yield to the election cycle.”

Lauro said Trump had not violated his pretrial conditions, and those were enough to keep him in check for the future. He told the judge, “What you have put in place is working.” Chutkan burst out laughing.

“I’m going to have to take issue with that,” the judge said.

Reading aloud a slew of statements from Trump, Chutkan repeatedly raised concerns that his remarks could inspire violence.

“If you call certain people thugs enough times doesn’t that suggest, Mr. Lauro, that someone should get them off the streets?” she asked Trump’s lawyer.

Prosecutors said Trump’s litany of attacks was already having consequences. They noted that a top prosecutor on Smith’s team received intimidating communications after being singled out by Trump, and a Texas woman was charged in August with making racist death threats against Chutkan, who is of Black and Asian descent, in a phone message left at her chambers.

It’s the second gag order imposed on Trump in the last month. The judge overseeing Trump’s civil fraud trial in New York earlier this month issued a more limited gag order prohibiting personal attacks against court personnel following a social media post from Trump that maligned the judge’s principal clerk.

___

Richer reported from Boston. Associated Press reporters Eric Tucker in Washington and Jill Colvin in New York contributed.

LONDON (AP) — A lawyer for Donald Trump told a London judge Monday the ex-president plans to prove that “shocking and scandalous claims” about him in a largely discredited report by a former British spy were false and harmed his reputation.

Trump has sued the company founded by Christopher Steele, who created a dossier in 2016 that contained rumors and uncorroborated allegations about Trump that erupted in a political storm just before he was inaugurated. Trump is seeking damages from Orbis Business Intelligence for allegedly violating British data protection laws.

Steele’s firm is seeking to have the case thrown out and a judge said she would rule at a later date after hearing arguments in London’s High Court.

The lawsuit comes as Trump is the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination while facing legal problems on the other side of the Atlantic.

Trump’s lawyers are currently fighting a civil fraud trial in New York alleging he and company executives deceived banks, insurers and others by overvaluing his assets and exaggerating his net worth to secure loans and make deals. He also faces four separate criminal cases for allegations including mishandling classified documents, trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election, and paying hush money to a porn actress to cover up an affair.

His lawyer noted in court Monday that Trump is a “controversial figure” who “expresses himself in strong language” and has faced criticism from judges in the U.S. However, he said none of that is relevant in the current case.

Trump “suffered personal and reputational damage and distress” because his data protection rights were violated, attorney Hugh Tomlinson said.

Steele, who once ran the Russia desk for the Secret Intelligence Service, also known as MI6, was paid by Democrats to compile research that included salacious allegations that Russians could potentially blackmail Trump for sexual activity. Trump said the dossier was fake news and a political witch hunt.

Tomlinson said it “contained shocking and scandalous claims about the personal conduct of President Trump” and included allegations he paid bribes to Russian officials to further his business interests. Trump’s case “is that this personal data is egregiously inaccurate,” he said.

Tomlinson said Trump plans to vindicate himself in court by providing evidence that the report’s claims were false.

In a written witness statement, Trump said that despite Steele’s assertions the allegations have not been disproven, they were “wholly untrue.”

Trump said he had not engaged in “perverted sexual behavior including the hiring of prostitutes … in the presidential suite of a hotel in Moscow,” taken part in “sex parties” in St. Petersburg, bribed Russian officials, or provided them with “sufficient material to blackmail me.” He also said he had not bribed, coerced or silenced witnesses.

Orbis wants the lawsuit thrown out because it said the report was never meant to be made public and was published by BuzzFeed without the permission of Steele or Orbis. It also said the claim was filed too late.

Orbis attorney Antony White said Trump has a “deep and intense animus against” Steele and the firm and a “a long history of repeatedly bringing frivolous, meritless and vexatious claims for the purpose of vexing and harassing perceived enemies and others against whom he bears a grudge.”

Trump had called for Steele to be “extradited, tried, and thrown into jail” and has called him a “lowlife” and “sleazebag” involved in the “Russian collusion hoax” who produced “a total phony con job” dossier, White said in a court filing.

Trump said in his witness statement that he was not trying to harass or seek revenge or drive Orbis into financial ruin but wants to establish that the information in the dossier was false.

“Until there is such a judgment, I continue to suffer damage and distress as a result of people wrongfully believing that the data in the dossier is accurate,” he said.

In two previous High Court cases, a judge ruled Orbis and Steele were not legally liable for the consequences of the dossier’s publication.

A federal judge in Florida last year dismissed Trump’s lawsuit against Steele, 2016 Democratic rival Hillary Clinton and former top FBI officials, rejecting his claims that they helped concoct the Russia investigation that overshadowed much of his administration.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan will hear arguments Monday in Washington over whether Trump has gone too far with remarks such as calling prosecutors a “team of thugs” and one possible witness “a gutless pig.”

It is the biggest test yet for Chutkan, underscoring the unprecedented complexities of prosecuting the former Republican president as the judge vows not to let political considerations guide her decisions.

Ending the stream of Trump’s harsh language would make the case easier to manage. But among the difficult questions Chutkan must navigate is how any gag order might be enforced and how one could be fashioned that does not risk provoking Trump’s base and fueling his claims of political persecution as he campaigns to retake the White House in 2024.

“She has to think about the serious risk that it’s not just his words that could trigger violence, but that she could play into the conspiracy theories that Trump’s followers tend to believe in, and that her act of issuing a gag order might trigger a very disturbing response,” said Catherine Ross said, a George Washington University law school professor.

“If we allow that to stop a judge from doing what is called for, that’s a big problem for rule of law. But on the other hand, if I were the judge, I would certainly be thinking about it,” she said.

Short of issuing an order, Chutkan has already suggested that inflammatory comments could force her to move up the trial, now scheduled to begin in March, to guard against tainting the jury pool. Judges can threaten gag order violators with fines or jail time, but jailing a presidential candidate could prompt serious political blowback and pose logistical hurdles.

Chutkan, who was nominated to the bench by President Barack Obama, isn’t the first judge to confront the consequences of Trump’s speech. The judge in his civil fraud trial in New York recently imposed a limited gag order prohibiting personal attacks against court personnel following a social media post that maligned the judge’s principal clerk.

Special counsel Jack Smith’s team envisions a broader order, seeking to bar Trump from making inflammatory and intimidating comments about lawyers, witnesses and others involved in the case that accuses the former president of illegally plotting to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden. Trump’s lawyers call it a “desperate effort at censorship” that would prevent Trump from telling his side of the story while campaigning.

A complicating factor is that many of the potential witnesses in the case are themselves public figures. In the case of Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence is also running against Trump for the GOP nomination. That could open the door for Trump’s team to argue that he should be permitted to respond to public broadsides he sees on television or seek a competitive edge by denouncing a political rival for the White House.

Burt Neuborne, a longtime civil liberties lawyer who challenged gag orders on behalf of defendants and lawyers in other cases, questioned whether a formal order was necessary because witness intimidation is already a crime and the court can guard against a tainted jury by carefully questioning prospective jurors before trial. A gag order may also slow down the case because it’s likely Trump either violates it and the judge will want to punish him or Trump will challenge the order in advance, he said.

“And so in some sense, you may be playing directly into his hands by essentially creating yet another mechanism for him to try to push this until after the 2024 election because my sense is that any gag order that she issues will eventually reach the Supreme Court,” Neuborne said.

But Barbara McQuade, a former U.S. attorney in Michigan, said she believes the judge can issue a narrow enough order that withstands legal challenges and protects both the case and Trump’s abilities to campaign.

“Especially in this case, where Donald Trump has made it apparent that he will say all kinds of outrageous and vitriolic things about the parties, about the judge, about witnesses unless she acts,” said McQuade, a University of Michigan Law School professor. “So in some ways she has, I think, a responsibility to act here.”

There is some limited precedent for restricting speech of political candidates who are criminal defendants.

In one case, a federal appeals court in 1987 lifted a gag order on U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Sr., a Tennessee Democrat charged in a fraud case. Ford, who was ultimately acquitted, claimed the case brought under Republican President Ronald Reagan’s administration was racially and politically motivated.

Ford’s gag order prohibited him from even sharing his opinion of or discussing facts of the case. The court noted that Ford would soon be up for reelection and said the gag order would unfairly prevent him from responding to attacks from his political opponents and block his constituents from hearing the “views of their congressman on this issue of undoubted public importance.”

Another appeals court in 2000 upheld a gag order challenged by then-Louisiana Insurance Commissioner Jim Brown in a fraud case, noting the order allowed assertions of innocence and other general statements about the case.

The court, however, also noted that the judge briefly lifted the gag order to avoid interfering with Brown’s reelection campaign, saying that the “urgency of a campaign, which may well require that a candidate, for the benefit of the electorate as well as himself, have absolute freedom to discuss his qualifications, has passed.”

Chutkan herself has experience with gag orders.

In 2018, she imposed an order restricting the comments of lawyers in the case of Maria Butina, a Russian gun activist who pleaded guilty to working in America as a secret agent for Moscow. The order followed prosecutors’ admission that they had wrongly accused Butina of trading sex for access as well as public comments by her lawyer that Chutkan said had “crossed the line.”

The next year, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson imposed a gag order on Trump ally Roger Stone in his obstruction and witness tampering case after he posted a photo of judge with what appeared to be crosshairs of a gun. Though she warned she could jail him if he violated the order, she instead barred him from using social media months later after he again publicly disparaged the case against him.

But that order was in direct response to a specific action, said Bruce Rogow, Stone’s attorney in that case. He said he was dubious that Trump’s attacks, “while in very poor taste,” posed the kind of danger to merit a gag order.

“Trump’s talk may be déclassé, but the First Amendment defends his right to present his distorted view of the world up to the point that he presents a true threat to people or the administration of justice. Not easy to measure,” Rogow wrote in an email. “Like obscenity, one knows it when you see it.”

Nearly every one of the more than half a dozen candidates seeking the Republican Party’s nomination for 2024 gathered in southern New Hampshire to close the week with a two-day “First in the Nation Leadership Summit” sponsored by the New Hampshire GOP .

“We’re going to fight on principles: small government, lower taxes, individual freedom and responsibility and local control. That’s what we’re all about,” New Hampshire GOP Chairman Chris Ager said to start the summit.

Scheduled to speak Friday were former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, businessman Perry Johnson, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy.

Former Vice President Mike Pence, former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott and businessman Ryan Binkley are scheduled to speak Saturday.

Candidates were joined on stage by Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, former U.S. Rep. Lee Zeldin, former Trump Administration Press Secretary Sean Spicer and former New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte, who is running to replace outgoing Gov. Chris Sununu.

Former President Donald Trump is not scheduled to appear in Nashua this weekend, but was in Wolfeboro, N.H., on Monday.

Christie was the first candidate to take the stage, when the former federal prosecutor said he’s running for president because President Biden isn’t doing the job for which he was elected and Trump isn’t fit for the office he once held.

The two-term governor was loudly booed by some members of the audience but applauded by others when he stated that the 2020 election was not stolen but simply lost by Trump. One man shouted for the next speaker to be brought out.

Christie responded by saying that it’s okay for people to have disagreements when it comes to politics.

“We can have differences of opinion. And I’m going to argue my side of the argument. That’s what this democracy was set up to do. So I don’t hold any grudge against anybody who has a different opinion than me, even though they hold a grudge against me for having a different opinion. I’m fine with you having a different opinion about the 2020 election,” he said.

“But what I’d like to do is not argue about it emotionally, but argue about it based on facts, because everyone’s entitled to their own opinion, but they’re not entitled to their own set of facts,” he continued.

Trump lost the 2020 election to Biden after netting 74,223,975 votes to the now-sitting president’s 81,283,501, and following an electoral college defeat of 232 – 306. Trump has produced no evidence to back his claims his loss was due to malfeasance or interference, Christie said.

“I’ve known Donald Trump for 22 years, believe you me, if he had the evidence to prove the election was stolen, we would have seen it years ago. And he hasn’t presented it because he doesn’t have it now,” Christie said.

According to polling aggregator RealClearPolitics, Christie is currently polling at under 3% nationally, a full 55 points behind the 45th president. He’s doing better in New Hampshire, where he nets 9% of polled conservatives.

DeSantis, who filed his nomination paperwork with the New Hampshire Secretary of State on Thursday and took the stage Friday evening following an appearance at Saint Anselm College in Goffstown, polls in second nationally and third in New Hampshire, behind Trump and Haley.

Burgum and Johnson, who are both polling at less than 1% nationally, came on after Christie and spoke to comparatively smaller audiences.

Johnson’s speech partially coincided with a Christie press gaggle, which drew the majority of the media attention out of the room.

Burgum started speaking as the venue, Nashua’s castle-esque Sheraton hotel, began its happy hour cocktail service and started serving dinner, drawing many audience members away from the stage.

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump’s top corporate deputies considered adding a “presidential premium” to his Trump Tower penthouse, Mar-a-Lago resort and other assets during his White House years, a gambit that would’ve padded his net worth by nearly $145 million, an executive at the former president’s company testified Friday.

Trump Organization Assistant Vice President Patrick Birney told Trump’s New York civil fraud trial that they ended up scrapping the idea, but state lawyers contend that merely going through the exercise underscores how Trump and his underlings were intent on finding ways to beef up his bottom line. Trump is expected to return to court for the trial next week when fixer-turned-foe Michael Cohen is scheduled to take the witness stand.

Birney said Trump executives considered tacking 25% onto the Trump Tower apartment’s value as a “premium for presidential personal residence” in 2017, his first year in office. They weighed doing the same for Trump’s winter and summer homes at Mar-a-Lago and his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club, Birney said.

A “presidential summer residence” premium at the same rate would’ve added $18.9 million to the Bedminster golf club’s price tag on Trump’s annual financial statements, Birney said, increasing its listed value to about $145 million. Trump executives gamed out adding 15% premiums for other properties where Trump didn’t spend much time. At one point, they considered adding a 35% “Ex-President” premium to certain assets.

Birney was testifying at the end of the second week of a non-jury trial in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ fraud lawsuit and will return on Monday. He is the third Trump Organization executive to take the witness stand, following longtime Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg and Senior Vice President and Controller Jeffrey McConney. Both of them are defendants in the case and have since retired.

In a pretrial decision last month, a judge ruled that Trump and his company committed years of fraud by exaggerating the value of Trump’s assets and net worth on his financial statements. Those documents were given to banks, insurers and others to make deals and secure financing.

As punishment, Judge Arthur Engoron ordered that a court-appointed receiver take control of some Trump companies, putting the future of Trump Tower and other properties in doubt, but an appeals court paused that from taking effect, for now.

The trial concerns related allegations of conspiracy, insurance fraud and falsifying business records. James, a Democrat, is seeking $250 million in penalties and wants Trump and other defendants banned from doing business in New York.

Birney, the only witness to testify Friday, indicated Trump executives started pondering a potential “presidential premium” as they sought ways to recoup a loss in value incurred from correcting the size of Trump’s 10,996 square foot Manhattan penthouse, which had been wrongly valued for years at nearly three times that square footage.

That fix was made in Trump’s 2017 financial statement, after Forbes magazine published an article revealing the true size of the Trump Tower apartment. At the same time, the Trump Organization was going through what McConney previously dubbed a financial “clean up,” scrubbing some pay practices and financial arrangements in the wake of Trump’s election.

“Was applying a presidential premium to a series of assets something you would have done on your own?” state lawyer Eric Haren asked.

“No,” Birney responded.

“Who directed you?” the lawyer asked.

“I don’t really remember, but probably Allen Weisselberg,” Birney said.

Birney, who took on a central role in preparing Trump’s financial statements beginning in 2017, previously testified that Weisselberg, referring to Trump’s net worth, told him “Donald likes to see it go up.” He testified that one of their discussions happened in a Trump Tower bathroom.

Weisselberg wasn’t asked about the “presidential premium” when he testified on Tuesday and Wednesday, nor in a deposition he gave in May in the case. But he and McConney did acknowledge adding other types of premiums to Trump’s property values.

In some years, Weisselberg testified, he instructed McConney to add a 30% premium to the values listed for Trump’s golf courses on his financial statements, based on his brand and intrinsic value. McConney told the trial last week that, years before Trump became president, he added $20 million to the value of Trump’s penthouse partly because of his celebrity.

Birney said the “presidential premium” prices they calculated were removed from consideration in October 2017 and were never included in any of his financial statements.

State lawyers argue that Trump and his lieutenants weighed and used a variety of methods to boost his net worth on his annual “statements of financial condition,” but didn’t disclose them to people relying on the documents for an accurate picture of his wealth and holdings.

For example, they calculated the values of some Trump properties based on the asking prices for other comparable properties, not the sales prices that are used in professional appraisals. For Mar-a-Lago, they calculated a rudimentary price-per-acre metric based on the selling prices of comparable Palm Beach, Florida properties, then added extra value to account for a ballroom and other amenities.

Trump, who’s pegged his net worth in excess of $6 billion in recent years, has estimated that his “brand” alone is worth “maybe $10 billion.” In his April deposition for the case, he called it “my most valuable asset” and attributed his political success to the ubiquity of his name and persona.

But Trump insisted he never accounted for his brand in his financial statements, testifying in April: “If I wanted to create a statement that was high, I would have put the brand on.”

Trump’s financial statements themselves aren’t as clear. Year after year, they’ve included a confusing clause suggesting that Trump’s fame was both a factor — and not a factor — in assessing his assets.

Trump’s name conveys a “high degree of quality and profitability,” which “significantly enhances” the value of his properties, the clause states. A few sentences later, it says: “The goodwill attached to the Trump name has significant financial value that has not been reflected in the preparation of this financial statement.”

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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, arguably the second-most-popular conservative in the country, was just a few hours behind North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum in meeting with New Hampshire’s Secretary of State on Thursday to declare he would seek the Republican nomination in 2024.

“Now is the time for leadership,” DeSantis said when signing, surrounded by press and supporters.

“Live free or die,” he added to his signature, quoting the New Hampshire State motto.

DeSantis is currently polling in second place nationally behind former President Donald Trump, a position he has maintained for months despite a slowly slipping lead in the Granite State and elsewhere. In a theoretical matchup against President Biden, the likely Democratic nominee, the former Navy JAG officer polls a few points behind or even.

The Sunshine State’s twice-elected governor shrugged off the falling poll numbers when asked to reflect on his second-place position during a brief press conference he held at the New Hampshire State House, pointing to his favorability ratings among the conservative electorate and to the work he has done to share his message in Iowa, which will caucus before the party primaries, and New Hampshire.

He went on to aim at his chief rival in securing the nomination, saying that if Trump is elected, he will begin his second term in office at a steep disadvantage unique to the former president.

“He’d be a lame duck on day one — even if he could get elected — he would be a lame duck. I don’t know how as a lame duck president, with all of the stuff he’s dealing with, you can go in and actually get the job done that we need to get done,” he said.

The “stuff” Florida’s governor references are 91 felony charges levied against the 45th President by four different jurisdictions and a recent civil case which may spell the end of the real estate mogul’s sprawling business empire. Trump will need to skip between court appearances and campaign stops frequently as the election season carries on, with some cases potentially carrying through to the next presidency.

DeSantis took the time to broadcast his support for Israel as they battle a Hamas led insurgency from the Gaza Strip which has claimed more than 1,000 Israeli civilian lives. He said Trump’s response to the sudden war in the middle east isn’t helping the situation, which could well explode into a wider conflict.

“Given the situation there, now is not the time to be doing what Donald Trump did by attacking Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, attacking Israel’s defense minister, saying somehow that Hezbollah were very smart. We need to all be on the same page,” he said.

DeSantis said that he is the candidate for those who are sick of Trump’s drama and ready for a new generation of conservative leadership.

“If the former president is the nominee, then the whole election will be about him and this and that, it wouldn’t be about the issues that people are concerned about,” he said. “We do need to pass the torch here.”

The pair of governors will soon be joined on the New Hampshire ballot by former Vice President Mike Pence, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, all of whom are scheduled to be in Concord at some point on Friday to file their own paperwork.

Former Gov. Chris Christie’s campaign did not return a request for comment on when the ex-New Jersey governor would file his paperwork.

The mass of Republican candidates will also appear at a summit hosted by the NHGOP both Friday and Saturday in Nashua, New Hampshire.

Trump, who was in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, on Monday, is not scheduled to attend.

“Under ‘Crooked Joe’ Biden, there has been a catastrophic increase in shortages of essential medicines.”

Former president and current Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, in a July 24 campaign video

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In a recent campaign video, former President Donald Trump blasted President Joe Biden for “a catastrophic increase” in drug shortages.

“It’s a mess,” Trump said in the video, adding that new drug shortages were up last year by 30%, with “295 active drug shortages” by the end of 2022.

The continued availability of lifesaving drugs is a concern in this country. Reports of shortages of medicines on which many Americans rely — from widely used cancer medications like cisplatin to over-the-counter painkillers such as Children’s Tylenol — have been widespread in recent years. The shortages have caused treatment delays or forced clinicians to substitute alternatives in place of preferred therapies.

But is Biden responsible, or is Trump’s claim an oversimplification?

We contacted the Trump campaign for answers, but got no reply. So, we poked around on our own. What we found didn’t align with Trump’s claims. By some measures, drug shortages increased more on Trump’s watch than on Biden’s.

Where to Place the Blame?

Trump’s statistics were in the ballpark. According to a March report by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, cited in the video’s footnotes, the number of active drug shortages in 2022 did hit 295 at the end of 2022. The count was 246 at the end of 2021, according to the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists.

But our calculations suggest the report’s math was off. The report stated an increase of “approximately 30%,” but it was closer to 20%. Likewise, new drug shortages grew from 114 to 160 in 2022, a 40% increase, not the “nearly 30%” cited in an earlier version of the report, which Trump apparently relied on.

The Senate panel’s report is based on data from the FDA and the society. The pharmacy group works with the University of Utah Health’s Drug Information Service to track drug shortages.

The society’s shortage information derives from pharmacists’ and patients’ reports of supply issues that affect how pharmacies prepare or dispense drugs, or influence patient care, often locally. The FDA, with its national scope, declares a drug shortage when demand or projected demand exceeds supply, as projected by drug manufacturers. So, the FDA’s shortage tallies are bound to be different from the society’s. For instance, the FDA reported that new and active drug shortages grew from 124 in 2021 to 135 in 2022, a 9% increase.

But Biden isn’t the only president whose administration has contended with rising drug shortages. And his numbers to date aren’t the worst.

Active drug shortages grew from 195 in 2016 to 264 in 2019 — when Trump was president. That’s a 35% increase, according to the society’s figures. During Biden’s first 3½ years in office, that same category of shortages increased 12%, from 276 to 309.

New drug shortages peaked at 267, in 2011, during the Obama administration, the society reported. Some experts credit an executive order that Obama signed that year directing the FDA to broaden its shortage reporting as a turning point. Since that 2011 high, the U.S. recorded the next-largest number of new drug shortages — 186 — in 2018, when Trump was president.

The point isn’t that Trump managed drug shortages badly then or that Biden is handling them badly now, experts said.

“I don’t think you can tie this to any administration or specific person,” said Michael Ganio, senior director of pharmacy practice and quality at the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists.

Many factors — from natural disasters and manufacturing problems to slim profit margins on generic drugs — can contribute to shortages. Lingering drug shortages from before the pandemic, “compounded with shortages due to covid and poor quality at U.S.-based companies like Akorn pharmaceuticals, have really contributed to the very large numbers of shortages we have right now,” said Erin Fox, associate chief pharmacy officer at University of Utah Health.

The Complexity of Medication Supplies

For decades, the U.S. has suffered periodic drug and medical device shortages. Disruptions at any point in the complex supply chain involving people, production, technologies, and policy decisions can ripple throughout the system, causing scarcities that may last years.

A Health Affairs article published this past January described the current system’s complexity. More than 20,000 prescription drugs and more than 13,000 facilities worldwide are registered to make drugs or their active ingredients. More than three-quarters of active pharmaceutical ingredients are made outside the United States, the authors said.

Experts acknowledge that relying on overseas drug manufacturers can lead to quality control and oversight problems, because it’s harder for the FDA to inspect plants overseas. For example, after an FDA inspection last December that found numerous manufacturing problems, Intas Pharmaceuticals in India voluntarily suspended production and distribution of its products that were destined for the United States. The company was allowed to distribute some drugs, including critical cancer drugs, that are in short supply, with strict third-party oversight. In the video, Trump also zeroed in on this concern. He pledged — with an emphasis on minimizing China’s role in the production of medications — to return manufacturing of all essential medicines to the United States, “where they belong.”

But the United States experiences manufacturing problems and weather emergencies, just as everywhere else in the world does. For example, Lake Forest, Illinois-based drugmaker Akorn filed for bankruptcy this year and stopped making more than 70 generic drugs. After a tornado hit its Rocky Mount, North Carolina, plant in July, Pfizer temporarily shuttered the facility. The company said Sept. 25 that it had restarted production at the plant.

“Bringing all manufacturing back to the United States not only isn’t feasible, because we don’t have the raw materials, but that also creates a reliance on a single geographical area,” said Soumi Saha, senior vice president of government affairs at Premier, a large group-purchasing organization for hospitals and other health providers. “What you need is global diversification.”

Marta Wosińska, a health care economist at the Brookings Schaeffer Initiative on Health Policy, agreed with Saha — domestic manufacturing isn’t a panacea. “Domestic production is no guarantee of having a stable supply chain,” she said. “Most shortages are caused by quality problems in both the United States and overseas.”

Trump also criticized Biden for “shamefully” not following through on an executive order Trump signed that directed federal agencies to identify ways to maximize domestic production of essential medicines.

The White House didn’t respond to questions about the status of Trump’s order. But spokesperson Kelly Scully in a statement pointed to the five executive orders Biden issued since taking office “focused on strengthening the resilience of critical supply chains,” including those for pharmaceuticals.

Our Ruling

Trump said there was a “catastrophic increase” in drug shortages under Biden’s watch. Trump was correct that drug shortages have ticked upward. But Trump’s statements blaming Biden for those shortages are inaccurate and lack context.

Not only have significant drug shortages increased during other presidential administrations — including Trump’s — experts generally agree that there are multiple, complex, and interlocking factors that cause them, meaning no one person is at fault, not even the president.

We rate this claim False.

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(KFF Health News, formerly known as Kaiser Health News (KHN), is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs of KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling and journalism.)

©2023 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump signed a document 30 years ago that gave the true size of his New York penthouse which was later listed as far larger on financial statements, according to evidence Tuesday at the former president’s civil business fraud trial.

The evidence appeared in an email attachment shown as Allen Weisselberg, the former finance chief of Trump’s company, testified in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ fraud lawsuit against Trump and his Trump Organization. Trump denies any wrongdoing.

The attachment was a 1994 document, signed by Trump, that pegged his Trump Tower triplex at 10,996 square feet — not the 30,000 square feet later claimed for years on financial statements that were given to banks, insurers and others to make deals and secure loans.

Weisselberg said he recalled seeing the email but not the attachment, explaining that the attachments were documents he already had on file in the company’s offices. But in any event, he said, he didn’t pay much mind to the apartment’s size because its value amounted to a fraction of Trump’s wealth.

“I never even thought about the apartment. It was de minimis, in my mind,” Weisselberg said, using a Latin term that means, essentially, too small to care about.

“It was not something that was that important to me when looking at a $6 billion, $5 billion net worth,” said Weisselberg, whose questioning will resume after an ex-bank official testifies Wednesday.

Later, Weisselberg was asked about an appraisal that came in $230 million below what Trump’s financial statements showed for his Seven Springs estate north of New York City. Weisselberg said he was aware of the appraisal but didn’t think the disparity was worth flagging to the outside accountants who prepared the statements.

Nevertheless, Weisselberg acknowledged signing documents certifying that financial summaries given to banks to meet loan requirements were “true, correct, and completely and fairly” represented Trump’s financial condition.

Weisselberg repeatedly said he couldn’t remember whether he discussed the financial statements with Trump while they were being finalized. The ex-CFO said he reviewed drafts “from a 30,000-foot level” (9,100-meter level) but paid special attention to something “very important” to Trump: the descriptions of his properties.

“It was a little bit of a marketing piece for banks to read about our properties, how well they’re taken care of, that they’re first-class properties,” said Weisselberg, who added that Trump scrutinized the language used in such descriptions.

“He might say, ‘Don’t use the word “beautiful” — use the word “magnificent,” or something like that,” Weisselberg testified.

Meanwhile, in Trump’s election interference case in Washington, prosecutors on Tuesday urged the judge to protect prospective jurors’ identities, citing the former president’s “continued use of social media as a weapon of intimidation in court proceedings.” Trump lawyer John Lauro declined to comment.

In that federal criminal case, Trump has pleaded not guilty to illegally plotting to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

In New York, Weisselberg said Tuesday he learned of the Trump Tower penthouse size discrepancy only when a Forbes magazine reporter pointed it out to him in 2016. He testified that he initially disputed the magazine’s findings but said he couldn’t recall whether he directed anyone to look into the matter.

“You don’t recall if you did anything to confirm who was right?” state lawyer Louis Solomon asked.

Weisselberg said he did not.

As Forbes zeroed in on the apartment size question in 2017, emails show, a company spokesperson told another Trump executive that, per Weisselberg, they weren’t to engage on the issue. A week later, Trump’s 2016 financial statement was released, using the incorrect square footage.

Over the years, Trump Organization executives had greatly boosted their estimate of the apartment’s value for reasons ranging from the boss’s fame to comparing it to an asking price on another triplex — though that other one ultimately sold for 60% less, another former exec testified last week.

When The Wall Street Journal wrote about the $135 million listing for a property near Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida in 2018, Weisselberg wrote a note telling a staffer to hang onto the article and “see what it ends up selling for.”

Asked Tuesday to explain, Weisselberg testified: “Anybody can ask anything for a dollar amount. That doesn’t mean it’s going to sell.”

Weisselberg, testifying as a prosecution witness, is also a defendant in the lawsuit. He took the stand after a recent jail stint for evading taxes on perks he got while working for Trump.

James’ lawsuit alleges that Weisselberg engineered Trump’s financial statements to meet his demands that they show increases in his net worth and signed off on lofty valuations for assets despite appraisals to the contrary.

Trump attended the first three days of the non-jury trial last week but hasn’t returned since.

Weisselberg left a New York City jail six months ago after serving 100 days for dodging taxes on $1.7 million in extras that came with his Trump Organization job, including a Manhattan apartment, school tuition for his grandchildren and luxury cars for him and his wife.

During sworn pretrial questioning in May, Weisselberg, 76, testified that he was having trouble sleeping, started seeing a therapist and was taking a generic form of Valium as he tried to “reacclimate myself back to society.”

Trump, in a pretrial deposition in April, said his former longtime lieutenant was liked and respected, and “now, he’s gone through hell and back.”

“What’s happened to him is very sad,” Trump said.

In a pretrial ruling last month, Judge Arthur Engoron found that Trump, Weisselberg and other defendants committed years of fraud by exaggerating the value of Trump’s assets and net worth on his financial statements.

As punishment, Engoron ordered that a court-appointed receiver take control of some Trump companies, putting the future oversight of Trump Tower and other marquee properties in doubt. An appeals court on Friday blocked enforcement of that aspect of Engoron’s ruling, at least for now.

The civil trial concerns allegations of conspiracy, insurance fraud and falsifying business records. James is seeking $250 million in penalties and a ban on Trump doing business in New York.

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U.S. Sen. Edward Markey got loudly booed at a rally in support of Israel on Monday after suggesting de-escalation in the Middle East was the right response to Hamas’ vicious surprise assault.

Markey is urging the White House to encourage peace talks between Israel and Hamas – which appears ridiculous given Israel’s declaration of war.

Markey’s Democratic colleague, U.S. Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-Mass.) strongly rebutted Markey while speaking directly after the senior senator at the rally.

“De-escalation is not possible when they are taking hostages,” Auchincloss said to cheers as Markey stood by awkwardly clapping.

Members of the leftist “Squad” and other critics of Israel are also being forced to condemn Hamas after the terrorist group launched its deadly attack, which some are comparing to the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor.

U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) – who skipped the Israel rally – called for a de-escalation of violence in the Middle East while terming the attacks on Israelis  as “deeply alarming.”

“It is long past time to stop this cycle of violence and trauma and work toward a just and lasting peace in the region,” Pressley said.

That seems naive and highly unlikely now given that Israel has declared war on Hamas and is defending itself against the terrorist group’s assault.

Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who has been the strongest critic of Israel, decried the “horrific” acts of violence against the Israeli state but also called for a cease-fire in the Middle East.

“I will keep advocating for peace and justice throughout the Middle East,” Omar said.

The leader of the Squad, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) also called for an immediate cease fire while condemning Hamas’s attack “in the strongest possible terms.” But she also said the attack “will not solve the ongoing oppression and occupation in the region” – referring to Israel.

Gov. Maura Healey and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu spoke at a solidarity rally for Israel on Monday, and Wu ordered that City Hall be lit up in Israel’s blue and white colors tomorrow as some other cities like New York have done. City Council President Ed Flynn also said Israel “has the right to defend itself” against the attacks.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams called the Hamas assault “nothing more than a cowardly action by a terrorist organization seeking to undo that peace and divide us into factions. That won’t happen.”

Other lawmakers have come out strongly for Israel and even backed the country’s declaration of war against Hamas.

Auchincloss compared Hamas’s attack to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and 9-11 and cast doubt on other lawmakers’ calls for peace.

“Peace is the ultimate objective, but peace is not possible when terrorists take hostages,”  he said.

House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) also backed Israel’s “right to defend itself.”

The new war in the Middle East has also thrown a wrench into President Biden’s hopes for peace and became a hot issue in the 2024 White House race.

Several GOP contenders blamed the Biden administration for recently transferring $6 billion to Iran – which has backed Hamas militarily – as part of a prisoner exchange.

“American taxpayer dollars helped fund these attacks,” former President Donald Trump said. “This would have never happened with me (as president).”

Even while making the bold assertion that the war Israel finds itself in against Hamas would not have occurred had he been left in the White House for a second term, he seemed more circumspect than might be expected from the famously bombastic businessman.

The voters were as engaged as at any Trump rally. Indeed, hundreds waited outside or in the hallways of the at-capacity Kingswood Arts Center while the 45th president declared to a standing-room-only crowd of more than 800 that it was the weaknesses of Biden administration policies that led to the deaths in Israel over the weekend.

“Can you imagine what this guy has done to us? That would have never happened, the attack on Israel would have never, ever happened,” Trump said early in his hour-and-a-half-long address, his voice drowned by applause.

Trump’s appearance came a little more than a day after Israel declared war on Hamas, the militant Palestinian group that invaded the U.S. ally on Saturday. The attack resulted in the deaths of several U.S. citizens and hundreds of Israeli civilians.

Aside from that assertion about Israel — one he repeated frequently and paired along with insistences of the same regarding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — the former president’s speech otherwise consisted of the sort of Republican red meat his base likely expects when he arrives in New Hampshire and that many present had probably heard before.

He hit all the topics that polling suggests are on the mind of voting-age conservatives: the border, transgender athletes, parental rights, energy policy, the economy and inflation, China, and his “rigged” election loss in 2020.

“Under a Trump administration, gasoline engines would be allowed but child-sexual mutilation would be banned,” he said, again to drowning applause.

The only thing missing from the speech was the Trump-ish-ness normally present. The former president’s tone was more flat than usual as he spoke, his expression somewhat tired, his posture unusually stiff and absent most of the pantomime he frequently delivers.

While Trump is not a young man, he typically displays a level of energy not normally associated with 77-year-olds. Bursts of that big-Trump-energy appeared sporadically as he spoke, but were not maintained.

“These radical left thugs have weaponized law enforcement to arrest their leading political opponent,” he said, gaining some momentary steam. “Me! I’ve been arrested!”

There is no doubt Trump leads the Republican field by wide margins and holds the support of a majority of polled conservatives, a position he’s maintained while bearing the weight of 91 felony-level charges levied against him in four separate indictments and a slew of civil actions.

The burden of those charges and related court appearances; or perhaps looming financial threat to his business empire unveiled last week during the end stages of a New York fraud trial that the ex-commander-in-chief has apparently already lost (pending appeal); or maybe the effort of campaigning through those legal hurdles; or all of it, could finally be taking a toll on Trump.

Part of the problem may also have been technical.

Trump’s teleprompter was not working, the former president told the audience to start his speech. The teleprompter came back up at one point, only to go down again. Despite this, the former TV-star seemed to pivot seamlessly to his printed notes or ad-lib as needed.

Also at issue may be a series of gag orders pending or already laid against the former president.

Judge Arthur Engoron ordered a limited gag last week, warning Trump against disparaging court personnel and demanding he delete a social media post identifying a court staffer working during the former president’s New York civil fraud trial. Trump limited his comments on the matter Monday to calling New York Attorney General Letitia James “totally corrupt” and defending the value of his real estate assets.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, on Friday, will hear arguments over a motion by Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team to silence what they describe as Trump’s attacks on witnesses and prosecutors.

Everyone has an off day, and if a candidate has a reason this week to have a “case of the Mondays,” then it’s fair to note Trump is coming off a rough few days before the judge and has more time in court to look forward to this week and give him the benefit of the doubt.

Still, it’s a long way to go until next November.