Trump attorneys will not call Eric back to stand at fraud trial: Live
Liz Cheney says she wants Republicans to lose their House majority in 2024
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Former President Donald Trump will take part in a Fox News town hall on Tuesday, one night before the next Republican debate.
Sean Hannity will host the pre-taped event, which will be held in Davenport, Iowa. Hannity moderated Thursday night’s debate between California Governor Gavin Newsom and Trump rival Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
Mr Trump was riled up by a new ad by the Lincoln Project that he claims uses Artificial Intelligence to make him look “as bad and pathetic as Crooked Joe Biden”. The ad was broadcast on Fox News.
Meanwhile, A judge has denied an attempt for a fast-tracked appeal of his gag order in his New York fraud trial, days after a ruling allowed the order to stay in place after court filings revealed the scope of abuse and harassment Judge Arthur Engoron’s staff has received.
Monday’s latest appeals court ruling means that the former president will likely still face a gag order when he makes his expected return to New York State Supreme Court next week..
His son Eric Trump was due to take the stand for a second time on Wednesday as a witness for the defence but now will not.
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NY fraud trial: Trump unloads on judge as court adjourns until Thursday
With Eric Trump no longer taking the stand tomorrow, Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial has adjourned until Thursday. To keep us entertained, the former president has again turned to Truth Social to vent about the case against him.
It’s the same argument he’s been posting throughout the trial…
We have totally proven our Case against the Corrupt, Racist, New York attorney General, Letitia “Peekaboo” James. The Banks, Insurance Companies, virtually everybody said we were “GREAT,” PERFECT LOANS, NO VICTIMS! Their sole Witness has been completely discredited, and admitted he lied about everything. He was the only Witness they had, and should be prosecuted for his lies. The Judge and the A.G. falsified the value of Mar-a-Lago and other Assets to make me look as bad as possible, and got caught. For anyone else, what they did would be considered FRAUD, and they would be thrown off the “bench” and out of office….
….The Banks didn’t even know why they were there, said we were a great Customer, and that I did nothing wrong! Additionally, we have a 100% Disclaimer Clause (on Page One), with respect to the EXTREMELY CONSERVATIVE Financial Statements (the exact opposite of what they said), which state, do your own due diligence and analysis—DO NOT RELY ON THESE STATEMENTS. Any Judge other than Engoron would have ended this Litigation years ago. It is a Rigged Case, WHERE A JURY WAS NOT ALLOWED. Judge Engoron is a Corrupt Puppet for Letitia James. It is all about ELECTION INTERFERENCE!
But wait, there’s more:
Judge Engoron has totally ignored a major decision on the Statute of Limitations in the New York attorney General’s Witch Hunt Case against me. He said that he doesn’t care what the Appellate Court ruled, and that he won’t abide by the Ruling, which essentially would end most of this Highly Political Case against me. Judge Engoron should be sanctioned for his actions. Nobody has ever seen anything like what is happening in his Courtroom. It is Judicial and Prosecutorial Misconduct. Letitia James should be impeached. THIS IS NOT AMERICA!
Oliver O’Connell5 December 2023 21:45
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But Trump, in his own testimony last month, said that he believes he retains the right to re-designate the property as a home. And Miami-based real estate attorney John Shubin testified Tuesday that “there is absolutely no prohibition on the use of Mar-a-Lago as a single-family residence.”
He noted that the property is simultaneously a club and Trump’s residence. Shubin also noted that a 1993 agreement between Trump and the town of Palm Beach said that Mar-a-Lago was to be used as a private social club but would revert to private residential use if the club were “abandoned.”
Trump’s lawyers argue that that means there was no problem with valuing the property the way that his financial statements did: as if it could be sold as an individual residence.
“Anybody who buys it … would just step into the shoes of President Trump,” defence attorney Christopher Kise said.
Some Palm Beach luxury real estate agents have told The Associated Press that the property would sell for $300 million to $600 million, and possibly $1 billion or more if it sparked a bidding war among uber-wealthy contenders.
Oliver O’Connell5 December 2023 21:30
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The Palm Beach County tax assessment that the judge mentioned was based on Mar-a-Lago’s annual net operating income as a club, not on its resale value as a home or on its reconstruction cost. The operating-income method is the county’s standard way of valuing social clubs, and the outcome carries tax benefits for Trump — a $602,000 property tax bill this year, compared to about approximately $18 million if Mar-a-Lago were assessed at $1 billion.
Moreover, in a 2002 agreement with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the club and Trump signed over “any and all of their rights to develop the property for any usage other than club usage.”
Yet when pulling information together for Trump’s annual financial statements, his former corporate controller Jeffrey McConney valued Mar-a-Lago club as though the property could be sold as a private home. The statements pegged it as high as $612 million in 2021.
James said that those values ignored the agreement with the National Trust. The attorney general, a Democrat, maintains that Trump should have valued Mar-a-Lago the same way the county does, based on its club income.
Oliver O’Connell5 December 2023 21:25
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Spanning 17 acres (7 hectares) with waterfront on two sides, the estate and social club is Trump’s home, a place where the former president and current Republican 2024 front-runner has conducted high-profile meetings while in and out of office, and the spot where federal special counsel Jack Smith alleges he improperly stashed classified documents, which Trump denies.
Mar-a-Lago also is a key element of the current New York civil case and Trump’s vehement frustration with it.
State attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit claims that the ex-president and his company deceived lenders and others by giving them financial statements that greatly overstated the values of some of his prime assets, including Mar-a-Lago.
Judge Arthur Engoron, in a pretrial ruling declaring that Trump and his company engaged in fraud, found that Trump exaggerated Mar-a-Lago’s worth by as much as 2,300%, compared to the Palm Beach County tax appraiser’s valuations. They ranged from $18 million to $28 million.
Trump denies any wrongdoing, saying that his financial statements actually undervalued his assets and were accompanied by disclaimers that wipe away liability for any mistakes.
His frequent complaints about the case have often spotlighted the claims about Mar-a-Lago. As recently as Friday, Trump vented on his Truth Social platform that the judge “fraudulently reduced the value of Mar-a-Lago.”
Oliver O’Connell5 December 2023 21:20
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NY fraud trial: Defence lays out Mar-a-Lago valuation argument
Former President Donald Trump’s civil business fraud trial turned Tuesday to one of the topics that has vexed him most — the value of his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.
Testifying for Trump’s defence, a Florida real estate attorney said the club could be sold as a home, notwithstanding decades-old legal documents in which Trump said he intended to forswear its use as anything but a club. That’s a restriction that is key to New York state lawyers’ claims that the former president fraudulently overhyped the property’s value.
A Palm Beach luxury real estate broker played a glimmering video of the historic estate and testified that he’d value it at over $1 billion as of 2021.
“It’s something breathtaking. It’s something amazing to see,” broker Lawrence Moens said during testimony that took a rare turn when he briefly answered a personal phone call while on the witness stand.
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Comer reacts to mockery over $4k Biden impeachment ‘bombshell’
The House Oversight Committee Chair – who is leading a controversial impeachment “hearing” into the president – came under fire for touting subpoenaed financial records that he said proved Joe Biden received monthly payments from a business account used by his son.
Lawyers for Hunter Biden have pointed out that the three monthly $1,380 payments were a loan for a truck that he was not able to finance himself – and that it took place during the period between Mr Biden serving as vice president and president.
Mr Comer, a congressman from Kentucky, appeared on Newsmax on Monday night to hit back at his critics and defend the “evidence” he had put forward in his ongoing attempt to impeach Joe Biden.
Oliver O’Connell5 December 2023 21:05
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Jack Smith details evidence he’ll introduce at Trump’s federal election conspiracy trial
In a nine-page court filing, Special Counsel Jack Smith has laid out some of the evidence the prosecution intends to deploy in its federal election interference case against Donald Trump.
“Evidence of the defendant’s post-conspiracy embrace of particularly violent and notorious rioters is admissible to establish the defendant’s motive and intent on January 6 — that he sent supporters, including groups like the Proud Boys, whom he knew were angry, and whom he now calls ‘patriots,’ to the Capitol to achieve the criminal objective of obstructing the congressional certification,” Smith says.
“At trial, the Government will introduce a number of public statements by the defendant in advance of the charged conspiracies, claiming that there would be fraud in the 2020 presidential election,” laying the “foundation for the defendant’s criminal efforts.”
The government will also argue that the former president had a history of election denialism and conspiracies, citing statements he made in 2012 and ahead of the 2016 election — that he won.
One of the more alarming passages in the filing relates to an individual who sought “to cause a riot to disrupt the count” of votes in Detroit after the 2020 presidential election. The person is an unindicted co-conspirator and is only identified as a “campaign employee”.
“On November 4, 2020, the Campaign Employee exchanged a series of text messages with an attorney supporting the Campaign’s election day operations at the TCF Center in Detroit, where votes were being counted,” the filing says. “[I]n the messages, the Campaign Employee encouraged rioting and other methods of obstruction when he learned that the vote count was trending in favor of the defendant’s opponent.”
“An election official at the TCF Center observed that as Biden began to take the lead, a large number of untrained individuals flooded the TCF Center and began making illegitimate and aggressive challenges to the vote count,” prosecutors said.
“Thereafter, Trump made repeated false claims regarding election activities at the TCF Center, when in truth his agent was seeking to cause a riot to disrupt the count.”
Oliver O’Connell5 December 2023 20:55
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Watch: Kash Patel claims he will come after media as Trump’s CIA director
Oliver O’Connell5 December 2023 20:40
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Voices: Trump continues down path of dominance as GOP rivals scramble for second place
The fourth Republican debate is set for Wednesday, for whatever that’s worth.
Donald Trump, the race’s frontrunner, will not be in attendance. Having skipped three onstage clashes of candidates so far without any negative consequences whatsoever, the former president will complete his mockery of the nominating contest this month by refusing to attend the final debate before voters head to the polls next month in Iowa and begin the race proper.
There are zero signs that Wednesday’s debate will matter. A poll by NewsNation, the network hosting tomorrow’s event in Alabama, found Mr Trump in control of six in 10 GOP voters nationally this week — a clean 50-point margin over Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, his two closest rivals. Worse for them, only a small fraction of the GOP indicated in the poll that a conviction in any of his four criminal cases would change their views, meaning that short of Mr Trump exiting the race, the minds of most voters are likely made up.
This spells more than one problem for the GOP’s traditionalist-to-neoconservative wing, which never really embraced Donald Trump beyond the vehicle that he presented for the confirmation of conservative justices and the advancement of some conservative economic policy.
Oliver O’Connell5 December 2023 20:30
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Giuliani skips confrontation with Georgia election workers
Rudy Giuliani failed to appear in court today for a pre-trial hearing in the defamation case against him filed by Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss.
Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, two Georgia election workers who have been tormented by harassment and threats since 2020, were prepared Tuesday to confront the man they view as the chief instigator of their suffering: Rudy Giuliani.
But Giuliani was a no-show at a federal court hearing in the duo’s defamation lawsuit, prompting a lashing for his attorney by U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell, who had ordered Giuliani to be present.
“How could you have missed that?” Howell asked Giuliani’s attorney, Joe Sibley, incredulously, when he took the blame for Giuliani’s absence.
“My mistake,” Sibley replied, prompting Howell to ask whether he was “falling on his sword” for the former mayor. Sibley insisted he wasn’t but rather that he simply had misunderstood Howell’s order requiring Giuliani’s presence at the hearing, the final session before the civil damages case goes before a jury next week.
Here’s the full story of Ms Freeman and Ms Moss’s case against the former New York mayor:
Oliver O’Connell5 December 2023 20:24
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