Trump attacks judge and clerk again in 'Happy Thanksgiving' post … – The Independent

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Death threats and antisemitic rants ‘inundated’ Justice Arthur Engoron and his law clerk after former president attacked them on social media, court security official says in affidavit
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Related Video: Trump claims he wasn’t referring to clerk when he violated fraud trial gag order
Donald Trump has launched a fresh attack on the judge and court clerk in his New York civil fraud trial – just hours after a court filing stated his prior attacks had led to them being “inundated” with violent threats.
In what was bizarrely named a “Happy Thanksgiving” post on Truth Social, the former president unleashed once again on what he described as “the Racist & Incompetent Attorney General of New York State, Letitia “Peekaboo” James”, “the Radical Left Trump Hating Judge, a “Psycho,” Arthur Engoron” and “his Politically Biased & Corrupt Campaign Finance Violator, Chief Clerk Alison Greenfield”.
Hours earlier, a court security official said Mr Trump’s violation of his fraud trial gag order led to Justice Arthur Engoron and his staff facing hundreds of “serious and credible” threats.
Captain Charles Hollon wrote: “When Mr Trump violated the gag orders, the number of threatening, harassing and disparaging messages increased.”
Many of the threats were antisemitic and came by phone, text, email, and social media, with transcriptions of voicemails delivered to Judge Engoron’s law clerk amounting to 275 pages. The scale of the threats is part of a filing to oppose the pause of the gag order.
On Wednesday, Donald Trump’s legal team filed three briefs in support of the motion to dismiss the indictment against him in the federal election interference case.
The three filings argue that the charges should be dismissed with prejudice on three grounds: constitutional grounds, statutory grounds, and for vindictive/selective prosecution.
In the first filing, Mr Trump’s attorneys argue that prosecutors have failed to show that the former president deceived or tricked anyone when he claimed that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
Here’s a passage from the document: “According to the prosecution, robotically incanting the claim that President Donald J. Trump’s statements about the 2020 Presidential Election “were false” and that he “knew that they were false” is sufficient to support its charges. The prosecution is wrong. Even taking the prosecution’s preposterous allegations as true, President Trump’s statements were not capable of “tricking” or “deceiving” anyone. Just the opposite, they were pure advocacy, reflecting only one of countless millions of opinions on the integrity of that election. President’s Trump’s listeners—including the sophisticated elected officials described in the indictment—were free to agree or disagree with President Trump’s views, and the prosecution does not allege otherwise.”
Over the last decade, the US Supreme Court has gradually chipped away at a landmark voting rights law adopted at the height of the civil rights movement.
A federal court ruling is teeing up another major Supreme Court case that could radically weaken the Voting Rights Act by blocking private citizens and civil rights groups from filing lawsuits to protect what has become America’s bedrock voting protections.
On Monday, a three-judge panel with the US Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit upheld a lower court ruling that determined that citizens and groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP cannot legally challenge discriminatory state and local election laws.
According to two of the judges on the panel, only the US Department of Justice can do so.
The latest test to landmark civil rights law is a ‘travesty for democracy’ that could head to the Supreme Court
For six weeks, lawyers with New York Attorney General Letitia James put more than two dozen witnesses on the stand and introduced dozens of documents to connect Donald Trump and his business empire to a decade of fraud allegations.
When the attorney general handed the case to his team of lawyers on 13 November, their first witness was Donald Trump Jr, who spent several hours testifying to his father’s “artistry” and “sexy” properties.
Two days later, Mr Trump’s attorneys demanded a mistrial. They lost. His attorneys also sued the judge overseeing the case, hoping to strike down a gag order that has blocked the former president from attacking court staff. They won.
Meanwhile, other members of Mr Trump’s legal team – a stable of attorneys defending him in four criminal cases and lawsuits across the country – are preparing for a separate courtroom battle to revoke a different gag order that prevents him from attacking witnesses and others in case accusing him of a conspiracy to overturn 2020 presidential election results.
In a filing to a federal judge, Mr Trump’s attorneys argued that the gag order blocks his “core political speech” – including his abilities to spread false claims about the chief court clerk in his fraud trial, in a courthouse that has been inundated with threatening messages.
Prosecutors and a New York judge reported threats surrounding the former president’s lawsuits and criminal cases. While his lawyers steer his fraud trial, he can’t be stopped from targeting them and others, for now, Alex Woodward reports
Donald Trump may still appear on the 2024 primary presidential ballot in Colorado, a state has judge ruled – shutting down efforts to remove the former president by invoking the 14th Amendment.
The attempt to remove Mr Trump from the ballot was based on the claim that he is constitutionally barred from office because of the January 6 insurrection.
The decision, issued on Friday afternoon by Colorado District Judge Sarah Wallace, comes after judges in Minnesota and Michigan also refused to remove Mr Trump from those states’ Republican primary ballots.
It comes following a weeklong hearing in Denver. A lawsuit filed by a group of Republican voters and unaffiliated Colorado voters by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), argued that Mr Trump had “failed” that test and rendered him “constitutionally ineligible to appear on any Colorado ballot as a candidate for federal or state office”.
The 14 Amendment, adopted in the aftermath of the US Civil War, prohibits anyone who has sworn an oath to uphold the constitution — including elected officials — and who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof”, from holding office in the future.
Read the full story.
A flood of credible death threats and antisemitic messages have inundated the judge and court staff overseeing Donald Trump’s fraud trial in New York, according to the court’s top public safety officer.
Judge Arthur Engoron and his clerk received “hundreds of threats, disparaging and harassing comments and antisemitic messages” that followed the former president’s harassment, according to a court filing to support a gag order that blocks Mr Trump from attacking the court’s staff.
Transcriptions of threatening voicemails after Mr Trump first targeted Judge Engoron’s chief clerk fill more than 275 single-spaced pages, according to Wednesday’s filing.
The threats against them are “serious and credible and not hypothetical or speculative,” according to the filing from Charles Hollon, an officer-captain with the court’s Department of Public Safety assigned to a judicial threats unit.
“You should be executed,” one message reads.
Alex Woodward has been following the trial for The Independent and filed this report.
The judge and his chief clerk were indundated with violent messages after Trump’s attacks, filing reveals
Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis made her debut arguing before a judge and questioning witnesses in a case surrounding Donald Trump’s sprawling election interference case as she pressed a judge to revoke a bond order for one of the former president’s co-defendants.
Her appearance previewed the arguments, evidence and list of witnesses expected to testify in the upcoming trial, among several criminal cases surrounding the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican nomination for president.
Harrison Floyd, the leader of Black Voices for Trump, has “engaged in a pattern of intimidation” against his co-defendants and witnesses since he was released on bond in August, according to the Fulton County District Attorney’s office.
But following a three-hour hearing on Tuesday, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee declined to send Mr Floyd back to jail and directed the parties to draft an order that reels in his public statements.
Read more…
Georgia prosecutor pressed a judge to revoke bond for one of the ex-president’s co-defendants for witness intimidation
After spending two days on the witness stand for a second time, Jeffrey McConney had enough.
Through tears, he told a defence attorney for his former boss Donald Trump and his co-defendants that he “gave up” his longtime accounting role with the Trump Organization following a crushing wave of legal threats against it.
“I just wanted to relax and stop being accused of misrepresenting assets for the company that I loved working for,” he testified in a lower Manhattan courtroom on Tuesday. “I’m sorry.”
Mr McConney is among more than a dozen defendants charged in a sprawling fraud lawsuit from New York Attorney General Letitia James, who has accused the former president, his two adult sons and chief associates of grossly inflating his net worth and assets to fraudulently obtain favourable financial terms over a decade in an effort to boost the family’s brand-building properties in its vast real estate empire.
Judge Arthur Engoron already found the defendants liable for fraud.
Read the full article
When Donald Trump was inaugurated in January 2017, he became the oldest commander-in-chief sworn in at the age of 70 years and 220 days old.
That was surpassed by his successor Joe Biden, who was 78 years and 61 days when he became the country’s 46th president in January 2021.
Before Mr Trump, Ronald Reagan was the oldest person to assume the presidency at 69 years and 349 years old at his first inauguration in 1981.
Reagan was the oldest president when he left office at the age of 77 in 1989, just 22 days away from turning 78.
But depending on who wins the 2024 presidential election, a new record could be set as both Mr Biden and Mr Trump are running for reelection.
Graeme Massie reports.
Former president was oldest ever at his inauguration in 2017 before Biden claimed record
Donald Trump appears to be struggling to get into the holiday spirit and is far from feeling thankful – that’s if his latest Truth Social rants are anything to go by.
In the early hours of Thanksgiving morning, the former president took to his social media platform to launch the latest in a growing number of attacks on the judge and court clerk in his New York civil fraud trial.
Bizarrely beginning with the phrase “Happy Thanksgiving”, Mr Trump unleashed on who he described as “the Racist & Incompetent” New York Attorney General Letitia James, “the Radical Left Trump Hating Judge, a “Psycho”” Justice Arthur Engoron and “his Politically Biased & Corrupt Campaign Finance Violator” court clerk Alison Greenfield.
“Happy Thanksgiving to ALL, including the Racist & Incompetent Attorney General of New York State, Letitia “Peekaboo” James, who has let Murder & Violent Crime FLOURISH, & Businesses FLEE; the Radical Left Trump Hating Judge, a “Psycho,” Arthur Engoron, who Criminally Defrauded the State of New York, & ME, by purposely Valuing my Assets at a “tiny” Fraction of what they are really worth in order to convict me of Fraud before even a Trial, or seeing any PROOF, & used his Politically Biased & Corrupt Campaign Finance Violator, Chief Clerk Alison Greenfield, to sit by his side on the “Bench” & tell him what to do; & Crooked Joe Biden, who has WEAPONIZED his Department of Injustice against his Political Opponent, & allowed our Country to go to HELL; & all of the other Radical Left Lunatics, Communists, Fascists, Marxists, Democrats, & RINOS, who are seriously looking to DESTROY OUR COUNTRY,” he ranted.
“Have no fear, however, we will WIN the Presidential Election of 2024, & MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”
Read the full story:
In an apparent ‘Happy Thanksgiving’ wish, Mr Trump unleashed once again on New York Attorney General Letitia James, Judge Arthur Engoron and court clerk Alison Greenfield
Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel mocked far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene for what he described as her “dumbest idea yet” following the release of her new book.
The Republican congresswoman released her memoir – titled “MTG” – on Tuesday, with Donald Trump promoting it on his Truth Social platform.
On Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Tuesday night, Mr Kimmel gave viewers a hilarious run-down of its contents as he mocked the lawmaker saying “it’s the first book she’s ever written or read”.
“Speaking of Christmas in hell, Marjorie Taylor Greene released a book today. It’s the first book she’s ever written or read, and it’s called MTG, it’s got a little bit of everything,” he said.
Martha McHardy has the story.
The Republican congresswoman released her new memoir – titled ‘MTG’ – on Tuesday
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Trump’s violation of his gag order led to Justice Arthur Engoron and his staff being “inundated” with death threats
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