Trump hit with another gag order ahead of hush money criminal trial: Latest – The Independent

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Limited gag order prohibits former president from speaking about court staff, prosecutors, witnesses or their families
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Donald Trump, Republican presidential candidate and part-time Bible infomercial salesman, appears to be testing out the boundaries of a new gag order imposed on him ahead of his hush money criminal trial, which is due to begin in New York with jury selection on 15 April.
Justice Juan Merchan granted the request from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, which prohibits the former president from talking about anyone involved in the case or their families.
The former president had already lashed out at the judge and his daughter on Truth Social before the order was signed on Tuesday and then doubled down on the attack on Wednesday morning.
Meanwhile, Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company behind his Truth Social platform, made its Wall Street debut on Tuesday, its shares appearing on the Nasdaq exchange for the first time under the ticker “DJT”. Opening valued at $78, they finished the day at $57.99 as the closing bell sounded.
The day’s trading meant Mr Trump has entered the ranks of the world’s 500 richest people, with his majority stake in the company now worth $5.5bn (£4.3bn), taking his estimated net worth to more than $8bn.
John Bowden writes:
Kari Lake, the US Senate candidate in Arizona who lost her 2022 bid for governor thanks in part to her refusal to untie herself from far-right conspiracy theories, seems unwilling to defend those same conspiracies under oath.
The former TV news anchor and current Trump superfan is running for the Senate seat being vacated in January by Kyrsten Sinema, the once-Democrat-now-independent first-term senator who announced that she would not stand for re-election after learning that she was in a distant third place in the polls. Ms Lake is set to run against Ruben Gallego, a congressman from Phoenix, who is leading her in polling.
While she previously indicated in an interview with Trump confidant Steve Bannon that she would fight a civil suit brought against her for alleged defamation of an Arizona elections official, Stephen Richer, Ms Lake’s team this week filed a motion to move directly to the phase of her trial where damages will be assessed.
Read on…
Conspiracy-embracing GOP candidate had previously indicated she would wage court battle to defend herself
The New York Times reports that Donald Trump is planning to attend services this week honouring New York City police officer Jonathan Diller, who was killed in a traffic stop in Queens on Monday evening. The outlet cited three people familiar with his plans.
On Thursday, the former president is expected to appear at the wake for Officer Diller, a three-year veteran of the New York Police Department.
Mr Diller was shot in the Far Rockaway neighbourhood of the city just before 6pm on Monday. He was 31 and the father of a one-year-old.
Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign’s national press secretary, told the Times that Mr Trump “is moved by the invitation to join NYPD Officer Jonathan Diller’s family and colleagues as they deal with his senseless and tragic death”.
On Tuesday, the former president posted on Truth Social:
Our heartfelt prayers go out to the family of highly decorated NYPD officer Jonathan Diller, whose life was taken by a murderous career criminal yesterday during a traffic stop in Queens. The “thug” in question has 21 prior arrests and just recently got out of prison – he NEVER should have been let back out on the streets. 

To Officer Diller’s family, and all of the other brave men and women of law enforcement who put your lives on the line every day, we love you, we appreciate you, and we will always stand with you!
Donald Trump, fresh off a near-miraculous court ruling slashing a nearly half-billion bond he owed down to $175m, is now slinging Bibles on Truth Social.
The former president — who has previously compared himself to Jesus Christ — has lent his image to the “God Bless the USA” Bible, a special version of the Good Book inspired by Lee Greenwood‘s saccharine patriotic tune of the same name.
Mr Trump held up the brown leather tome — this time right-side up — in an ad he shared on his Truth Social account on Tuesday.
Graig Graziosi reports on the ridiculous yet unsurprising new gig for the former president:
‘All Americans need a Bible in their home and I have many, it’s my favorite book’
Eric Garcia writes:
Last week, Ohio Republican voters nominated Bernie Moreno to run against Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown. As Ohio has moved from being a swing state to a solidly pro-Donald Trump Republican outpost in the Midwest, Brown remains the only statewide elected Democrat there.
Democrats will need to spend mountains of cash to help his campaign in a state Trump won twice. But Brown has also received some additional help in the form of the two spending bills that passed this month, thanks to “earmarks”.
Read on…
A little bit of federal dollars can go a long way to win re-election, even if — like Marjorie Taylor Greene — you’ve been acting like you wouldn’t take them at all
New Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump sat down for an interview with NBC News — ironically just as her predecessor was being ejected from a new role at the network after a revolt by on-air talent.
She told Garrett Haake that she believes the party is “past” litigating the 2020 election but Donald Trump, the former president and Ms Trump’s father-in-law, will soon be facing two juries on charges that he tried to overturn the results while he runs for re-election.
Per NBC News:
“I think we’re past that. I think that’s in the past,” Lara Trump told NBC News when she was asked whether it will be the RNC’s position that the 2020 election was not fairly decided.
“The past is the past, and unfortunately, we had to learn a couple of hard lessons in 2020,” she continued. “Believe me, we are applying them all across this country in every single state, and we want to ensure that, indeed, every single legal vote is counted.”
Meanwhile, Mr Trump continues to say that the election was rigged, that he should still be president, and that it was stolen from him partly because of mail-in voting — something that the RNC wants to encourage even as their candidate rails against it.
Asked about those comments, she told Haake:
“Well, I actually think if you talk to him right now, you will see that he is very much embracing early voting,” she said.
“I think that the message that the people of this country have sent to Donald Trump, and you saw it in the primaries, is that they want to get out and they want to vote for him as soon as they possibly can,” she continued. “And if that means Day 1 of early voting for people, he’s very happy for them to go out and do it.”
Ms Trump also said that the party will not directly fund her father-in-law’s legal costs directly despite previously having told Newsmax that “every single penny will go to the number one and the only job of the RNC — that is electing Donald J Trump,” adding that Republican voters would be interested in paying the former president’s mounting legal bills.
Asked to assure people how their money would be spent if they donated to the RNC, she told NBC News:
“Trust me, I am the daughter-in-law of Donald Trump. I will ensure that every penny of every dollar is going to causes that Republican voters care about.”
Mr Trump further said:
“Well, the No. 1 job of the RNC is to, of course, support the Republican candidate for president. That is Donald Trump. But of course, we are paying attention to all about down-ballot races, as well,” she said.
“The truth is, it’s great if we win the presidency, and I think that’s imperative, but we also want to expand our lead in the House. We want to take back the Senate. So we are paying very close attention to all those races. We will be supporting [them] in a very big way.”
Jon Stewart has skewered claims that Donald Trump’s multi-million dollar fraud was a “victimless crime.”
The former president’s New York fraud case has been branded as an incident with no victims, particularly by commentators on Fox News.
The Shark Tank judge Kevin O’Leary even declared that everything Mr Trump was found liable for in the civil fraud case “is done by every real estate developer everywhere on Earth in every city. This has never ever been prosecuted.”
“Leave it to Kevin O’Leary to be unaware enough to say the quiet part out loud,” Stewart responded incredulously on The Daily Show.
Amelia Neath reports on what else Stewart had to say:
‘The only immoral practice, apparently, in the capitalist system is to use that money for people who may need it’
Donald Trump is furious at NBC News for terminating a contract with Ronna McDaniel after just a couple of days following a furious reaction from on-air talent to the hiring of the former chair of the RNC who helped perpetuate the former president’s lies about the 2020 election.
Ms McDaniel — whom Mr Trump refers to as Ronna Romney (she is the niece of Trump foe Mitt Romney) — resigned from the RNC in February at the behest of the former president.
Here’s what he had to say this afternoon:
MSDNC FAKE ANCHORS HAVE TAKEN OVER NBC FROM CHAIRMAN BRIAN ROBERTS, AND HE DOESN’T KNOW WHAT TO DO! THEIR RATINGS SUCK, FIRE THEM, AND START ALL OVER AGAIN. WHO WOULD HAVE EVER THOUGHT THAT FAILED HOST, SLEEPY EYES CHUCK TODD, WOULD HAVE THE AUDACITY TO REPRIMAND BRIAN ROBERTS CONCERNING THE HIRING OF RONNA ROMNEY. THEY SHOULD FIRE HIM IMMEDIATELY, AND NEVER LOOK BACK. MAGA2024!
And here’s our reporting on the end of Ms McDaniel’s short career at NBC:
Former RNC chair dropped as pundit after Chuck Todd, Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, Rachel Maddow and others speak out against her hiring over 2020 election lies
Mike Roman, Donald Trump’s former campaign aide and one of the 18 co-defendants in his sprawling racketeering case in Georgia, has been subpoenaed by Arizona officials as part of their criminal investigation into the alleged plot to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 win in the state.
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes has been overseeing the inquiry into the so-called “fake electors” scheme, which, had it not been foiled, would have seen groups of illegitimate state electors submitting false voting certificates to Congress and the National Archives declaring Mr Trump, not Mr Biden, as the election winner.
The Democrat is said to be nearing a decision on whether to bring charges against anyone involved, according to CNN.
Joe Sommerlad has the details:
Mike Roman has been summoned as part of the state attorney general’s investigation into the ‘alternate electors’ plot
Attorneys for Donald Trump failed to convince a judge that the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office mishandled potential evidence in his criminal case stemming from an alleged hush money scheme to bury embarrassing stories of his affairs.
The former president arrived inside a 15th floor criminal courtroom in Manhattan on Monday morning for yet another pretrial hearing in the case, what was supposed to be the first day of jury selection for the first-ever criminal trial against a president.
Alex Woodward filed this report from the court in Lower Manhattan:
Judge Merchan was unconvinced by the ‘unbelievably serious’ misconduct allegations levelled against Alvin Bragg’s office by the former president’s legal team
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis disputed that her office’s prosecution of Donald Trump for his efforts to pressure state officials in Georgia to change the 2020 election results was in any way hindered or slowed down by the dispute over her relationship with a prosecutor on the case.
Ms Willis spoke to a CNN reporter on Saturday and said that while outside forces were working to slow the case down, her office had continued working on the case throughout the recent proceedings determining whether there was a conflict of interest on Ms Willis’s part given a romantic relationship she engaged in with a prosecutor on her team.
John Bowden reports:
Ex-president faces racketeering charge in Georgia after conflict of interest dispute ends
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