Related Video: Trump claims he wasn’t referring to clerk when he violated fraud trial gag order
Donald Trump was booed by a crowd of South Carolina football fans on Saturday when he made an appearance at Clemson University for the Palmetto Bowl. While there was a sizeable contingent of Trump fans in the crowd, several videos captured the overwhelming jeers aimed at the former president upon his arrival at the alma mater of his GOP primary rival Nikki Haley.
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.
“When Mr Trump violated the gag orders, the number of threatening, harassing and disparaging messages increased,” according to Wednesday’s filing, supporting the judge’s opposition to the gag order pause.
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 filing noted.
Bob Woodward undermines Trump excuse for not giving back secret papers: ‘He’s not busy’
Famed journalist Bob Woodward rejected the idea that Donald Trump was “too busy” to return boxes of classified documents that had been stored at Mar-a-Lago, recalling long conversations he had with the former president at the time while he was researching a book.
Woodward, who has written four books focused on Mr Trump and serves as an associate editor of The Washington Post, sat down for an interview on MSNBC during which he recalled the former president frequently insisting he was “too busy” to talk for long, but ultimately would spend more time than Woodward had allotted chatting with him.
Graig Graziosi27 November 2023 08:00
ICYMI: Trump’s Truth Social sues 20 media outlets over financial loss reports
Donald Trump’s Truth Social platform has filed a lawsuit against 20 media organisations for making what it claims to be defamatory statements about the company’s financial losses.
In the lawsuit, filed in the 12th Judicial Court of Sarasota County, Florida, on Monday, Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) accuses the “reckless and malicious” outlets of falsely reporting that the company had lost $73m since its launch.
Graig Graziosi27 November 2023 07:00
Trump lawyers dismiss death threats as ‘irrelevant’ to federal gag order
A wave of death threats and antisemitic and homophobic messages were sent to the judge overseeing Donald Trump’s fraud trial, as well as his chief clerk, according to a state court filing this week.
A filing to support New York Justice Arthur Engoron’s opposition to a freeze on a gag order in the case includes a statement from the court’s top security official, who has collected “hundreds of threats, disparaging and harassing comments and antisemitic messages” that followed the former president’s harassment.
Federal prosecutors – who are seeking a separate gag order – shared those threats with the federal appeals court judges who will decide whether Mr Trump should be gagged in his election interference case.
But on Friday, the former president’s attorneys dismissed those threats as “irrelevant”.
Read more from The Independent:
Graig Graziosi27 November 2023 06:00
ICYMI: Rudy Giuliani sued for allegedly skipping out on $10k payment to accounting firm
Rudy Giuliani is facing yet another lawsuit.
A former associate is suing him for $10,000, adding to the mountain of debt the former New York City mayor and Trump attorney is facing.
BST & Co. CPAs, LLP, an accounting firm based in Latham, New York, claims he had the company conduct an appraisal of his business interests while he separated from his wife, Judith Nathan, without paying them.
Including interest, the firm now seeks to recover about $25,000.
Michelle Del Rey reports:
Graig Graziosi27 November 2023 04:59
Wife of Iowa GOP official found guilty on 52 counts of election fraud from 2020
The wife of a Republican politician in Iowa has been convicted of dozens of criminal charges related to a 2020 voter fraud scheme aimed at getting her husband into office.
Kim Phuong Taylor submitted absentee ballots on behalf of voters who had not given her permission to do so.
She was convicted of 52 counts in total, including 26 counts of providing false information in registering and voting, 23 counts of voter fraud, and three counts of fraudulently registering to vote. She could face up to five years in prison for each charge.
The Independent’s John Bowden has more:
Graig Graziosi27 November 2023 04:00
Trump’s attorneys in his New York fraud trial are targeting the accountants
Judge Arthur Engoron already found Donald Trump and his co-defendants liable for fraud outlined in New York Attorney General’s blockbuster lawsuit.
In the eighth week of a trial stemming from her bombshell complaint, attorneys for the former president have narrowed their defence: blame the accountants.
Graig Graziosi27 November 2023 03:00
Appeals court judges aren’t convinced with Trump’s gag order opposition
A federal appeals court will determine whether to keep a gag order in place in Donald Trump’s federal election interference case.
In court this week, Trump’s attorney John Sauer repeatedly argued his client’s statements are “core political speech” protected under the First Amendment.
But Circuit Judge Patricia Millett cut him off at one point to ask whether those comments are merely protected political speech or “political speech aimed at derailing or corrupting the criminal justice process.”
Graig Graziosi27 November 2023 02:00
Eric Garcia: ‘The Maga release of the Jan 6 tapes is about vengeance’
Newly elected Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson released more than 44,000 hours of raw footage from the January 6 attack on the US Capitol this week.
It’s less about transparency and more about revenge against Democratic officials who investigated the riot and the former president’s role, The Independent’s Eric Garcia writes:
Republicans know that January 6 is a huge albatross around their necks and they hope to reshape the narrative about the riot so that they can move on. The problem is that the loudest voices are giving away the game and revealing this is not only an attempt to whitewash the events but rather to run interference and defend Mr Trump.
Graig Graziosi27 November 2023 01:00
One of Trump’s co-defendants in his Georgia case won’t be going back to jail, for now
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 the Trump election interferference case in Georgia in August, according to the Fulton County District Attorney’s office.
But following a three-hour hearing on Tuesday, 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.
The hearing marked District Attorney Fani Willis’s courtroom debut in the case.
She delivered a fierce defence of her move to strip Mr Floyd’s bond.
“I’m threatened everyday anyway,” she told the judge. “I’m a public official, voters elected me, and I’ve put myself in that position. That does not give him the right to contact co-defendants or intimidate other witnesses. And quite frankly, it’s really in the defendant’s interest to shut his mouth about this case because it can and will be used against him.”
Read more in The Independent:
Graig Graziosi27 November 2023 00:00
ICYMI: Read some of the ‘serious and credible’ death threats against Trump’s fraud trial judge and his staff
“You should be executed,” one message reads.
“Trust me when I say this,” reads another. “I will come for you. I don’t care. Ain’t nobody gonna stop me either.”
Those are just a few of the messages collected by a top security official with the New York court system who reviewed hundreds of threatening, antisemitic and homophobic messages targeting the judge overseeing Donald Trump’s fraud trial, as well as members of his staff.
We have the court filing that details the threats they received:
Graig Graziosi26 November 2023 23:00