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Manhattan DA asks judge in Trump’s hush money case to ‘clarify or confirm’ that gag order applies to family members
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office this week asked a judge presiding over the New York criminal case against Donald Trump to “clarify or confirm” that his earlier order restricting the former president’s public statements about the case and those involved applies to family members.
In a letter dated Thursday and acknowledged as received by the court on Friday, prosecutors asked that the court weigh in on whether a partial gag order issued by Judge Juan Merchan on Tuesday “protects family members of the Court, the District Attorney, and all other individuals mentioned in the Order” and asked that the court “direct that defendant immediately desist from attacks on family members.”
Trump’s attorneys responded in opposition in their own letter on Friday, arguing that the “express terms of the gag order do not apply in the manner claimed” by prosecutors.
Trump has blasted Merchan as “biased and conflicted” while also taking aim at his daughter for a social media post that a court spokesperson said was wrongly attributed to her.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Trump and co-defendants ask appeals court to review ruling allowing Fani Willis to stay on Georgia election case
Former President Donald Trump and eight other defendants accused of illegally trying to interfere in the 2020 election in Georgia on Friday submitted a formal application to appeal a judge’s ruling allowing Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to remain on the case.
Trump and other defendants had tried to get Willis and her office tossed off the case, saying her romantic relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade created a conflict of interest. Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee earlier this month found that there was not a conflict of interest that should force Willis off the case but said that the prosecution was “encumbered by an appearance of impropriety.”
McAfee’s ruling said Willis could continue her prosecution if Wade left the case, and the special prosecutor resigned hours later. Lawyers for Trump and other defendants then asked McAfee to allow them to appeal his ruling to the Georgia Court of Appeals, and he granted that request.
The filing of an application with the appeals court is the next step in that process. The Court of Appeals has 45 days to decide whether it will take up the matter.
The allegations that Willis had improperly benefited from her romance with Wade upended the case for weeks. Intimate details of Willis and Wade’s personal lives were aired in court in mid-February, overshadowing the serious allegations in one of four criminal cases against the Republican former president. Trump and 18 others were indicted in August, accused of participating in a wide-ranging scheme to illegally try to overturn his narrow 2020 presidential election loss to President Biden in Georgia.
Alex Slitz / Getty Images
The appeal application says McAfee was wrong not to disqualify both Willis and Wade from the case, saying that “providing DA Willis with the option to simply remove Wade confounds logic and is contrary to Georgia law.”
Steve Sadow, Trump’s lead attorney in the case, said in a statement that the case should have been dismissed and “at a minimum” Willis should have been disqualified from continuing to prosecute it. He said the Court of Appeals should grant the application and consider the merits of the appeal.
A spokesperson for Willis declined to comment.
Willis used Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, or RICO, law, an expansive anti-racketeering statute, to charge Trump and the 18 others. Four people charged in the case have pleaded guilty after reaching deals with prosecutors. Trump and the others have pleaded not guilty.
McAfee clearly found that Willis’ relationship with Wade and his employment as lead prosecutor in the case created an appearance of impropriety, and his failure to disqualify Willis and her whole office from the case “is plain legal error requiring reversal,” the defense attorneys wrote in their application.
Given the complexity of the case and the number of defendants, the application says, multiple trials will likely be necessary. Failure to disqualify Willis now could require any verdicts to be overturned, and it would be “neither prudent nor efficient” to risk having to go through “this painful, divisive, and expensive process” multiple times, it says.
In his ruling, McAfee cited a lack of appellate guidance on the issue of disqualifying a prosecutor for forensic misconduct, and the appeals court should step in to establish such a precedent, the lawyers argue.
Finally, the defense attorneys argued, it is crucial that prosecutors “remain and appear to be disinterested and impartial” to maintain public faith in the integrity of the judicial system.
Fulton County DA Fani Willis plans to take a lead role in trying Trump case
Two weeks after Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis survived a bid by defense lawyers to have her disqualified from the Georgia election interference case, she has all but taken over the case personally, focusing intensely on legal strategy and getting her team in fighting form for trial.
In a significant move along these lines, according to a source close to her, Willis has decided to play a leading courtroom role herself in the sprawling conspiracy case against Donald Trump and 14 co-defendants.
“I think there are efforts to slow down the train, but the train is coming,” Willis said with characteristic bravado during impromptu remarks to CNN as she was leaving a Georgia Easter egg hunt on March 23.
“I guess my greatest crime is that I had a relationship with a man, but that’s not something I find embarrassing in any way,” she added.
Willis had just endured a lengthy legal soap opera after lawyers for one of the defendants filed a motion on Jan. 8 alleging that she had a clandestine romantic relationship with outside lawyer Nathan Wade, whom she had tapped to lead the case. Over two months of withering testimony and legal argument, Willis had intimate details of her private life publicly aired, her judgment and integrity questioned, and saw the most high-stakes prosecution of her career teeter on the brink of collapse because of an indiscretion in her personal life.
Alex Slitz/AP/Bloomberg via Getty Images
In the end, Judge Scott McAfee ruled there was no actual conflict of interest that would have required disqualification of Willis and her entire office from the case. But he did conclude that Willis’ conduct created an “appearance of impropriety” that needed to be “cured” for her to continue. The solution was for Wade to resign from the case, which he did a few hours after the judge’s ruling.
Instead of replacing Wade with another lawyer from inside or outside the office, Willis is stepping up her own role in quarterbacking the case, CBS News has learned. She has already plunged into the nuts and bolts of trial strategy, including starting to lay out how evidence, including witnesses and documents, will be presented, a process known as “order of proof.”
At the same time, she is thinking about how to communicate the stakes of a case about protecting the democratic rights of Georgians — a far more abstract concept than typical murder or gang prosecutions — to a Fulton County jury.
Moreover, according to one knowledgeable source, Willis will now be the primary point of contact for defense lawyers in any future plea negotiations, a role that Wade had previously played.
Perhaps most consequentially, she is gaming out her own role in trying the case. Her appearance in the courtroom will not just be symbolic. Willis is seriously considering handling opening statements for the prosecution and examining key witnesses herself, according to sources familiar with her thinking, who requested anonymity to speak freely about her approach to the case.
Those who know the pugnacious and competitive DA well say a star turn in the courtroom — in the only case against Trump that will be televised — may put the distracting disqualification drama fully behind her. They say she is intent on shifting the public’s focus back onto Trump and his co-defendants for their alleged effort to overturn the 2020 election. It was a strategy she already showcased when she testified combatively in the disqualification hearing last month.
“You’re confused, you think I’m on trial,” she told defense lawyer Ashley Merchant. “These people are on trial for trying to steal an election.”
Willis’ stepped-up, high-profile public role in the case would also come as she runs for reelection in Fulton County. While it seems unlikely the trial would begin before the general election in November, she will likely have opportunities to argue pre-trial motions and procedural matters before then.
Any remarks about the case she makes inside the courtroom carry far less risk than whatever she might be tempted to say in the public arena, where she feels less restrained. She has already been admonished by McAfee for making “unorthodox” public remarks. The judge has hinted that he might impose a gag order on the case.
“Given the fact that she just barely walked away legally unscathed and that there is an appeal, I think a little extra caution would pay off dividends,” said Anthony Michael Kreis, a professor of law at Georgia State College of Law, who has been following the election interference case closely. But at the same time, Kreis said Willis has every “right and prerogative” to try the case herself and called doing so a potential “rehabilitation moment.”
Willis was always likely to play at least some public-facing role in the trial, if for no other reason than to show her constituents how seriously she was taking a case that she regards as core to their rights as Americans and Georgians, according to a close friend of Willis’. But it was only after going through the searing two-month disqualification ordeal that she decided to play a leading, if not the leading trial role, sources tell CBS News.
Willis earned a reputation as a courtroom practitioner over a two-decade career of trying and winning hundreds of murder, rape and gang cases, but also leading some of the most complex prosecutions ever brought in Georgia. Chief among them was the Atlanta Public Schools cheating case, a Georgia RICO prosecution — involving the same conspiracy statute under which Trump and his co-defendants were charged — against more than a dozen teachers, principals and administrators. All but one of the 12 defendants who went to trial were convicted in what still stands as the longest trial in Georgia history.
“She combines a level of preparation unmatched by any attorney I have ever seen, with a very rare ability to connect with a jury at that gut level,” said Charley Bailey, a former Fulton County assistant DA who has tried cases with Willis and is a close friend.
Trump, co-defendants ask appeals court to consider booting DA Fani Willis from Georgia case
Lawyers for former President Donald Trump and eight of his co-defendants in the Georgia election interference case on Friday asked a state appeals court to allow them to challenge a recent ruling that didn’t disqualify Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from prosecuting the case.
“The Georgia Court of Appeals should grant the application and accept the interlocutory appeal for consideration on the merits,” Steve Sadow, Trump’s lead attorney in Georgia, told NBC News in a statement Friday.
Willis’ office declined NBC News’ request for comment.
The application comes after Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee gave Trump and the others permission to seek a review from the Georgia Court of Appeals of McAfee’s decision not to disqualify Willis and her office and dismiss the charges in the sprawling racketeering case.
In a motion originally filed by Trump co-defendant Michael Roman, and later adopted by Trump and others, Willis is accused of financially benefitting from a personal relationship she had with Nathan Wade, a special prosecutor she’d appointed to the case. The motion alleged Willis and Wade took vacations together while working on the case.
Willis and Wade denied any wrongdoing. They acknowledged they’d been in a relationship, but they maintained that it began after his appointment as special prosecutor and that Willis did not benefit financially.
In a decision earlier this month, McAfee found no conflict of interest but said because of an “appearance of impropriety,” either Willis and her office would have to step aside, or Wade.
Wade resigned shortly after McAfee’s ruling — but, Sadow noted, the defense wanted the order to go further.
“Defendants argues in the trial court that the indictment should have been dismissed and, at a minimum, DA Willis and her office should have been disqualified from prosecuting the case,” Sadow’s statement said.
Trump has pleaded not guilty in the case, which alleges he conspired with others to overturn the 2020 election results in the state.
With the request officially filed, the appeals court has 45 days to decide whether to take up the case. McAfee has said he will not halt proceedings in the Georgia case as the disqualification matter makes its way through the appeals court.
Breaking down Trump’s free speech claims in Georgia election case
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Georgia judge hears Trump’s First Amendment claim in election interference case
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Trump ramps up attacks on judge in hush money case following gag order
Less than 24 hours after getting hit with a partial gag order in the New York criminal case involving his alleged falsification of business records, former President Donald Trump repeatedly lashed out at one person who’s not covered by the ruling — the judge.
In a series of posts on his social media platform, Trump called Judge Juan Merchan “biased and conflicted” while also taking aim at the judge’s daughter for a second day in a row.
In a ruling Tuesday, Merchan noted the impending April 15 trial date and said Trump must “refrain” from “making or directing others to make public statements about known or reasonably foreseeable witnesses concerning their potential participation” in the case, as well as about individual prosecutors and court staff and their family members.
The order did not mention the judge and his family members — a loophole Trump exploited Wednesday.
“This Judge, by issuing a vicious ‘Gag Order,’ is wrongfully attempting to deprive me of my First Amendment Right to speak out against the Weaponization of Law Enforcement,” Trump wrote, saying the judge “is suffering from an acute case of Trump Derangement Syndrome” and should recuse himself from the case.
The attacks continue a pattern of Trump lashing out at judges and the judicial system on social media after getting an adverse ruling in court.
As he’d done previously, Trump also went after Merchan’s daughter, who’s worked at a progressive digital marketing agency that has worked for many Democratic candidates.
“Maybe the Judge is such a hater because his daughter makes money by working to ‘Get Trump,'” one of his posts said. He also accused her of having posted a picture of him behind bars on social media —an allegation that appears to have originated from a Trump ally, far right activist and conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer.
Loomer made a similar allegation last year involving the wife of the judge who presided over Trump’s civil fraud trial, accusing her of having shared anti-Trump memes on social media.
Trump then attacked the judge’s wife, who was not protected by the partial gag order Engoron had put in place in that case.
A spokesman for the state court system said then that the posts Loomer promoted were not from the judge’s wife.
“Justice Engoron’s wife has sent no social media posts regarding the former president. They are not hers,” said the spokesman, Al Baker.
Trump never acknowledged or apologized for the apparent false accusation.
NBC News has reached out to the court system for comment on the new Loomer/Trump accusation.
The handle used in the X profile highlighted by Loomer had been previously associated with Merchan’s daughter in 2022, but the profile Loomer shared said the person joined X in April of 2023, the same month far right news outlets wrote critical stories about the daughter.
An NBC News analysis earlier this year of Trump’s posts on his social media platform Truth Social found his unprecedented attacks on the judicial system were frequently tied to developments in his court cases, and at times outnumbered his posts about his re-election bid.
Trump’s criticism often comes at a cost for his targets. Merchan, Engoron and the judge presiding over his federal election interference case in Washington, D.C., Tanya Chutkan, have all been recipients of threats following Trump’s complaints.
Merchan cited his experience when he handed down his ruling Tuesday blocking Trump from making comments about individual prosecutors (with the exception of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg), court staff, their family members, and jurors and potential jurors.
“Although this Court did not issue an order restricting Defendant’s speech at the inception of this case, choosing instead to issue an admonition, given the nature and impact of the statements made against this Court and a family member thereof, the District Attorney and an Assistant District Attorney, the witnesses in this case, as well as the nature and impact of the extrajudicial statements made by Defendant in the D.C. Circuit case (which resulted in the D.C. Circuit issuing an order restricting his speech), and given that the eve of trial is upon us, it is without question that the imminency of the risk of harm is now paramount,” Merchan wrote.
Trump’s attorneys had argued in court filings that because their client is the presumptive Republican nominee for president he “must have unfettered access to the voting public to respond to attacks from political opponents.”
Merchan said in his ruling that Trump’s public commentary in this case and others has gone “far beyond defending himself against attacks.”
“Indeed, his statements were threatening, inflammatory” and “denigrating,” and the “consequences of those statements included not only fear on the part of the individual targeted, but also the assignment of increased security resources to investigate threats and protect the individuals and family members thereof,” the judge wrote.
He said he was acting now “given that the eve of trial is upon us” and “it is without question that the imminency of the risk of harm is now paramount.”
The DA’s case alleges Trump falsified business records to cover up payments he was making to his then-lawyer Michael Cohen as repayment for a $130,000 hush money payment Cohen had doled out to adult film star Stormy Daniels in the closing days of the 2016 campaign. Daniels claimed she had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006, which Trump denies.
Trump has pleaded not guilty in the case and maintains the charges are part of a politically orchestrated witch hunt against him.
Ireland to intervene in ICJ case against Israel
The Republic of Ireland will intervene in the case against Israel under the Genocide Convention at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
The ICJ has been asked to consider whether Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
Israel rejects the allegations as “baseless”. South Africa brought the case to the court – which is the top court of the United Nations (UN).
Ireland’s Tánaiste (deputy prime minister) and Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin announced on Wednesday that he had directed officials to commence work on a Declaration of Intervention under Article 63 of the statute of the ICJ.
Interventions by state parties under Article 63 do not take a specific side on whether genocide has been committed by Israel.
Ireland will not be asserting if genocide is being committed, but asserting its interpretation of the Genocide Convention.
This is the same approach taken by Ireland in the Ukraine v Russia case.
Work on the intervention is likely to take a number of months.
What is the ICJ?
Based in the Hague, in the Netherlands, it was established after World War Two, to settle disputes between states.
It also gives advisory opinions on legal matters, which is what it is being asked to do with Israel.
Unlike the International Criminal Court (ICC), the ICJ cannot prosecute individuals for crimes of the utmost severity, such as genocide.
But its opinions carry weight with the UN and other international institutions.
UN ceasfire resolution
Ireland is to liaise closely with a number of international partners, who have also confirmed their intention to intervene.
Belgium, Nicaragua and France have all stated their intentions to formally do so.
The case itself is set to take a number of years.
“The situation could not be more stark; half the population of Gaza face imminent famine and 100% of the population face acute food insecurity,” Mr Martin said on Wednesday.
“Ireland will be intervening.
“It is for the court to determine whether genocide is being committed.
“But I want to be clear in reiterating what I have said many times in the last few months; what we saw on 7 October in Israel, and what we are seeing in Gaza now, represents the blatant violation of international humanitarian law on a mass scale.
“It has to stop. The view of the international community is clear. Enough is enough.”
South Africa alleges Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians, following Hamas’s 7 October attack.
Hundreds of Hamas gunmen crossed from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel, killing 1,200 people, mainly civilians, and taking about 240 hostages back to Gaza.
Since Israel launched its military campaign against Hamas in response, more than 32,400 people, mainly women and children, have been killed in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
The UN Security Council has adopted a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire, as well as the release of hostages.
Israel was directed by the ICJ in January to take all additional measures to ensure that civilian lives had been protected, however sources within the Department of Foreign Affairs said the Irish government did not believe this had been done to an acceptable standard.
This is based on evidence provided by UN partners.
Israel has said it has taken a raft of measures to avoid civil casualties.
Its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: “It is not we who have come to perpetrate genocide, it is Hamas.
“It would murder all of us if it could.
“In contrast, the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] is acting as morally as possible.”
Biden’s case for re-election is improving, but his polling against Trump is still shaky
WASHINGTON — The economy is improving, inflation is falling, joblessness is down, and the stock market is hitting record highs. Crime is dropping. U.S. crude oil production is at an all-time high. A special counsel declined to bring charges against President Joe Biden for mishandling classified information, and the Republican impeachment inquiry is flailing.
Biden’s case for re-election is strengthening, but he still enters the general election in a weaker position than he did in 2020, when he consistently led Donald Trump in national and swing state surveys, often by wide margins. His struggles come despite Trump’s mounting legal bills and four criminal cases, with one trial set to begin next month.
Democrats offer a variety of theories as to why.
“Because we haven’t made our argument yet,” Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, said in an interview.
“Democrats’ record on the economy, on crime, on making prescription drugs less expensive, on climate action, on civil rights, on human rights, on gun safety — our record is strong, and [Trump’s] record was catastrophically bad,” he said. “But we haven’t spent any money and any time making that argument because we’ve been too busy doing the work. As we move into a different season, we’re going to be making that argument. Once people hear it, the votes move.”
‘We’ve got quite a bit of time’
The president has just over seven months — and a lot of votes to move, according to surveys as he and Trump clinched their party’s nominations this month. Nationally, most polls show a statistical tie or a Trump lead. By contrast, at this time in 2020, Biden was leading Trump by about 6 points in the FiveThirtyEight average.
In the battleground states that gave Biden the White House — like Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona — surveys in recent weeks largely show dead heats or Trump leading outside the margins of error. A clear Biden lead was common in swing state polls around this time in 2020, but it’s all but absent today.
A new Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll Tuesday found signs of hope for Biden as he ticked upward against Trump in six of seven swing states over the last month. Still, there was little to celebrate: He was either trailing Trump or statistically tied in all seven states. The poll showed voter perceptions of the economy improving, as did a CNBC national survey that found a dead heat.
Biden’s campaign notes that Democrats have consistently overperformed the polls since 2022. But in 2016 and 2020, when Trump was on the ballot, Democrats underperformed the polls both times. And the Electoral College has built-in advantages for Trump: In 2020, Biden won the popular vote by 7 million and squeaked out an Electoral College win by 45,000 votes in three states.
Biden campaign spokeswoman Lauren Hitt declined to comment on the polls but credited him for the improving economy.
“Joe Biden wakes up every day fighting to make life better for the American people,” she said. “The President is committed to earning not demanding Americans’ votes, unlike Donald Trump who is running a campaign of revenge and retribution for himself and his wealthy friends.”
The Trump campaign said its arguments remain strong.
“Inflation is still wildly out of control, prices of goods are astronomical, the border is an unmitigated disaster with illegals causing bloodbaths in communities across the country, and [special counsel Robert] Hur called low IQ Crooked Joe an elderly man with a terrible memory unfit to actually stand trial,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in an email. “Democrats and the media should stop gaslighting the American people from all the hurt Crooked Joe has caused in just four years.”
‘Some of Biden’s coalition is still wandering’
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said he doesn’t believe the improving conditions will save Biden, because the benefits of lower unemployment and wage growth have been uneven.
“The economy is not uniform,” he said in an interview. “In a lot of respects, the elites in our country aren’t having the same daily experience that a lot of working families are. So I think there’s a big disconnect — some of it is economic, and I think some of it is cultural. That’s my gut instinct.”
Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., said Biden’s struggles are due to the fact that voters “are still reeling from the higher prices” even though inflation is down. He said Biden must speak to ongoing concerns like fentanyl poisoning, mental health and education.
“The cost of buying a home or renting a home and the cost of pharmaceuticals are high,” he said, calling for initiatives to “take on the hedge funds that are buying up the housing market” and negotiate “every drug for every American” to lower medicine costs. “In all those areas, team Biden does have policies that will make things better. And Trump, quite frankly, doesn’t,” he said. “We’ve got quite a bit of time before the election for this discussion to take place.”
Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg, who is bullish on Biden’s prospects, said “large numbers of voters haven’t checked in” and “some of Biden’s coalition is still wandering,” so surveys show him struggling with young and nonwhite voters. He predicted the polls will improve for Biden by “late spring,” around April or May.
“Our view is — and I sort of share the view of the campaign on this — that the likely scenario is that a chunk of the coalition will come home in the next few months as it becomes clear that it’s Biden-Trump and as the Biden campaign turns on,” Rosenberg said, “and then my expectation is we’ll be up a few points.”
Has GOP ‘fumbled’ its case against Biden?
Rosenberg said his optimism is partly due to the thinning GOP case.
“Their basic argument against Biden — much of it has evaporated in the last few months. The economy is strong; it’s not weak. Inflation is down; it’s not up. Violent crime and murder rates are plummeting, not rising. We’re producing more domestic energy of all kinds than ever before — there’s no war on energy,” he said. “And if you take those away … what they were left with was the ‘Biden crime family’ narrative,” which “has been exposed as a farce in recent weeks,” and Biden’s age.
“They had clear advantages on the border. And I think they’ve fumbled that now,” he said, citing the GOP’s rejection of a Biden-backed bipartisan bill to impose stricter border and asylum laws. “I think they’ve given us a chance to get back into a competitive position on the border or even go on offense about that.
“What that leaves the Republicans with is not a lot. They don’t really have obvious places to go after Biden,” Rosenberg said. “And the likelihood of this becoming a referendum on Trump has increased dramatically in my view in the last few weeks.”
Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., who also faces re-election this year, said the presidential race will be a fight to the end.
“The population is closely divided in a lot of our states. I’m very proud of the president’s record, and I’m proud of having been part of it. But I don’t see the next months as being smooth. I think we’re going to have to really work. We got to just battle every day to be successful. The nation needs for us to be successful,” he said. “It’s going to be a race unlike any other in the history of the country.”