Police investigate bomb threat against judge in Trump fraud trial before closing argument, reports say – live | Donald Trump

Police are investigating a bomb threat made against the judge Arthur Engoron, who is presiding over the fraud trial of Donald Trump and his family business empire in New York, NBC reports.

A law enforcement bomb squad went to the judge’s home in Nassau county, on the outskirts of New York City, yesterday, sources told the TV station. It is not known if Engoron or anyone else was home at the time.

Engoron is expected at court in Manhattan today to sit as closing arguments are presented in the New York attorney general Letitia James’s civil fraud case against Trump, his sons Don Jr and Eric and other senior figures in the New York-based Trump Organization, the family real estate empire.

Donald Trump’s lawyers will make their closing arguments in a New York court room today as they attempt to see off a legal judgment that could impose a $370m fraud fine on the former president’s family firm and ban it from doing business in the state, where the Trump Organization real estate empire is based.

The former US president reportedly planned to deliver his own closing statement at the trial – a last chance to defend himself against charges he inflated the value of his assets on financial statements for profit. But the judge overseeing the civil case blocked that move on Wednesday.

The New York fraud trial had been on a nearly month-long break for the holidays since December after 11 weeks of witness testimony. It is unclear when Engoron will issue a verdict, though he has indicated he will make a decision by the end of the month. Because the trial is a bench trial, there is no jury, and Engoron is the sole decider of the case.

In a pre-trial ruling, Engoron already found Trump, his adult sons and the former Trump Organization executives Allen Weisselberg and Jeff McConney guilty of fraud, saying they botched the value of various Trump properties on government forms.

More details here and more background here.

Good morning, US politics blog readers. Today, in New York City, Donald Trump will take yet another break from the campaign trail to appear for the closing arguments in the civil fraud trial the New York attorney general, Letitia James, brought against his business empire. The former president, who is no lawyer, intended to deliver the arguments himself in court, but that was knocked down yesterday by Arthur Engoron, the judge hearing the case. The stakes are high for Trump, since Engoron has already found he and his co-defendants engaged in fraud for years, and is now considering what penalties to levy against them.

The trial’s conclusion takes place four days before Iowa’s first-in-the-nation Republican caucuses on Monday, which the former president is expected to win. That would put him on course to once again claim the party’s nomination, despite Trump facing 91 criminal charges in four cases, in addition to ongoing civil cases. We’ll cover today’s proceedings – Trump included – live.

It’s been a lively last 12 hours and the next 12 are set to be just as fascinating. Here’s what’s going on:

• Donald Trump’s lawyers will make their closing arguments as they attempt to see off a civil case judgment that could impose a $370m fraud fine on his family firm and ban it from doing business in New York state.

• Before heading to the court house in New York today, the former US president said at a Fox News town hall in Des Moines last night that the overturning of Roe v Wade, ending the constitutional right to an abortion, by a US supreme court he helped to tip rightwards was a “miracle”, and also that he knows who his running mate will be if he wins the Republican nomination for president, though he’s not telling. The town hall was his alternative to taking part in …

• … The last GOP debate before Monday’s Iowa caucuses, last night, where just two of the three rivals who qualified for the event were in a hostile head-to-head clash. Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis traded insults and accusations, shortly after their trailing rival Chris Christie suspended his 2024 campaign.

• Joe Biden has been hosting top donors and others for private lunches at the White House in an effort to bolster support for his re-election campaign, the Washington Post reports, while Axios added that the White House counsel’s office has advised the president to stop giving big donors tours of the Oval Office, to avoid an ethics problem.

• Hunter Biden, hot from his unexpected visit to Capitol Hill to attend a House committee hearing where the Republican majority wants to hold him in contempt of Congress, will have to show up in a Los Angeles court room today. The president’s son is expected to deny tax offenses.

The Guardian is also running global live blogs on Israel’s war in Gaza and the wider situation in the Middle East, which you can follow here, and Russia’s war in Ukraine, which you can follow here.