Donald Trump lashes out at judge and political rivals after hush money court appearance – live | US news

By the way, if you’ve got the time and inclination for it, ABC have published a full transcript of what happened in the courthouse Tuesday in the Trump arraignment hearing, which lasted 57 minutes.

Moira Donegan writes for the Guardian today that Trump isn’t the ringmaster he once was, but we’re still watching his show:

Will the criminal charges be good for Trump? Trump seems to think so, or at least that’s what he’s trying to project to the public. He raised a lot of money for his third presidential bid over the five days between his indictment and his arraignment: $7m, according to campaign officials. And as he was inside the courthouse being charged, his campaign sent out a fundraising email, asking supporters to purchase tee shirts featuring a fake mug shot of the former president, along with the words “NOT GUILTY.” They cost $47 a piece.

And the indictment has placed Trump’s would-be rivals for the Republican nomination in an awkward position: they want to distance themselves from Trump, but they can’t afford to alienate his supporters, those die-hards who still make up a ruling majority of the Republican base. If anything, the indictment has made it seem more likely that Trump will secure the Republican nomination, for the same reasons it seemed likely back in 2016: while Republican elites and donors scramble to stop him, and rival candidates define themselves against his example, he’s still the sun around which the Republican party orbits, a force exponentially more powerful than the party itself.

Should we even be paying attention to this? Have we learned nothing? But with Trump, even studied indifference to him still makes him the center of political attention, like when you tell someone not to think of a white elephant.

Read more here: Moira Donegan – Trump isn’t the ringmaster he once was, but we’re still watching his show

It would be fair to say that Donald Trump’s lawyers have got plenty of potential court dates ahead of them in the coming months and years. Here is a list from CNN’s Dan Berman of all the investigations and court activity that the former president is facing:

Mar-a-Lago documents – Special counsel Jack Smith is overseeing the Justice Department’s criminal investigations into the retention of national defence information at Trump’s resort.

2020 election and January 6 – Smith’s purview also includes the period after Trump’s 2020 election loss to Joe Biden and leading up to the insurrection at the US Capitol. Aspects of the Justice Department’s probe include the use of so-called fake electors from states that Trump falsely claimed he had won, such as Georgia and Arizona.

2020 election: Efforts to overturn Georgia results – Fulton County, Georgia, district attorney Fani Willis oversaw a special grand jury investigating what Trump or his allies may have done in their efforts to overturn Biden’s victory in Georgia.

2020 election and January 6: House select committee – before concluding at the end of 2022, the House select committee referred Trump to the Justice Department on at least four criminal charges.

E. Jean Carroll: Defamation suit over Trump’s denial of rape claims – Carroll alleged Trump raped her in a New York department store dressing room in the mid-1990s and defamed her when he denied the rape

January 6: lawsuits by police officers – several members of the US Capitol Police are suing Trump saying his words and actions incited the 2021 riot.

Trump and Bob Woodward – Trump is suing journalist Woodward for alleged copyright violations, claiming Woodward had released audio from interviews without consent.

Trump and the New York Times, Mary Trump and CNN – Trump is suing his niece and The New York Times in New York state court over the disclosure of his tax information.

Trump and CNN – Trump has sued CNN in a southern Florida federal court, accusing the network of a “campaign of dissuasion in the form of libel and slander”. CNN has asked the judge for the case to be “dismissed with prejudice.”

Associated Press is carrying some quotes on the legal basis of the case against Donald Trump that district attorney Alvin Bragg is trying to make, and both of them think Bragg may face an uphill struggle.

The indictment raises many thorny issues about state and federal law that could provide openings for the defense to attack the charges to try to get them tossed before the case even gets to trial.

“The bottom line is that it’s murky,” said Richard Hasen, an expert in election law and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles law school. “And the district attorney did not offer a detailed legal analysis as to how they can do this, how they can get around these potential hurdles. And it could potentially tie up the case for a long time.”

The 34 counts of falsifying business records would normally be misdemeanors, lower-level charges that would not normally result in prison time. But they were bumped up to felonies – which carry up to four years behind bars – because, Bragg says, they were done in an effort to commit or conceal other crimes.

The $130,000 payment to Daniels exceeded the federal cap on campaign contributions, Bragg said. He also cited a New York state election law that makes it a crime to promote a candidate by unlawful means.

Prosecutors filed a “statement of facts” that told their story of a scheme to protect Trump’s presidential prospects by buying and suppressing unflattering information about him.

“There are an awful lot of dots here which it takes a bit of imagination to connect,” said Richard Klein, a Touro Law Center criminal law professor. Bragg said the indictment doesn’t specify the potential underlying crimes because the law doesn’t require it. But given the likelihood of Trump’s lawyers challenging it, “you’d think they’d want to be on much firmer ground than some of this stuff,” said Klein, a former New York City public defender.

Hasen said it’s not clear whether candidates for federal office can be prosecuted in cases involving state election laws. The defense may also argue the case can’t be brought in state court if it involves a federal election law.

Our columnist Osita Nwanevu writes today that Donald Trump’s prosecution is a triumph:

One of the major questions in American political and legal thought has been whether presidents may be allowed to commit crimes. As it stands, the position of the Justice Department is that they may ⁠— for half a century, it has held that a president cannot face criminal prosecution while in office. And while there’s not even a theoretical bar to prosecuting a president once they leave office, no one had ever tried it, leaving the question of whether criminal laws functionally apply to presidents at all, as a practical matter, a matter of speculation.

Here Alvin Bragg has bravely taken a stand: a person may, in fact, be indicted for a crime even if they were once president— just as though they were an ordinary person to whom laws applied. This is tremendous news. No rifts have opened in the time-space continuum. Frogs, locusts, and lice have yet to descend upon Manhattan. For the time being, it appears that a prosecutor really may attempt to hold a president ⁠— or at least a former president ⁠— accountable for a suspected crime without reality collapsing in on itself. What’s more, Bragg’s indictment amounts to an insistence that a former president may be indicted even for a relatively low-level crime like falsifying documents ⁠— just like any other white collar criminal.

Read more here: Osita Nwanevu – Donald Trump’s prosecution is a triumph

The justice system in New York could not be described as the most fast-paced in the world. Lauren del Valle at CNN has set out the timeline of what we can expect:

Prosecutors said they expect to produce the bulk of the discovery in the next 65 days. Trump’s team has until 8 August to file any motions and the prosecution will respond by 19 September. Judge Juan Merchan said he will rule on the motions at the next in-person hearing, scheduled for 4 December.

Karen McDougal: who is second woman in Trump case?

There has been a fair amount of commentary that the high profile indictment of former President Donald Trump would boost his campaign for the Republican nomination for the 2024 election, and help Republicans at the polls. That didn’t bear any fruit immediately, most notably in Wisconsin, where liberal judge Janet Protasiewicz is projected to win her race for a seat on Wisconsin’s supreme court.

Her win will flip the ideological balance of the state’s highest court, in an election which democracy observers have called the most consequential one of the year, with abortion rights, redistricting and election rules at stake.

In yesterday’s other vote, progressive candidate and Cook county board commissioner Brandon Johnson won the election for Chicago mayor on Tuesday evening after pulling ahead of his opponent Paul Vallas in the evening.

On Tuesday Donald Trump gave a 25-minute speech after his New York arrest, where he listed long-held grievances and complaints about the several investigations he is facing before briefly addressing the indictment. As well as the hush money indictment, Trump is being investigated over his handling of classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago, and pressure he put on state officials over the 2020 election result in Georgia. Trump repeated falsehoods about the nature of the accusations he is facing, and personally attacked the prosecutors and investigators leading the cases.

What we know so far …