masto.ai is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
A general Mastodon server for all languages.

Administered by:

Server stats:

2.4K
active users

🧵

Testimony started w/a bang last week as David , the fmr publisher of The , said that he had entered into a secret plot w/ & to negative stories about Trump as he ran for president in 2016.
, the 3rd to testify, started off w/dry details about banking transactions. But is leading us to the payment


nytimes.com/live/2024/04/30/ny

The New York Times · Trump Trial's 3rd Week to Begin With More Testimony: Live UpdatesBy Ben Protess

Judge begins immediately by saying that he has reached a ruling on whether violated the . We don’t know what it is yet.

Judge says can have May 17 to attend the high school graduation of his youngest son, Barron. Trump had complained about not immediately being given permission. “I don’t think the May 17 date is a problem,” the judge says.

The judge says the people have met their burden of proof on some violations & fines $2,000 to begin with. There are more fines coming.

Justice Juan M. cruised over that quickly, but what just happened should not be overlooked. has been found in & fined what seems to be at least $5,000. The way it was presented was very hard to follow so we’ll confirm the number as soon as we can.

Nonilex

Merchan, issued his ruling as the began its third week, saying that ’s statements, including on social media, had violated the . Prosecutors had asked that Trump be held in , citing 10 public statements that they said posed a “” to the trial.

The judge, Juan M. , fined him $9,000, punishing the former president for repeatedly violating a that bars him from attacking witnesses, prosecutors & jurors.

Merchan determined that had broken the by making several public statements on social media & on his campaign website in which he attacked & the .

Already, prosecutors have alerted to the judge to 4 new potential violations. Those were not covered by Justice ’s order & will be discussed at another hearing, which will be held on Thurs morning.

In addition to fining after finding him in , Justice Merchan ordered him to remove the offending Truth Social posts today.

Justice wrote that he was “keenly aware of, and protective of, Defendant’s First Amendment rights.” But nonetheless, he wrote that he would not tolerate continued violations of his orders and that if necessary & appropriate, he would “impose an incarceratory sentence.” In plain language, he is warning that he will send him to if necessary.

Justice explicitly called ’s claim that reposts don’t count as violations of the “counterintuitive and absurd.”

Justice Merchan rejected the defense’s claims that Trump had merely reposted the messages from others and that he had largely been acting in response to political attacks from two potential witnesses in the case: & .

is testifying about LLCs & know-your-client forms. The prosecutor questioning him has asked him to spell out what LLCs are. Know-your-client forms are used by banks to verify who a client is.

“Everything was urgent w/ ,” Gary Farro testifies about Cohen’s interest in opening his acct quickly. Cohen used the account to make the hush-money payment to .

He says Cohen did not make it clear that it would be used to pay a porn star.

First Republic did not do business w/the porn industry, as Farro testified last week. If the paperwork submitted had made allusions to its actual purpose, “there would be a determination made by the 2nd & 3rd line of defense” at the bank. The payment would have been flagged by bank auditors, as “it is an industry that we do not work with,” said Farro.

An email was shown from a FirstRepublic banker to , flagged as “high importance,” confirming his request to transfer $131k from his home equity line of credit acct to the Essential Consultants LLC acct.

Farro’s testimony is a reminder that moving money around always leaves an electronic footprint. There are wire transfers & paperwork inside the bank. It doesn’t always stop a fraud from happening but is helpful after the fact.

Mangold, one of the prosecutors, walked the banker Gary Farro through a wire transfer that occurred immediately after Essential Consultants LLC was created. The documents displayed show that on Oct. 27, 2016, & the LLC wired $130k to Keith Davidson, ’ lawyer at the time. Cohen wrote that the purpose of the wire transfer was for a “retainer.”

's lawyer Todd , will conduct cross. It’s Blanche’s 1st this trial.

It’s also the 1st time we’ve seen Blanche since the hearing last week in which he sought to argue that Trump had not violated the judge’s . Blanche lost that hearing.

Gary Farro was asked by Blanche about speaking with “the people,” (the prosecutors) Trump shook his head pointedly when Farro talked about meeting w/ prosecutors he had in DC ahead of his testimony.

is trying to cast some doubt on ’s testimony & use him to criticize . He asks Farro to say again that Cohen was a “difficult client.” Farro agrees that he was.

Blanche is also trying to separate Cohen's actions from 's, arguing that the account was never established as related to Trump. Basically it’s defense's entire argument: that Cohen was acting on his own.

Farro is reportedly a bit irritated w/ , 's lawyer. Blanche suggests that Farro opened up a shell corporation, & Farro bites back: “I don’t open up shell corporations. I open up LLC accounts.” Blanche is directing jurors' focus to what did -- that is, effectively start a shell corporation that was used to pay . It’s a way to attack Cohen through Farro, making the former fixer sound deceptive & potentially criminal.

After briefly consulting w/ his defense team & leaning down to whisper to , Todd asked directly if he ever had any communications w/ about Trump & if he ever spoke w/Trump himself. Farro said no.

Blanche has finished his cross-examination of Gary Farro, & Rebecca Mangold, a prosecutor, has returned for re-direct questioning.

During the break, the lawyers have continued to discuss the case with the judge. Now, a prosecutor, Matthew Colangelo, rises & says that if testifies, the prosecution would seek to cross-examine him about the judge’s ruling on the . This issue will be argued at length sometime later — & possibly not even today — but Colangelo raises it now.

The campaign is already fund-raising off Justice ’s ruling, sending an email to supporters claiming, in all caps, that a “liberal judge just silenced me.”

The judge returned to the bench but took some extra time to return to the courtroom, which is unusual in this case. Now Trump is back & has warned Todd , his lawyer: “Let’s try to keep the breaks short.”

Trump is joined by his son Eric again, although Susie Wiles & Dan Scavino, two of his aides, have not re-entered the courtroom.

The next witness is being called, & it’s not someone we’re familiar with. He is identified as Dr. Robert Browning.

Some laughter in the courtroom as Dr. Browning says he’s a “little bit” nervous about testifying for the first time.

Dr. Robert Browning is the next witness. He is a Purdue professor focusing on & the , he is also the head of archives. He says he was compelled to testify.

Robert Browning explained that C-SPAN is a “public television network that telecasts events in their entirety.”

Browning is a custodial witness, or records custodian - witnesses certify the truth of records presented. In this trial, the defense did not agree on certain facts that the prosecution sought to stipulate were true. So, the prosecutors need these sorts of witnesses to help the jury understand the basic truth of the episodes they want to talk about at trial.

Prosecutors played clips, starting w/one from an Oct 2016 campaign rally in NC, where he talks about 2 women who said Trump sexually assaulted them. “I have no idea who these women are,” Trump said at the time. “These are lies being pushed by the media & the Clinton campaign to try & keep their grip on our country. They’re all false, totally invented, fiction.”

Trump seems to be watching himself as the C-SPAN clip plays on the monitor in front of him.

Next is video of a campaign event did in PA, in Oct 2016. He blasts media outlets & says, “Every woman lied when they came forward to hurt my campaign.” He later vows to sue, saying "the events never happened, never."

Merchan precluded prosecution from introducing direct evidence that many women, near the end of the 2016 campaign, accused Trump of . They are getting some of that evidence into the trial w/these videos of Trump attacking the women on the campaign trail.

@Nonilex Even if Trump reposted messages from others, it constitutes an endorsement of them by him and an emphasis of those statements. A gag order is a gag order, period.

@Nonilex Do we know prosecutors sought a stipulation? Sometimes litigators elect to lay a formal foundation to focus the jury on the importance of the evidence being admitted. (In a similar vein, sometimes a lawyer will quickly stipulate to an opposition witness being an "expert" allowed to state opinions, to avoid the jury hearing about all that expert's qualifications and receiving the judge's influential impromatur.)

@Nonilex @Dodo_sipping When you have no scruples the sky is the limit and everything is an opportunity. The only answer to this behaviour is be without scruples too …. But that is not what most decent people want to be.
And here is the difference; Trump would be willing to misuse immunity, Biden would not.
#trump #VoteBlueToSaveEverything #VoteBlueToEndTheMadness

@Nonilex
No one has "silenced" him, unfortunately. If it was you, me, or any other everyday citizen, we'd have been locked up for contempt. And THAT is the problem that everyone, including his followers, needs to realize shows the real lack of equality in our nation. No one, should be above it all. No one.

@Nonilex Will the jury be made aware of the contempt ruling and fine?

@Nonilex Until he starts putting him in jail, Trump isn't going to stop. He's treating it like a fee, not a fine. This is going to be a regular cost of doing business for him.