Trump’s Own Witness in Fraud Trial Admits He Knows Nothing About Finances

One of Donald Trump’s expert witnesses in the New York business fraud trial admitted Friday that he is not, in fact, an expert.

Steven Laposa first took the stand Thursday to discuss the valuation of Trump’s real estate holdings. The New York attorney general has accused Trump and his allies of fraudulently inflating the value of their real estate assets to get more favorable terms on bank loans.

Laposa said the attorney general’s approach to valuation was “flawed” because it relied on a market value analysis of Trump’s properties. He argued it should have been based on the investment value, which takes into account the owner’s investment requirements.

When Laposa returned to the stand Friday, a lawyer for the attorney general’s office asked him if he had any experience reviewing personal financial statements. Laposa said no.

The lawyer, Louis Solomon, then asked if Laposa is or has ever been a certified appraiser. Again, Laposa said no.

Solomon cited Laposa’s initial deposition from July, in which he said that when “disparate valuations exist, it is prudent and common practice to examine the underlying assumptions.” Laposa admitted he had not done so with Trump’s valuations.

Laposa also revealed he had never seen the financial statements for Trump’s property at 40 Wall Street, which might make it difficult to value the property accurately. (On the stand Thursday, Laposa said that 40 Wall Street in Manhattan was also undervalued.)

It’s unclear what Trump’s legal team sought to accomplish by bringing in Laposa as an expert witness. His disastrous testimony reflects how much of the trial has gone for Trump.

The current trial is just to set damages. Presiding Judge Arthur Engoron determined in September that Trump had committed fraud. Engoron ordered that all Trump’s New York business certificates be canceled, making it nearly impossible to do business in the state and effectively killing the Trump Organization.

During the trial, Trump and his family members have all testified, and they have all made major mistakes. Trump’s lawyers also shared faulty evidence, undermining their own case.

Donald Trump was back to attacking New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron’s law clerk just hours after an appellate court suspended the gag order in his New York bank fraud trial.

In a post made on Truth Social Thursday evening, Trump slammed the gag order as “ridiculous and unconstitutional,” taking special note to ridicule the judge’s “politically biased and out of control, Trump hating clerk,” Allison Greenfield. Trump went on to snub Greenfield as “a disgrace” who is “sinking” Engoron and his court “to new levels of low.”

Engoron initially issued the gag order after Trump made derogatory comments toward his courtroom staff, specifically Greenfield, whom he accused of bias over a baseless assertion that she was dating Senator Chuck Schumer. Trump’s digital diatribe against the legal aide then ushered a scourge of far-right sympathizers onto her social media accounts.

“Personal attacks on members of my court staff are unacceptable, inappropriate, and I will not tolerate them in any circumstances,” Engoron said at the time.

Since then, Trump has twice violated the gag order, accruing $15,000 in fines and the threat of jail time.

Trump’s attorneys applauded the lifted order on Thursday, suggesting that public haranguing of courtroom staff is just a part of the job.

“There is not a day that I don’t get a threat. It’s just part of the game,” said Trump attorney Alina Habba. “If I put something out on social media, and I get a threat for it, which has happened to me every single day, I don’t get to cry.”

Another gag order on the former president survives, however, in his federal election subversion trial, overseen by Judge Tanya Chutkan.

Newly released audio from an interview recorded just two months after January 6 captures Donald Trump’s real thoughts on the insurrection. In his own words, the former president claimed it was within his abilities to stop the riot.

When asked by ABC chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl if he would have returned to the Capitol Building while thousands of MAGA supporters raided the building, Trump said he “would have.”

“I was going to,” Trump said in the recording, first published by CNN. “And then Secret Service said ‘you can’t’, and then by the time … I was thinking about going back during the problem to stop the problem, doing it myself. Secret Service didn’t like that idea too much.”

“And I could’ve done that,” Trump continued. “And you know what? I would have been very well received. Don’t forget, the people that went to Washington that day, in my opinion, they went because they thought the election was rigged. That’s why they went.”

But that cozy narrative—in which Trump wanted to benevolently wield his power to stop the riot—flies in the face of testimonies provided by more than a thousand witnesses during House January 6 committee hearings, including that of former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson.

According to Hutchinson, an “irate” Trump wanted to join the protesters at the Capitol Building so badly that he lunged at the clavicle of one of his Secret Service agents, Bobby Engel, before attempting to take the wheel of the presidential limo, nicknamed The Beast.

Hutchinson also testified that she overheard Trump saying he did not care if his supporters wielded weapons as they descended on Congress since he didn’t believe he would be a target of the violence.

The morning of, Trump also allegedly expressed frustration that his Secret Service were using metal-detecting magnetometers to keep armed people out of the area where he was set to give a speech.

“I overheard the president say something to the effect of ‘I don’t fucking care that they have weapons. They’re not here to hurt me. Take the fucking mags away. Let my people in, they can march to the Capitol from here. Let the people in, take the f---ing mags away,” she said.

Trump denied those allegations.

The January 6 committee also heard testimony purporting that Trump expressed support when he heard rioters were chanting to “hang Mike Pence” over the vice president fulfilling his constitutional duty to certify the vote for Joe Biden’s presidency.

In an 814-page final report, the committee determined that Trump “lit that fire,” fueling the violent, life-threatening raid in the weeks immediately preceding the insurrection.

Trump has been charged with four felony counts related to his actions on January 6, 2021.

Ex–Donald Trump attorney Jenna Ellis lashed out at her former boss, after his allies attacked her for flipping on the former president in the Fulton County case.

Ellis struck a plea deal with Fulton County prosecutors in late October, agreeing to testify against Donald Trump in exchange for a lighter sentence. Noted Islamophobe Laura Loomer, whom Donald Trump Jr. recommended as his father’s next press secretary, took aim at Ellis Thursday on X (formerly Twitter). Loomer called Ellis a “waste of space” and a “fake Christian.”

“Disloyal Harlots go to hell, Jenna,” Loomer wrote.

Ellis came out swinging Thursday night. “Don Jr’s pick for press secretary is claiming I am a ‘disloyal harlot’ and ‘going to hell,’” she tweeted.

“No mention though of Jr’s divorce, his girlfriend’s divorce from Gavin Newsom, or The Best Christian Ever screwing a porn star while his third wife was pregnant.”

When a commenter noted that Ellis had “turned quick,” Ellis demanded, “What’s not true in my post? Go ahead, I’ll wait.”

Everything Ellis mentioned in her tweet is true, and it was true even before she agreed to the plea deal. The difference, though, is that Ellis was not personally implicated in Trump’s multiple lawsuits until now.

Leaked video of Ellis’s testimony shows her providing incredibly damaging information to the Fulton County investigators. She describes how senior Trump aide Dan Scavino told her during the 2020 White House Christmas party that “the boss” intended to simply stay in office. Ellis explained that everyone knew “the boss” meant Trump.

Ellis said she pointed out that Trump had lost the election and they had lost all of their attempts to challenge the result in court. Scavino replied, “Well, we don’t care, and we’re not going to leave.”

Trump was charged with felony racketeering in Georgia for trying to overturn the state’s 2020 election results. He pleaded not guilty to all 13 charges. A big part of his defense is that he truly believed he won the election and was acting based on legal advice. Ellis’s testimony could prove to be his undoing.

A Palestinian student advocacy group is taking to the legal system to fight back against Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s efforts to kick them off student campuses.

On Thursday, the University of Florida chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine announced that it is suing DeSantis, Chancellor Ray Rodrigues, University of Florida President Ben Sasse, and other university leaders for “violating their [First] Amendment rights,” according to a statement by the nonprofit Palestine Legal.

The lawsuit, filed by Palestine Legal and the American Civil Liberties Union, stems from an unusual action taken by the state government last month, in which Rodrigues issued a letter calling for all chapters of the pro-Palestine group to be “deactivated,” claiming that they were providing “material support” to a “terrorist organization.”

Florida State’s chapter, however, argues that it has little to do with the national group or the statements it makes, according to the lawsuit.

SJP has just two chapters left in all of Florida: Florida State University and the University of North Florida.

“As students on a public college campus, we have every right to engage in human rights advocacy,” said Florida State’s chapter in a statement. “We know we have First Amendment rights in school and we’re bringing this lawsuit to make sure the government doesn’t silence us or others like us.”

Florida’s suppression of the local chapter is part of a larger national crackdown on the Palestinian advocacy group. Last month, the Anti-Defamation League and the Brandeis Center, both Jewish nonprofits, issued letters to nearly 200 university presidents across the country calling for an investigation into Students for Justice in Palestine.

Meanwhile, DeSantis has made his own stance on the protests abundantly clear.

On November 8, at the GOP presidential debate in Miami, DeSantis bragged that he had “deactivated” the group.

“We’re not gonna use tax dollars to fund jihad,” he said.

DeSantis also used the platform to openly threaten international students here on visas.

“If you are here on a student visa as a foreign national, and you’re making common cause with Hamas, I’m canceling your visa and I’m sending you home, no questions asked,” said DeSantis.

“Local chapters of student groups cannot be punished for their association with national organizations—nor can the government selectively punish and censor student groups for engaging in speech it doesn’t like or agree with,” said Palestine Legal.

The Tennessee city of Murfreesboro has revoked its ban on public homosexuality, but the rules it still has in place continue to unfairly target LGBTQ people.

Murfreesboro passed an ordinance in June banning “indecent behavior,” including “indecent exposure, public indecency, lewd behavior, nudity or sexual conduct.” The ordinance specifically mentions Section 21-72 of the city code, which states that sexual conduct includes homosexuality.

The city agreed on November 2, following a court order, to remove the mention of homosexuality from the city code, but the change has not yet been codified. Journalist Erin Reed reported that the amended code will go into effect on Friday. But as of publication, homosexuality is still listed as an act of public indecency on the Murfreesboro municipal code website.

Meanwhile, the June ordinance is still in effect and being used to unfairly target the LGBTQ community. An ACLU-backed challenge to the ordinance has already been launched, but that hasn’t stopped city officials from implementing the measure.

While the indecency ordinance does not specifically mention LGBTQ people, it is similar to the many drag bans passed across the country, all of which were ultimately blocked in court. The ordinance relies on overly vague language to frighten people into self-policing, and it hides behind the justification of “public decency” and protecting children. And the way it has been implemented makes it clear that the ordinance’s intended target is LGBTQ people.

City police also have the right to enforce the ordinance, meaning the rules are up to individual interpretation. As long as the city code still officially says homosexuality is banned, a strict or more conservative officer could target LGBTQ people.

Last week, the Rutherford County steering committee met to discuss removing all books that might potentially violate the ordinance from the public library. Murfreesboro city officials have already used the ordinance to ban four books that discuss LGBTQ themes.

In October, the organizers of BoroPride, the city’s Pride festival, won a court order barring Murfreesboro from enforcing the ordinance against Pride events. The court order also required that the city remove the mention of homosexuality from its public indecency code.

“Of course, they only did that after the judge slapped them down,” BoroPride volunteer Matt Ferry told the Murfreesboro Daily News Journal. “The problem is that the mayor and the city manager keep equating LGBTQ+ with actual sex predators, which couldn’t be further from the truth.”

“It’s hurting our LGBTQ+ community,” Ferry said. “It’s intimidating them. They were already afraid to come out in the open in Murfreesboro. This is going to make it worse.”

Donald Trump’s revenge spree against his former fixer Michael Cohen continued last month with a formal demand for Cohen to turn over all his personal devices.

Despite Cohen’s bombshell testimony in Trump’s $250 million New York bank fraud trial last month, this latest request is specific to the former president’s hush-money case, in which Trump faces 34 felony counts for falsifying business records related to paying off porn star Stormy Daniels in the waning days of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

On October 17, Trump’s legal team filed a formal demand for Cohen to give them “all documents and communications regarding the topics below that are stored on any medium under your possession or control, including but not limited to phones (including encrypted messaging applications), tablets, computers, and hard copy,” according to documents obtained by The Daily Beast.

District Attorney Alvin Bragg Jr.’s team argues that the tactic amounts to “witness intimidation” and could result in Trump disseminating sensitive texts, photos, and documents stored on Cohen’s cell phone. They are asking the judge to intervene, the outlet reported.

Trump has denied all wrongdoing and is seeking to dismiss the case outright, calling it a “discombobulated package of politically motivated charges” that interferes with his 2024 campaign to retake the White House.

Prosecutors have argued that reasoning shouldn’t hold any influence on the criminal proceedings.

“Defendant repeatedly suggests that because he is a current presidential candidate, the ordinary rules for criminal law and procedure should be applied differently here. This argument is essentially an attempt to evade criminal responsibility because [the] defendant is politically powerful,” prosecutors said on Thursday, according to ABC News.

The trial is slated to begin on March 25, though that date could be changed if it gets in the way of Trump standing trial over his involvement in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, according to the judge.

Elon Musk has endorsed a virulently antisemitic conspiracy theory that Jewish people are getting what they deserve after pushing “diabolical hatred against whites.”

The blowup started with one user posting an ad on X, formerly known as Twitter, urging antisemites who believed “Hitler was right” should stop hiding behind a digital cloak of anonymity.

Then one user emerged with a neo-Nazi talking point, pegging Jewish communities for pushing alleged racism against white people.

“Jewish commun[i]ties have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them,” posted X user @breakingbaht. “I’m deeply disinterested in giving the tiniest shit now about western Jewish populations coming to the disturbing realization that those hordes of minorities that [they] support flooding their country don’t exactly like them too much.”

“You want truth said to your face, there it is,” they added.

“You have said the actual truth,” Musk responded.

The comments are disturbingly in line with the antisemitic “great replacement” theory touted by the Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue shooter, Robert Bowers. 

After more than an hour of intense backlash, Musk reframed his comments with another post, claiming only to be chastising the Jewish nonprofit organization the Anti-Defamation League, an organization he threatened to sue earlier this year for monitoring hate speech on X.

“The ADL unjustly attacks the majority of the West, despite the majority of the West supporting the Jewish people and Israel. This is because they cannot, by their own tenets, criticize the minority groups who are their primary threat. It is not right and needs to stop,” the entrepreneur added.

But far-right users are already chuffed by Musk’s engagement, adding their own prejudice into the mix.

“Judaism is extremely anti European,” wrote one user.

Another responded by retweeting his earlier comments claiming that if it weren’t for Jews, “we’d enjoy our 90% White countries. But they want their nation while destroying our sovereignty.”

The billionaire’s comments were also retweeted by Nick Fuentes, a Hitler-loving, self-proclaimed white supremacist who once analogized the murder of six million Jews during the Holocaust to cookies being baked in the oven.

Musk has an extensive history of leveraging his social media platform to spread controversial and problematic stances. Recently, the world’s wealthiest man has agreed with posts purporting that “‘decolonization’ is the woke version of jihad” and posted that they should “drop the “A” and go with Defamation League” after the Anti-Defamation League released a poll indicating that hate speech against Jews had risen by 61 percent on X since Musk’s takeover.

Representative Becca Balint on Thursday became the first Jewish member of Congress to call for a cease-fire in Gaza, joining a steadily growing number of Democrats demanding peace.

A total of 32 lawmakers have now called for a cease-fire. Balint joins 30 other representatives and just one senator, Dick Durbin.

“What is needed right now is an immediate break in violence to allow for a true negotiated cease-fire,” Balint wrote in a column for VTDigger. “One in which both sides stop the bloodshed, allow critical access to humanitarian aid and move towards negotiating a sustainable and lasting peace.”

“I’m one generation removed from the horrific trauma of the Holocaust, which impacted my family and reshaped the world. Like me, there are thousands of American Jews that share a deep emotional connection to Israel because of what it meant for the survival of the Jewish people in the face of extermination,” Balint said.

“This same history also drives so many of us to fight for the protection of Palestinian lives. I do not claim to know how to solve every aspect of this decades-long conflict. But what I do know is that killing civilians, and killing children, is an abomination and categorically unacceptable—no matter who the civilians are, and no matter who the children are.”

It’s notable that Balint is the first Jewish lawmaker to call for a cease-fire, in part because her words add weight against any arguments that supporting Palestinian civilians is somehow antisemitic. But it’s also significant that she called for a cease-fire before her fellow Vermonter Senator Bernie Sanders.

Sanders has remained silent on a cease-fire, despite huge amounts of pressure from his supporters. More than 300 Democratic National Convention delegates who backed Sanders during his 2016 and 2020 presidential runs urged him Wednesday to introduce a resolution calling for a cease-fire. Three weeks ago, nearly 300 of his former campaign staffers also called on Sanders to support a cease-fire.

Congress has been overwhelmed by the outpour of public support for a cease-fire. Democrats reportedly are telling their staff to let calls from voters go to voicemail while the party forms an official opinion.

President Joe Biden has so far resisted calls for a cease-fire, though, telling reporters last week that there was “no possibility” of one. Meanwhile, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer participated in a March for Israel rally on Tuesday. One of the speakers was far-right evangelical Pastor John Hagee, a known antisemite who once claimed Jews were responsible for the Holocaust. Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who last month suggested that civilians in Gaza are legitimate targets, also attended the rally.

On Wednesday, Democratic Representative Brad Sherman spread dangerous misinformation when he described a protest calling for a cease-fire “pro-terrorist.”

More than 11,100 Palestinian civilians, more than half of them children, have been killed in Israel’s ongoing retaliation to Hamas’s October 7 attack. The fighting has also killed at least 39 journalists and other media workers and more than 100 United Nations employees.

Ohio Republicans are considering a bill that would incentivize donations to anti-abortion facilities, just a week after residents voted to protect abortion rights in the state Constitution.

The state Senate Finance Committee discussed a Republican bill on Tuesday that would give tax credits to people who donate to “qualifying pregnancy resource centers.” There are more than 175 such facilities in Ohio, although only donations to nonprofit centers would qualify for the tax credit. The bill proposes Ohio credit a total of up to $10 million.

Pregnancy resource centers, also called crisis pregnancy centers, are run by anti-abortion activists with the intention of convincing people not to get an abortion. The centers, which are often faith-based, do provide some resources for pregnant people. But they don’t provide a full range of reproductive health care and are instead meant to “scare, shame, or pressure” patients out of getting an abortion. They also often spread harmful misinformation, such as saying that the abortion pill is reversible.

There are more than 2,500 crisis pregnancy centers in the U.S., according to the Crisis Pregnancy Center Map, an organization that works to share accurate information about the fake clinics. Crisis pregnancy centers outnumber actual abortion facilities by nearly three to one.

The Ohio bill comes a week after residents voted overwhelmingly to enshrine abortion rights in the state Constitution. The bill would make it appealing to donate to anti-abortion facilities and could drown out pro-abortion donations. This could render the amendment moot: Protecting reproductive rights doesn’t mean anything if Ohioans can’t access the proper care.

Since their landslide loss last week, Republicans seem to be working overtime to circumvent democracy. This week’s bill is their second attempt post vote to overthrow the will of the people. Just two days after the election, a group of Republican state representatives proposed blocking the courts from implementing the amendment.

And that’s not even taking into account everything Republicans did to try to stop the vote from happening at all. In August, they tried to raise the threshold for constitutional amendments to a 60 percent vote instead of a simple majority.

When that failed, the Ohio Ballot Board voted 3–2, along party lines, to change the text of the amendment on the ballot to a Republican-authored summary littered with inflammatory and fearmongering language.