Michael Cohen Schools Trump’s Dumb Lawyer

At Donald Trump’s hush-money trial Thursday, his former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen had a legal lesson for Trump’s counsel.

Cohen, a witness for the prosecution, was being cross-examined by Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche, who asked Cohen about conversations that the former Trump employee had secretly recorded. 

Blanche, in a stern tone, asked Cohen if he ever told anyone that he was recording them, and reportedly seemed surprised when Cohen said no.

Cohen calmly told Blanche, “It’s not illegal in New York.” Blanche seemed offended at this answer.

“Mr. Cohen, I did not ask you if you were breaking the law,” Blanche replied.

In the state of New York, for a recording to be made legally, one-party consent is required. This means that one party to the recorded conversation has to give their permission to be in accordance with the law, and Cohen, as the one making the recordings, had that consent from himself.

Earlier, Blanche pressed Cohen about recorded conversations that were privileged, like those between attorney and client, but then probably wished he hadn’t.

“You understand that it is not ethical to record a conversation with your client, there’s lots of New York bar opinions on this. But you are not supposed to record your client,” Blanche said.

“Well, there’s the crime-fraud exception rule,” Cohen replied, alluding to the case in question.

Cohen has been testifying all this week on his role in Trump’s scheme to cover up an affair with adult film actress Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election by paying her off with Cohen’s help. The Republican presidential nominee faces 34 felony charges for allegedly falsifying business records with the intent to further an underlying crime. Trump has pleaded not guilty on all counts.

Jared Kushner secured a massive $500 million contract with the state of Serbia to build a hotel on the memorialized ruins of a former military base in Belgrade, The New York Times reported Thursday.

The announcement of the contract reportedly provoked protests in Belgrade against the deal, which is being bankrolled by Kushner’s Saudi-backed investment company, Affinity Partners. In defense of the contract, a Serbian government official described Kushner’s company primarily funded by foreign interests as a “reputable American company.”

“The government of Serbia has chosen a reputable American company as a partner in this venture, which will invest in the revitalization of the former Federal Secretariat for National Defense complex,” the statement read. The deal with Kushner’s company inked by Serbian officials includes a 99-year lease to convert the site into a luxury hotel, commercial space, and over 1,500 residential units.

This is one of the biggest investment deals Kushner has landed while his father-in-law, Donald Trump, runs for president.

Prior to approval of the contract, public officials in Serbia heavily opposed the deal for its insensitivity and potential for political manipulation. Serbian politician Borko Stefanovic described the location as “one of the pearls of pre-war architecture” to The Daily Beast, noting, “Most Serbs believe this site should not be desecrated in any way.”

A petition was launched in Serbia against the contract with Kushner in late March that generated 10,000 signatures in a matter of hours and over 25,000 within days, according to The Daily Beast. The location has long been sought after by Trump and his acolytes: In 2013, Trump expressed interest in turning the site into a hotel. In 2020, while serving as a diplomat for Trump, Richard Grenell—who joins Kushner on this contract—suggested “repairing” the complex.

The Yugoslav Ministry of Defense military complex was bombed by NATO forces in 1999 during a U.S.-backed campaign that killed an estimated 2,000 civilians and lasted until the Yugoslav Army retreated from Kosovo during the Kosovo War. The prospect of a U.S. company building anything on the site was described by Politico as “if the Taliban wanted to build a luxury apartment compound on the site of New York’s Twin Towers.”

Kansas City Chiefs Harrison Butker upset more than just a few women online with the misogynistic commencement speech he gave at Benedictine College over the weekend. As of Thursday, more than 120,000 people had signed an online petition calling on the NFL team to give the kicker the boot.

“We demand accountability from our sports figures who should be role models promoting respect for all people regardless of their race, gender identity or sexual orientation,” the petition reads. “We call upon the Kansas City Chiefs management to dismiss Harrison Butker immediately for his inappropriate conduct.”

In the span of just a few minutes, Butker managed to rail against abortion, IVF, surrogacy, euthanasia, the LGBTQ community, and the “tyranny of diversity, equity, and inclusion” programs. He also encouraged the women in the crowd at the private Catholic college to forget the “diabolical lies” sold to them and to return to the “vocation” of bearing children and cooking in the kitchen instead of beginning careers related to their degrees. The strangest part is that Butker holds these beliefs in spite of the fact that his own success is in part due to his mother’s career as a medical physicist at the Emory University Department of Radiation Oncology.

But the growing chorus of people calling for Butker to face consequences for the remarks hasn’t translated into action by the NFL. Instead, the football league issued a lukewarm response, scarcely acknowledging Butker’s disturbing views.

“Harrison Butker gave a speech in his personal capacity,” Jonathan Beane, the NFL’s senior vice president and chief diversity and inclusion officer, told People. “His views are not those of the NFL as an organization. The NFL is steadfast in our commitment to inclusion, which only makes our league stronger.”

Still, the chauvinistic messaging could stir up problems for another Chiefs player, team captain Travis Kelce, whose relationship with pop superstar—and self-described feminist—Taylor Swift has launched him and the football team into national celebrity status. Especially since Butker specifically called Swift out in his speech, quoting a line from her song “Bejeweled” that “familiarity breeds contempt.”

Some of Donald Trump’s biggest supporters in Congress showed up at his hush-money trial on Thursday. They didn’t plan on being publicly embarrassed.

Representatives Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert were among those who made the trek to Manhattan, ostensibly to support the former president. They quickly found themselves the object of scorn from local New Yorkers.

The audience at the trainwreck press conference also heckled the members of Congress, even chanting “Beetlejuice” at Boebert, a reference to her inappropriate behavior at a live theatrical performance of Beetlejuice last fall. To make matters worse, the heckling came as she tried to get some microphone time as her colleagues quickly left her behind.

The MAGA politicians had other plans for their New York trip. Perhaps they wanted to get out of their actual legislative work, tease a second insurrection, make a cringey campaign ad with Trump, or help him skirt his gag order (which would be illegal). Maybe they think their support will help the presumptive Republican nominee for president’s self-esteem, as his trial is certainly not going well for him.

Trump is facing 34 felony charges for allegedly falsifying business records with the intent to further an underlying crime by using  his former fixer, Michael Cohen, to pay off adult film actress Stormy Daniels to cover up an affair before the 2016 election. Each day of the trial brings more damning testimony and evidence against Trump.

The Supreme Court rejected a challenge to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Thursday, ending a case that would have had wide-ranging implications for federal agencies.

In a shocking move, Justice Clarence Thomas took the lead on the 7–2 decision, in which the court decided that the funding mechanism for the financial sector regulator—which comes from a standing pool of funds issued by Congress outside of its typical appropriations bill process—was completely legitimate.

The case reached the Supreme Court after the ultraconservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the method violated the appropriations clause and was thereby unconstitutional.

“Under the Appropriations Clause, an appropriation is simply a law that authorizes expenditures from a specified source of public money for designated purposes. The statute that provides the Bureau’s funding meets these requirements,” Thomas wrote in the majority opinion. “We therefore conclude that the Bureau’s funding mechanism does not violate the Appropriations Clause.”

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Samuel Alito argued that the current structure effectively allows the agency to “bankroll its own agenda without any congressional control or oversight.”

“There is apparently nothing wrong with a law that empowers the Executive to draw as much money as it wants from any identified source for any permissible purpose until the end of time,” Alito wrote.

But a conversation about constitutionality is not where the case originated. In 2018, the Community Financial Services Association of America and the Consumer Service Alliance of Texas, a trade association that represents payday lenders and credit-access businesses, sued the bureau in an attempt to plug a crackdown on payday loans.

“For years, lawbreaking companies and Wall Street lobbyists have been scheming to defund essential consumer protection enforcement,” a CFPB spokesperson said in a statement. “The Supreme Court has rejected their radical theory that would have devastated the American financial markets. The Court repudiated the arguments of the payday loan lobby and made it clear that the CFPB is here to stay.”

In another surprise move, Thomas hit back hard at Alito’s dissent, saying his usual far-right comrade in arms had failed to connect his argument to the actual case at hand.

But legal experts were quick to qualify that the high court’s rational decision wasn’t a sign of its moderation, but rather a symptom of how unhinged the Fifth Circuit has become.

“We’re going to come back to this a lot over the next six weeks, but *please* don’t confuse ‘#SCOTUS slaps down a wackadoodle Fifth Circuit decision’ with ‘#SCOTUS is more moderate than its critics claim,’” wrote University of Texas at Austin law professor Steven Vladeck. “‘Not as radical as the Fifth Circuit’ is not the same as ‘moderate.’”

The court will hear more high-profile challenges to the authority of federal agencies in the coming weeks, with two cases focusing on guns and abortion rights.

On Thursday morning, before his hush-money trial resumed, Donald Trump ranted and raved outside of court and, in the process, likely violated his gag order by attacking one of the prosecutors.

“A lead person from the DOJ is running the trial, so Biden’s office is running this trial. This trial is a scam, and it shouldn’t happen,” Trump said.

Trump was referring to Matthew Colangelo, the lead prosecutor on the case and a former attorney for the Department of Justice. Earlier this month, the New York Post reported that Colangelo was a political consultant to the Democratic National Committee. Trump’s gag order prohibits him from attacking court staff, jurors, the prosecution, witnesses, and their families. He has already violated the order 10 times, resulting in being fined $10,000, and Merchan has warned that any further violations would result in jail time.

Complaining that he wasn’t allowed to respond to damaging testimony from his former fixer and attorney Michael Cohen, as well as adult film actress Stormy Daniels, Trump had his legal team appeal to have the gag order tossed out—only to be denied by a New York appeals court on Tuesday. That didn’t stop Trump from trying other methods to get around the gag order Wednesday, having his political allies criticize the people off-limits to him.

Trump is accused of paying off Daniels in order to keep their affair under wraps before the 2016 presidential election with the help of Cohen, and faces 34 felony charges for allegedly falsifying business records with the intent to further an underlying crime. If found guilty, he would likely serve prison time. With these repeated gag order violations, though, Trump might see the inside of a jail very soon.

Representative Lauren Boebert admitted exactly why she and her conservative coterie appeared at Manhattan Criminal Court on Thursday for Donald Trump’s hush-money trial: to help him circumvent his gag order.

The firebrand representative of Beetlejuice fame immediately took to X (formerly Twitter) to denigrate lead witness Michael Cohen and Judge Juan Merchan’s daughter on Trump’s behalf.

Boebert seemed to acknowledge that she was acting as a surrogate to violate Trump’s gag order, writing on X, “They may have gagged President Trump. They didn’t gag me. They didn’t gag the rest of us.”

“I wonder if I’ll run into Judge Merchan’s daughter here in court today,” Boebert wrote, accusing her of “being paid millions and millions of dollars by Democrat campaigns all across the country.”

Boebert also threw some barbs at key witness Michael Cohen, asking, “Why is that fraud Michael Cohen allowed on TikTok with a shirt of Trump behind bars but Trump can’t speak out?”

Conservative attacks against Merchan’s daughter—an attorney who operates a progressive political consulting firm—have raged on for weeks, spearheaded by Trump in an effort to remove Merchan from overseeing the case. Trump’s attacks have led to threats against family members of prosecutors overseeing the case. Merchan criticized the behavior as an effort to impede the rule of law.

Merchan’s gag order prohibits Trump from speaking about people participating in his hush-money trial, save for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and Merchan himself. The order also bars Trump from speaking about the judge’s and prosecution’s family members. Trump is similarly prohibited from tapping surrogates to speak on his behalf.

While none have yet explicitly acknowledged they’re acting as surrogates for Trump, multiple conservative politicians have criticized the gag order while making denigrating statements in line with Trump’s against those Trump is prohibited from speaking about. Earlier this week, Senator Tommy Tuberville admitted he went to the trial to help Trump “overcome his gag order.”

When asked on Tuesday if Trump was using people to speak on his behalf, Trump declared, “I do have many surrogates, and they’re all speaking very beautifully.”

Merchan previously noted that, as Trump has violated his gag order 10 times, he may have to consider jail time should he violate it again. For Merchan to take action on surrogates, there would need to be proof that Trump directed them to speak. With these blabbermouths, direct admission seems to be just a matter of time.

Droves of Republicans arrived at Donald Trump’s New York hush-money trial Thursday in a show of support and power for the presumed GOP presidential nominee—but that didn’t mean the lawmakers were actually off for the day.

The lawmakers who trekked up to New York for the day included Representatives Andy Biggs, Lauren Boebert, and Anna Paulina Luna, all of whom sit on the House Oversight Committee. The committee rescheduled a contempt markup for Attorney General Merrick Garland to 8 p.m. from 11 a.m., evidently so members could attend Trump’s trial.

“I guess we all know who is setting the Committee’s calendar now,” wrote the official X (formerly Twitter) account for the Oversight Committee Democrats.

Other politicians who made the field trip included Representatives Matt Gaetz, Eli Craine, and Andy Ogles, as well as Virginia state Senator John McGuire. McGuire is running against House Freedom Caucus Chair Bob Good in the Virginia Republican representative primaries.

They join a long lineup of Republicans who have traveled the distance to be in the background of the trial, protesting the legal proceedings as well as the gag order on Trump, which restricts him from making disparaging remarks against witnesses, court staff, or their families.

“They may have gagged President Trump. They didn’t gag me. They didn’t gag the rest of us,” Boebert wrote in a post on X.

Earlier in the week, former North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, House Speaker Mike Johnson, and Senators Tim Scott, J.D. Vance, and Tommy Tuberville all paid their own visits.

On Tuesday, biotech investor Vivek Ramaswamy, RNC co-chair Lara Trump, Eric Trump and two Republican representatives showed up at the New York courthouse in matching suits and ties for a low-budget fundraising ad that attempted to portray Trump as a candidate unjustly locked in the courthouse.

As court resumes for Trump’s hush-money trial, Representative Matt Gaetz published a creepy, blurry photo of himself at Manhattan Criminal Court with the caption, “Standing back and standing by, Mr. President.”

Gaetz’s post—which originally included no caption—immediately evokes the line first deployed by Trump during a September 29, 2020, presidential debate against Joe Biden directed to the Proud Boys, a far-right extremist group known to essentially function as a violent street gang.

During that debate, moderator Chris Wallace asked Trump if he condemned the presence of white supremacist and militia groups at events in support of his presidency. Trump avoided condemnation, instead asking Wallace to provide him a name. “The Proud Boys,” Biden added.

“Proud Boys, stand back and stand by,” Trump responded. Afterward, Trump claimed to not know who the Proud Boys were, saying, “Whoever they are, they have to stand down. Let law enforcement do their work.” Despite this, Trump’s “stand back” comment was broadly interpreted among the far right as a call to mobilize on his command.

Immediately following the September debate, the Proud Boys released a flier with the phrase “Stand back and stand by” announcing a November 14, 2020, protest in Washington, D.C., that MAGA groups dubbed “Million MAGA March.” Following that day-long protest, a gang of drunken Proud Boys roamed the streets of D.C. on the hunt for anti-fascists, leading to a violent brawl where Proud Boys attacked counterprotesters and press.

Soon after, a second protest was called for December 12, 2020, titled “Ten Million MAGA March.” Proud Boys again showed up to D.C. in droves, getting into fights with counterprotesters and D.C. residents that led to dozens of arrests and multiple stabbing attacks. Soon after, the MAGAsphere announced a multiday protest in D.C. titled “Stop the Steal” that concluded with the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot. That riot was partly organized by the Proud Boys, whose leaders would later receive convictions for seditious conspiracy.

On Wednesday, Trump attorney Will Scharf was left tongue-tied after one simple question from CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. 

Collins asked Scharf, also a Republican candidate in Missouri’s race for attorney general, “You’re an attorney, obviously: Have you ever gotten a legal retainer that was grossed up by hundreds of thousands of dollars?”

The reference to Donald Trump’s hush-money case caught Scharf off guard, and he scrambled to put together an answer.

“Uh-uh-uh, I mean I’ve received payment for legal services in many ways before: contingency fees, fee per hour,” Scharf said. “I think different people come to different agreements.”

But Collins wasn’t done. “Have you ever been owed a certain amount, let’s say $100,000 that you did in billable hours and you got $330,000?” she asked.

Scharf still had to gather his thoughts. “Kaitlan, I, respectfully, the point here is that the payments are ancillary to the case that the prosecution is trying to prove which relates to the records of the payments, not the payments themselves,” he said. “Hush-money reimbursement for hush money—none of that’s a crime.”

The exchange is telling. While Scharf isn’t part of Trump’s hush-money case, he, thanks to his legal knowledge, clearly has trouble justifying Trump’s actions. Trump is charged with 34 felony counts for allegedly falsifying business records with the intent to further an underlying crime by using his former fixer and attorney, Michael Cohen, to pay off adult film actress Stormy Daniels to cover up an affair before the 2016 presidential election. Trump made the “grossed up” payments to Cohen to reimburse him for paying off Daniels and to avoid taxes and scrutiny. Cohen’s testimony has made it clear that Trump was involved in every step of the alleged crime. If the Republican presidential nominee is found guilty in the case, how will his attorneys and surrogates justify it?