Trump’s First Criminal Trial Just Got a New Witness—and She’s a Doozy

Donald Trump’s already star-studded hush money trial just added a new witness to its lineup: former Trump White House Communications Director Hope Hicks.

Hicks had previously testified before a grand jury investigating Trump’s 2020 election interference, and she will testify again, reported MSNBC on Monday.

The trial, which is scheduled to begin jury selection on April 15, focuses on accusations against the former president for allegedly using his former fixer Michael Cohen to sweep an affair with porn actress Stormy Daniels under the rug ahead of the 2016 presidential election. Hicks was, at the time, serving as Trump’s campaign press secretary.

An attorney for Hicks claimed in 2019 that the ex-aide was unaware of any hush money payments between her boss and Daniels, but an FBI affidavit in Cohen’s federal criminal case cast doubt on that, citing evidence that Cohen had exchanged calls, text messages, and emails with Daniels’s legal counsel, Trump, and Hicks.

“I have learned that in the days following the Access Hollywood video, Cohen exchanged a series of calls, text messages and emails with Keith Davidson, who was then [Daniels’s] attorney, David Pecker and Dylan Howard of American Media Inc., the publisher of the National Enquirer, Trump, and Hope Hicks, who was then press secretary for Trump’s presidential campaign,” the affidavit reads.

Trump is facing 34 felony charges in this case for allegedly falsifying business records with the intent to further an underlying crime. He has pleaded not guilty on all counts.

Alongside Hicks, Cohen and Daniels are also expected to be star witnesses in the trial, though Trump had previously attempted to keep both of them far away from it on the basis that the two were “liars.” But last month, a judge nixed that effort, allowing them both to testify.

This story has been updated.

A Republican representative thinks that the U.S. response to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza brought on by Israel’s bombing campaign should be resolved “like Nagasaki and Hiroshima.”

Michigan Representative Tim Walberg made the horrific comment during a town hall meeting on Friday. In response to an audience question about the United States building a temporary port in Gaza to facilitate aid deliveries, he said that the U.S. shouldn’t be sending any aid to Palestinans in the region.

“We shouldn’t be spending a dime on humanitarian aid,” Walberg said.

Instead, “it should be like Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Get it over quick,” he said.

Palestinians in Gaza are experiencing a humanitarian crisis including starvation and a lack of medical care due to Israel’s war and invasion of the territory, which Tel Aviv claims is in response to the October 7 attacks. In Walberg’s eyes, any humanitarian aid to the Palestinians would support Hamas, Iran, Russia, and “arguably North Korea’s in there, and China too.”

After receiving criticism from Michigan Democrats over the remarks, a spokesperson for Walberg, Mike Rorke, told the Detroit Free Press that “during [Walberg’s] community gathering, he clearly uses a metaphor to support Israel’s swift elimination of Hamas, which is the best chance to save lives long-term and the only hope at achieving a permanent peace in the region.”

Rorke said that Walberg “has great empathy for the innocent people in Gaza” and noted that “Hamas still is holding hostages, including Americans. Hamas should surrender and return the hostages.”

Walberg’s comments are just the latest in a series of violent and often bigoted comments from right-wing politicians about Palestinians and Israel’s war in Gaza, which is entering its fifth month. Donald Trump said early in March that Israel had to “finish the problem” in Gaza, while Representative Brian Mast compared Palestinians to Nazis in November and even questioned the innocence of Palestinian babies in February. Meanwhile, the U.S. recently approved sending more bombs and fighter jets to Israel.

If Donald Trump is elected to a second term in November, his allies plan to end this country’s long-standing oppression of a major marginalized group in America: white people.

Trump’s supporters inside and outside his campaign are making plans to use civil rights laws to counter what they perceive as “anti-white racism,” Axios reported Monday. These include programs that seek to combat racism within the government and corporate America, such as those that provide economic opportunities to marginalized and minority groups. Some of these programs began after the pandemic and racial justice protests of 2020, while others go back decades.

”As President Trump has said, all staff, offices, and initiatives connected to Biden’s un-American policy will be immediately terminated,” Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign, told Axios.

At the center of this push is former Trump adviser Stephen Miller. Since leaving the White House, Miller co-founded America First Legal as a conservative “long-awaited answer to the ACLU.” The group has spent its time filing legal actions ranging from a civil rights complaint over the NFL’s mandatory policy of having teams interview minority candidates for head coaching positions to another complaint that Kellogg’s allegedly sexualized and politicized Pop-Tarts in a marketing campaign.

If elected, one can only suspect that Miller and his allies would have the full force of the federal government to pursue their racist agenda. And Trump voters would likely welcome this, considering 58 percent of them believe that people of color have advantages over white people, according to a CBS News poll from 2023.

And it’s not just Miller: There are a host of right-wing legal minds preparing for day one of a new Trump administration so they can execute a wish list of horrors. The Heritage Foundation, a prominent conservative think tank, already has published Project 2025, a long playbook that includes not only dismantling anti-racism efforts but also taking aim at reproductive and LGBTQ rights. There’s no telling what more damage Trump could do with a Cabinet full of America’s top racist and fascist minds.

Donald Trump has asked to adjourn his hush money trial indefinitely on the basis of too much “pre-trial publicity.”

The former reality TV host and his legal team are arguing that the nature of his charges is so widely known in New York that it would be impossible for him to get a fair trial. That is, of course, despite the fact that Trump has used practically all the platforms available to him, including his rallies and his social media company, to draw more attention to the proceedings.

Still, Trump was quick to place blame on practically everyone else for the widely circulated news. In court documents, which were filed last week but released Monday, Trump blamed the district attorney of New York for the “manufactured timing of Weisselberg’s plea,” referring to former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg pleading guilty to perjury.

Trump also claimed that his former fixer Michael Cohen would “spew vitriol” to “anyone who will listen,” and slammed porn actress Stormy Daniels’ latest documentary about her legal saga with the former president, claiming it was filled with “prejudicial, false commentary about this case.”

After surveying 400 residents from New York, Orange, Richmond, Rockland, and Suffolk Counties, Trump’s legal team determined that “many of the potential jurors already wrongfully believe that President Trump is guilty.”

The team also pointed to a “media study” finding, claiming that they had found 1,223 online news articles published between January and February that “included prejudicial discussion of other proceedings involving President Trump and inaccurate and irrelevant discussions of alleged sexual misconduct, including false claims regarding ‘rape.’”

The tactic is, most likely, another attempt to delay the only one of Trump’s criminal trials currently on the docket, with jury selection scheduled to begin April 15.

Judge Juan Merchan has so far batted away several other delay tactics by the GOP presidential nominee, resulting in a ruling last week that Trump’s legal team must first ask for permission to make future filings in an effort to avoid more delays.

Last month, the court overcame a brief delay in the trial after the Southern District of New York offloaded 100,000 pages worth of documents mere days before the trial was scheduled to begin.

Trump is accused of using Cohen to sweep an affair with Daniels under the rug ahead of the 2016 presidential election. He faces 34 felony charges in this case for allegedly falsifying business records with the intent to further an underlying crime. Trump has pleaded not guilty on all counts.

This story has been updated.

The anti-abortion movement in Texas has adjusted course—and it’s headed toward putting abortion and IVF patients on death row.

Leaked video footage of an Abolish Abortion Texas function shows Hood County Republican Party officials in attendance at a meeting supporting the death penalty for women and minors who seek out either procedure. The meeting took place in January, but the video was only shared to X (formerly Twitter) last week.

“There’s no difference in the value of born people and preborn people,” said Paul Brown, the group’s director. “In short, abortion is murder. And that’s starting at the moment of fertilization even prior to implantation. So that Plan B pill, or what’s known as the morning-after pill, which is used to terminate or kill a baby prior to implantation, that is an abortion.”

This is false. Emergency contraception such as Plan B prevents fertilization from occurring.

“Other forms of abortion in this category include what happens in IVF, when a fertilized egg is created and is oftentimes destroyed,” Brown continued. “Those that do are terminating or destroying human life.”

Brown also added that abortions provided for victims of incest or rape will “never be OK,” noting in his speech that “[women’s] lives don’t matter any more than the babies’ they are killing.”

Hood County Constable Scott London, Hood County GOP Chair Steve Biggers, and Hood County GOP chair candidate Greg Harrell attended the meeting, but many more GOP hopefuls have signed a pledge with the anti-abortion group and received its endorsement. That includes state Representative Jay Dean and former Texas House Speaker Tom Craddick, as well as more than a dozen Texas state House candidates.

“The fact that Texas Republicans are meeting with people willing to send pregnant women and doctors to Death Row should terrify every person in Texas. Make no mistake: Texas Republicans will strip women of their basic healthcare rights and will not stop at just banning abortion,” said Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa in a statement.

“They will punish women and doctors for seeking and performing basic health care, they will ban IVF and they will create a hostile and inhumane state. All of these candidates should be ashamed of themselves. This isn’t Texas, but this is the Republican party of Texas.”

The White House recognized Transgender Day of Visibility on Sunday, which should be pretty innocuous—except it fell on Easter Sunday this year. And, as one might expect, the right was outraged.

The White House released a statement Friday calling on Americans to “join us in lifting up the lives and voices of transgender people throughout our Nation and to work toward eliminating violence and discrimination based on gender identity.”

The Trump campaign responded the following day, calling the declaration “blasphemous” and demanding Joe Biden “issue an apology to the millions of Catholics and Christians across America who believe tomorrow is for one celebration only—the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

On X (formerly Twitter), Speaker Mike Johnson, Senator Marsha Blackburn, and Chaya Raichik (a.k.a. Libs of TikTok) all blasted the declaration as attacking Christianity and a conspiracy.

The International Transgender Day of Visibility has taken place on March 31 every year since 2009. The fact that it fell on the same day as Easter this year is a coincidence. To Fox News’s credit, host Howard Kurtz did point this out Sunday, noting that “Biden didn’t pick the date.”

Of course, hours earlier, Fox News was up in arms over the White House allegedly promoting paganism during its annual Easter egg roll, specifically for prohibiting overtly religious designs.

In a statement to the Associated Press, White House spokesperson Andrew Bates reminded everyone that “as a Christian who celebrates Easter with family, President Biden stands for bringing people together and upholding the dignity and freedoms of every American.”

Speaking of blasphemy, the Trump campaign has little room to talk, as over the weekend the former president claimed on Truth Social he was being crucified like Jesus, and invoked the holiday to attack his political and legal enemies. This follows his desperate attempt to raise money by selling “God Bless the USA” Bibles for $60 each.

Representative Nancy Mace is still defending Donald Trump—but won’t parse out her reasoning in the wake of the GOP presidential pick’s judgment in his E. Jean Carroll trial saga.

Instead, the South Carolina Republican took to Fox News on Sunday to defend a viral interview she gave last month with ABC’s This Week, which went south when anchor George Stephanopoulos prompted her to explain a contradiction: How could she, a rape victim, support the presidency of someone who had been found liable for sexual abuse?

Explaining to Fox News host Howard Kurtz, Mace branded the line of questioning as “10 minutes of rape-shaming” and accused the network of flagrantly bringing up the issue while her “underage daughter” was with her.

Except Stephanopolous’s question was based on Mace’s own account, which she brought up during an abortion debate while serving as a lawmaker in South Carolina’s legislature in 2021. Mace said that the video clip This Week played of her own story had “sabotaged” her.

“But at the same time, it really exposed the left because if you don’t succumb to their ideology or prescribe to the way that they think, if you don’t think the way they want you to, they will bully you,” Mace said. “They will shame you. They’ll shame you over being raped.”

“As a man, George Stephanopoulos tried to mansplain rape to me,” she continued. “I don’t need some man telling me how I should feel about rape. I don’t need some man telling me as a rape victim that I can’t vote Republican and vote for the man I believe that can save our country.”

Trump filed a defamation lawsuit against ABC last month to prove that he was just a sexual abuser—not a rapist, as Stephanopoulos had said during the viral interview. Mace also insisted Sunday that Trump “never was” found guilty of rape.

It’s unclear how Trump’s verbiage suit will play out in court, though his unexpected specificity flies in the face of another precedent set by the court. In July, Judge Lewis Kaplan clarified that although New York penal law has a “far narrower” definition of rape, the jury still found Trump to have raped Carroll in the modern sense of the word.

Donald Trump on Friday asked a Georgia state appeals court to remove Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from his election interference case, the former president’s latest attempt to delay legal proceedings.

Judge Scott McAfee ruled two weeks ago that Willis could remain on the case she built against Trump if her special prosecutor resigned. Nathan Wade submitted his resignation that same day, and the case could once again proceed.

Trump and eight of his 18 co-defendants in the case filed an application Friday with the Georgia Court of Appeals asking it to reconsider McAfee’s decision. They argued that Willis had a personal stake in the election interference case and should step down.

“While the trial court factually found DA Willis’s out-of-court statements were improper and Defendants proved an apparent conflict of interest, the trial court erred as a matter of law by not requiring dismissal and DA Willis’ disqualification,” the court filing said. “This legal error requires the Court’s immediate review.”

“If this law means anything, the trial court’s actual findings here establish an actual conflict.”

Willis’s office has 10 days to respond to the appeal application.

Trump and several of his co-defendants accused Willis of having an improper relationship with Wade, who has billed her office—and thus county taxpayers—for more than $728,000 in legal fees. Trump’s team alleges that Willis and Wade began dating in 2019 and that, over the course of their romantic relationship, the couple took extravagant vacations that Wade supposedly paid for in part by billing Willis’s office.

Willis and Wade, who are no longer together, say they didn’t start seeing each other until 2022, after Willis hired Wade for the Georgia case. Willis also says they each paid their own share of the vacation bill.

During the hearings, the key witness against Willis crumbled on the stand, admitting he didn’t know when Willis and Wade began dating, how their relationship began, or even what trips they took together. But the most important thing to remember, Willis has stressed, is that Trump and his co-defendants are currently on trial for “trying to steal an election.”

McAfee chastised Willis for what he described as a “tremendous lapse in judgment.” But he ultimately refused to throw her off the case, saying she must resolve the “appearance of impropriety” by either recusing herself or removing Wade. And again, Wade has already stepped down.

The former president’s strategy has been to delay every single one of his legal battles as long as possible, in the hopes that he is reelected in November and can use his newfound presidential powers to shield himself from prosecution. His accusation against Willis dragged out the Georgia proceedings for weeks, and if the appeals court accepts his application, legal proceedings could take even longer to get going. A trial date has not yet been scheduled.

This story has been updated.

Donald Trump’s attacks on the judges and court staff overseeing his criminal trials have much deeper legal implications than petty fines. Instead, the attacks—and the responding “passivity, acquiescence, and submissiveness by the nation”—are actively undermining the entire judicial system, prominent conservative judges are warning.

In a CNN interview Thursday evening, Republican-appointed federal District Judge Reggie B. Walton felt compelled to announce that Trump’s continued attacks could result in “tyranny.” Just hours later, former Appeals Court Judge J. Michael Luttig, also a conservative, issued his own warning cry, declaring that Trump is responsible for the “dismantling” of the nation’s “system of justice.”

“The Nation is witnessing the determined delegitimization of both its Federal and State judiciaries and the systematic dismantling of its system of justice and Rule of Law by a single man—the former President of the United States,” started Luttig in a multipart thread on X.

“In the months ahead, the former president can only be expected to ramp up his unprecedented efforts to delegitimize the courts of the United States, the nation’s state courts, and America’s system of justice, through his vicious, disgraceful, and unforgivable attacks and threats on the Federal and State Judiciaries and the individual Judges of these courts.”

“Never in American history has any person, let alone a President of the United States, leveled such threatening attacks against the federal and state courts and federal and state judicial officers of the kind the former president has leveled continually now for years.”

Luttig also warned that Trump isn’t accomplishing the task alone. It’s the complicit Supreme Court—and the American people—that are letting Trump get away with it.

“It is the responsibility of the Supreme Court of the United States in the first instance to protect the federal courts, the federal judges, and all participants in the justice system from the reprehensible spectacle of the former president’s inexcusable, threatening attacks, just as it is the responsibility of the respective State Supreme Courts in the first instance to protect their courts and their state judges from the same,” he added. “Ultimately, however, it is the responsibility of the entire nation to protect its courts and judges, its Constitution, its Rule of Law, and America’s Democracy from vicious attack, threat, undermine, and deliberate delegitimization at the hands of anyone so determined.”

Here was Walton’s own dire warning:

Georgia Republican lawmakers, in the dead of night, passed a bill that will make it easier to challenge a voter’s registration, dealing a huge blow to voting rights just months before the 2024 election.

The measure, which has already passed the Senate, also passed the House along party lines early Friday, despite opposition from Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. If Georgia Governor Brian Kemp signs the bill into law, it will go into effect on July 1.

The bill increases the number of reasons that a person’s voter registration can be challenged, such as registering in another state or jurisdiction, using a different residence to obtain a homestead tax exemption, or registering at a nonresidential address. In smaller Georgia towns, where there aren’t enough residents in the zip code for the post office to deliver mail to home addresses, many residents use their post office box as their voter registration address. This would also be banned.

The measure would require homeless people to use the country registrar’s office as their voting address, which could be complicated for both the registrars and the people trying to register. This requirement could also violate the National Voter Registration Act.

The bill would make other changes to Georgia’s voting laws, including requiring that the printed text on a ballot be used to count votes, instead of a scannable bar code, and requiring absentee and advanced ballots to be counted within one hour of polls closing on Election Day.

Voting rights advocates have slammed both the bill and Republicans for seeking to create more barriers to voting. Andrea Young, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia, warned the bill would encourage “anti-democratic vigilantes to come in and challenge your right to be on the voting list.”

“What we’re saying is that it should be easy for every citizen to vote,” she told The Guardian. “That’s what makes this a democracy. And all of these tricks to try to create barriers for Georgia citizens to have a voice in their government is anti-democracy.”

Since the 2020 election, Republicans across the country have tried to pass restrictions on voting, particularly mail-in and advanced voting. While the GOP lawmakers claim they are trying to protect the integrity of U.S. elections, the real effect of their actions has been to make it that much harder for many people, especially people of color, to vote.

Ironically, the measure passed Georgia’s House of Representatives just days after a judge determined that a state resident had voted illegally. Brian Pritchard, the first vice chairman of the state Republican Party, violated state election laws when he voted illegally in nine elections from 2008 to 2010. At the time he cast those votes, Pritchard was still on probation after being convicted of a forgery felony in Pennsylvania in 1996.