Trump Trial Is Ideal Stage for Desperate Republicans to Suck Up to Him

Donald Trump’s hush-money trial has become a real who’s who of conservatives vying for the presumed GOP presidential nominee’s favor.

Before the trial began on Tuesday, some of Trump’s former GOP nomination opponents, as well as some of the biggest players in the Republican Party, showed up to support him. Biotech investor Vivek Ramaswamy—who is reportedly under consideration to be homeland security secretary if Trump wins in November—and South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, whom Trump has confirmed is on his veep long list, were at the courthouse, apparently bearing no ill will toward the man who overwhelmingly defeated them in the 2024 Republican primaries.

North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, who never performed above single-digit support in the primaries, also came out to back Trump. As did House Speaker Mike Johnson, who is not a running mate contender but enjoyed Trump’s support during a chaotic bid to oust him from the speakership.

They all join Senators J.D. Vance and Tommy Tuberville, who appeared with Trump outside the courtroom on Monday.

A majority of Trump’s high-profile attendees have refused to provide direct answers in recent weeks when questioned about whether they’ll accept the November election results. Scott, for his part, refused six times to give his answer on the issue during an interview on Meet the Press. The show of loyalty is a significant rejection of the rule of law in favor of power in Trump’s potential administration—and it’s especially poignant in the face of his first criminal trial.

Trump is accused of using Michael Cohen to sweep an affair with porn actress Stormy Daniels under the rug ahead of the 2016 presidential election. The Republican presidential nominee 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.

Accuracy in Media, a deliriously named far-right group known for doxxing students, revealed that some of Donald Trump’s biggest donors are among its top contributors. The conservative donors were revealed by the group’s 2022 tax returns reviewed by CNBC. The group reported $1.9 million in contributions between May 2022 and April 2023, according to CNBC.

According to the tax returns, family foundations for Richard Uihlein, the conservative billionaire founder of shipping supply company Uline, and Adam Milstein, a real estate executive, both gave $10,000 to Accuracy in Media. The Adolph Coors Foundation, the charity for the Coors brewing family, reportedly donated $15,000. As CNBC reported, these foundations are all regular donors to Republican campaigns.

Included in Accuracy in Media’s tax filings is an eye-popping $1 million donation from GOP megadonor Jeff Yass. Accuracy in Media disputes the accuracy of Yass’s donation, which appears on two pages of the group’s tax filings, and claims its presence is an error, for which it blamed its accountant.

Accuracy in Media is best known for its “doxxing trucks”—LED trucks the organization hires to circle college campuses such as Harvard, Columbia, Yale, and more. The trucks depict images of students, faculty, and staff and falsely accuse them of being antisemitic for espousing pro-Palestine views or engaging in activities calling for a cease-fire.

One student featured on the trucks filed a lawsuit in November against Accuracy in Media and its founder Adam Guillette for defamation, civil rights violations, and more. In late October last year, Jewish students at Columbia University protested the presence of the doxxing truck, where it regularly visited for weeks before branching to more campuses.

Accuracy in Media blamed its accounting firm, JBS & Co., for the inadvertent disclosure of the right-wing benefactors behind its doxxing trucks and harassing web pages created to single out students opposed to Israel’s devastation of Palestine. JBS & Co. told CNBC the information it filed, including the disputed presence of Yass’s $1 million donation, was provided to it by Accuracy in Media. To date, none of Accuracy in Media’s tax filing information has appeared on its own LED truck.

Michael Cohen verified handwritten notes in court during Donald Trump’s hush-money trial Monday detailing the former president’s payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels.

The notes were written on a bank statement of a wire transfer of $130,035, the amount of money paid to Daniels, with Cohen’s help, to prevent her affair with Trump from becoming public before the 2016 election. One note in Cohen’s handwriting shows how a $50,000 payment for tech services was added to the wire transfer amount for a total of $180,035. An additional note on the statement in Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg’s handwriting shows that subsequent amount being “grossed up” to $360,000 so Cohen would avoid federal taxes.

Cohen, Trump’s former fixer and attorney, testified that he had been reimbursed for legal expenses from the Trump Organization before, but it had not been “grossed up” in those cases. Cohen’s testimony corroborates exactly what another key witness testified last week when he took the stand.

Former Trump Organization controller Jeffrey McConney also confirmed these handwritten notes, as well as other notes that McConney took on Trump stationery. Like Cohen, McConney also couldn’t recall another time when a reimbursement for expenses was doubled for tax reasons. At the time, Trump lawyer Emil Bove tried and failed to have the reasons behind the inflated payment to Cohen stricken from the record.

Prosecutors hope that this paper trail, confirmed by Cohen’s testimony, makes it plainly clear to the jury that Trump, through Cohen, paid off Daniels and then attempted not only to hide the payment but to make sure that reimbursing Cohen wouldn’t be exposed or reduced by taxes, and was fully involved in the entire process. Trump faces 34 felony charges for allegedly falsifying business records with the intent to further an underlying crime, and has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges.

It’s only the first day of Michael Cohen’s hush-money trial testimony, and he’s already put a huge nail in the coffin of Donald Trump’s legal defense.

In opposition to everything Trump’s attorneys have attempted to argue, Cohen testified Monday that Trump knew every detail about the $130,000 payment made to porn actress Stormy Daniels. In fact, not only did Trump sign off on the payments to cover up his affair with Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election, but he personally promised to pay Cohen back for them.

Cohen said that when he agreed to pay Daniels out of his own pocket, Trump promised to reimburse him.

When prosecutor Susan Hoffinger asked if Cohen would have paid Daniels without first getting Trump’s approval, Cohen said no.

“Everything required a sign-off from Mr. Trump,” Cohen told the court. “But on top of that, I wanted the money back.”

That’s counter to what Trump’s attorneys have attempted to argue, which is that the funds came from Cohen alone and that Trump was not aware of the hush-money payments. But other witnesses in the criminal trial have made similar accusations, including Daniels’s former attorney Keith Davidson, who testified that he understood at the time the agreement was drawn up that the ultimate source of the money would be Trump.

The Republican presidential nominee 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.

When Donald Trump heard that Stormy Daniels intended to sell her story of their affair, he thought it would be a disaster—but only because it would hurt what women thought of him, while men would think it was “cool,” Michael Cohen testified Monday.

“This is a disaster—a total disaster—women will hate me. Guys they think it’s cool, but this is gonna be a disaster for the campaign,” Trump said, according to his ex-fixer and attorney’s testimony during the former president’s hush-money trial Monday.

According to Cohen, Trump’s polling with women was poor following the release of the infamous Access Hollywood video, where he ​​described women’s bodies with obscene language and bragged about forcing himself on them. Cohen recalled Trump telling him that Daniels going public would be a disaster, and Trump later ordered Cohen to “get control over it.”

Cohen would end up helping to pay off Daniels to keep the affair under wraps until after the 2016 presidential election.  

During her testimony last week, the adult film actress revealed salacious details about her 2006 tryst with the president, including how Trump didn’t use a condom and compared her to his daughter Ivanka. Daniels also said she used an excuse to avoid sex a second time with the former president. Despite the likelihood of these details coming to light with Daniels going public, Trump apparently thought men would appreciate that he had an affair with a porn star. This misogynistic view of extramarital sex lines up with how Trump framed the Access Hollywood video as “locker room talk” with the help of a suggestion from his wife, Melania.

Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, faces 34 felony charges for allegedly falsifying business records with the intent to further an underlying crime, and has pleaded not guilty on all counts.