Longtime Trump nemesis joins Manhattan DA's case

Donald Trump
Gage Skidmore/Creative Commons

A longtime adversary to Donald Trump could be the secret weapon in the Manhattan district attorney's case against the former president.

Matthew Colangelo has aggressively pursued Trump for years, first for the New York attorney general, then at the Department of Justice and now for district attorney Alvin Bragg's team of prosecutors, and his lengthy experience will be instrumental in proving the charges against the first ex-president to face felony charges, reported The Daily Beast.

Trump has taken notice of Colangelo, as evidenced by a Truth Social post that singled him out for violent threats and also prompted House Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) to make a highly unusual request for the prosecutor to testify about his hiring.

Colangelo has turned into a bogeyman for the MAGA right, which claims his role in Manhattan is proof that President Joe Biden is behind the Trump indictment, but former colleagues say he's an experienced attorney with high integrity.

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“I had the opportunity to work with Matthew at the New York Attorney General’s Office," said Jeffrey Novack, who worked alongside Colangelo in a case against the Trump administration’s Securities and Exchange Commission. "He is a fantastic lawyer, committed to serving the public interest, and of the utmost integrity."

Colangelo worked for years to ensure fair housing prices for Black Americans, among other civil rights issues, but began investigating Trump not long after he entered the White House, when he filled a role left by Bragg, his future boss, for the New York attorney general's office.

His team sued to dissolve the Trump Foundation in June 2018 in a case they eventually won after proving the then-president used the charity to fund then-Florida attorney general Pam Bondi, and Colangelo fought against many of the Trump's right-wing initiatives for the state attorney general's office.

"Indeed, Colangelo’s record in court reads like an entirely separate indictment — against Trump for nearly every policy imaginable," The Daily Beast reported. "And it dates back to the former president’s very first day at the White House."

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The director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency on Saturday demanded “maximum military restraint” from the US and Israel as it confirmed reports that strikes had targeted a location close to Iran’s Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, killing at least one person.

In a statement released via social media, the IAEA relayed a message from Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi, who expressed “deep concern about the reported incident.”

Grossi warned that nuclear power plants or nearby areas “must never be attacked, noting that auxiliary site buildings may contain vital safety equipment” and stressed “the paramount importance of adhering to the seven pillars for ensuring nuclear safety and security during a conflict.”

The IAEA said the attack near the Bushehr plant, Iran’s only operational nuclear power facility, was the fourth such attack since Israel and the US began its invasion of Iran on February 28. The plant lies in a city inhabited by about 250,000 people.

A security staff member was killed by a projectile fragment and a building on the Bushehr site was impacted by shockwaves and fragments. Grossi said that no increase in radiation levels was reported.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi also condemned the Bushehr strike and issued a reminder of the “Western outrage about hostilities near Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine” when Russia attacked the site.

“Israel-US have bombed our Bushehr plant four times now. Radioactive fallout will end life in [Gulf Cooperation Council] capitals, not Tehran. Attacks on our petrochemicals also convey real objectives,” said Araghchi.

Al Jazeera reported that at least two petrochemical facilities had been hit by the US and Israel in southern Iran’s Khuzestan province, an energy hub in the country. At least five people were injured in those attacks.

Iranian news agency Mehr reported that the state-run Bandar Imam petrochemical complex, which produces liquefied petroleum gas and chemicals as well as other products, sustained damage.

President Donald Trump said late last month that he would delay any attacks on Iran’s energy infrastructure until April 6 and said the delay was “subject to the success of the ongoing meetings and discussions.”

He has threatened to destroy Iran’s power plants and other civilian infrastructure if Iranian leaders don’t end the blockade on the oil export waterway the Strait of Hormuz, which they began in retaliation for the US-Israeli strikes that started more than a month ago and which has fueled skyrocketing global energy prices.

The threat amounted to Trump warning that he could soon commit a war crime, said international law experts.

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Fox News host Kayleigh McEnany was forced to admit Saturday that Republicans faced an uphill battle in the upcoming midterm elections, remarks she made as President Donald Trump’s historic unpopularity appears to be hurting GOP candidates at the ballot box, The Hill reported.

“I think there’s a sense he’s doing things,” McEnany said, who previously served as Trump’s White House press secretary during his first administration, according to The Hill.

“Not to put too rosy a picture on it though, midterms will be hard for Republicans. It’s just historically difficult to win when you’re in power, but I would like my odds more with this president than prior presidents.”

After launching a war against Iran in late February, Trump’s favorability among Americans has sunk to the lowest level of his political career, reaching a net approval of -21.4 as of Thursday, per the polling aggregator FiftyPlusOne. The president’s waning support has appeared to impact GOP candidates’ election prospects, with “many Republican leaders” now “privately” conceding the midterms to already be lost, the Associated Press reported Friday.

While defending Trump in her remarks, Kayleigh appeared aware that the current midterm outlook for Republicans was grim.

Trump’s favorability has slipped gradually throughout his second stint in the White House, though it reached new lows in the wake of the U.S. war against Iran, which remains “broadly” unpopular with a majority of Americans.

Donald Trump's administration has seemingly changed tack with international diplomacy and struck deals with a series of the world's most brutal leaders, per a report.

Records from the White House, seen by the New York Times, show that American diplomats are straining to strike deals with countries across the world and have put everything on the negotiating table as a result. Included in the possible negotiations were offers to "pay foreign security forces, ease visa restrictions or tariffs, finance public health services, and even reconsider a country’s placement on U.S. watch lists," per the NYT team.

Part of the Trump admin's change has been on how they view immigration as a negotiating tool. The report, seen by Eileen Sullivan, Hamed Aleaziz, Megha Rajagopalan, and Pranav Baskar, notes that some countries could be swayed into making concessions to the US should they be given special treatment.

"The negotiations show how Mr. Trump has turned mass deportation, one of his signature domestic initiatives, into a central part of American foreign policy," they wrote. "The Trump administration has deported thousands of people to about a dozen countries, often to places where they have no ties.

"As mass detention in the United States becomes politically complicated, the administration is eager to cut more deals to deport migrants.

"Such arrangements are taking shape in particular in Africa, where Mr. Trump has ushered in a new style of diplomacy that prioritizes deal-making over enforcing human rights and promoting democracy. The policy is called 'America First in Africa.'

"The Trump administration is in talks, records show, to send migrants to the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo, two countries where the judicial systems are dysfunctional and government forces have been linked to torture and forced disappearances."

Deals have reportedly already been struck with the leaders of Cameroon and Rwanda, while an arrangement with Equatorial Guinea, Eswatini, and South Sudan is in the works.

Eswatini has a history of human rights abuses, while Equatorial Guinea is overseen by an autocratic state where torture is systemic.

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