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After notching a legal victory Monday, Donald Trump repeated his false claim that a New York appeals court had already decided a civil fraud lawsuit in his favor.

An appeals court reduced the amount of the bond he must pay to stave off enforcement of a judgment in the case from $545 million — 120 percent of the $454 million judgment against him — to $175 million, and gave him 10 more days to come up with the money.

Former President Donald Trump's lawyers have used all kinds of maneuvers to delay his assorted criminal trials, and some of the Trump team's latest moves have left MSNBC legal analyst Kristy Greenberg stunned.

At issue were revelations that Trump's lawyers waited until nearly the last possible minute before requesting documents about the Stormy Daniels hush-money case from the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York that wound up further delaying the criminal trial.

In what CNN anchor Jim Acosta later called, "Not a good sign for the defense," Judge Juan Merchan raised his voice and scolded Donald Trump's lawyer for making unfounded allegations against Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office.

Reporting from outside the courthouse on a chilly Monday, CNN Chief Legal Affairs Correspondent Paula Reid read from texts received from inside the courtroom where cameras are not allowed.

CNN legal analyst Van Jones compared Donald Trump's courtroom headaches to a bullfight Monday, with Trump being the "bull" and the legal system being the "matador."

According to Jones, "Every single opening and vulnerability" in Trump's character "is being poked at by the legal system." He then went on to list what he sees as Trump's personality traits and how they've steered him towards the legal problem he has today.

A New York appeals court slashed the amount of the bond Donald Trump must post to cover a $454 million civil fraud judgment Monday.

The ruling reduces the bond to just $175 million to stave off enforcement of the judgment until the appeals process is finalized. The court gave the former president 10 days to post the bond, reported Bloomberg Law.

When Christians ask, "What would Jesus do?" the answer doesn't usually involve authorizing a hush-money payment to cover up an affair with an adult film star.

Despite this, former President Donald Trump seems to believe that comparisons between himself and the savior of the entire Christian religion are apt.

Donald Trump has apparently been unable to secure a bond to hold off enforcement of his $454 million fraud judgment, and a legal expert said Monday his options look bleak.

The former president has filed notice that he would appeal the court order, but New York law requires defendants to put up 110 percent of the penalty to delay enforcement until the appeal process is completed, and MSNBC legal analyst Catherine Christian told "Morning Joe" that Trump had few options to do that after getting turned down by more than 30 lenders for that bond.

Anger against NBC over its hiring of former Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel, much of it coming from the network's top personalities, is continuing to permeate Monday as more people at the network speak out over her hiring.

People within the network are reportedly blowing up text threads and Slack channels over the hiring after a contentious segment on Meet the Press with host Chuck Todd, who ranted on air about McDaniel, saying, “There’s a reason why there’s a lot of journalists at NBC News uncomfortable with this,” and blaming the RNC's alleged habits of “gaslighting” and “character assassination."

The U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled Tuesday to hear oral arguments in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine — a case in which far-right Christian fundamentalists and anti-abortion activists are challenging access to the abortion drug mifepristone.

Those fundamentalists are claiming that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration should never have approved mifepristone — a claim that far-right Judge James C. Ho, a Donald Trump appointee to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, agreed with when he ruled to restrict the drug.

Tristan Snell, the former assistant attorney general for the state of New York who prosecuted the Trump University fraud case, told CNN on Monday that former President Donald Trump has been getting "special treatment" that is given to no other criminal defendants.

During an interview with John Berman, Snell made the case that the courts have gone far easier on Trump than they have on defendants who have also been found liable for decades' worth of business fraud.

Donald Trump is getting his band of conspiracy theorists and convicted criminals back together ahead of the 2024 election, and experts say that should send an alarming signal.

The former president is reportedly bringing back some of his former campaign advisers, including 2016 campaign managers Paul Manafort and Corey Lewandowski, after securing the Republican presidential nomination, which could be a preview of shenanigans to come, reported The Guardian.

During a surprisingly sympathetic discussion about Donald Trump's legal woes, MSNBC "Morning Joe," contributor Katty Kay claimed the former president is being crushed by the burden of trials he is facing and can only find solace in the crowds who attend his rallies — and even those have seen a fall in attendance.

With host Joe Scarborough noting the hearing in Manhattan on Monday in the so-called hush-money case is a criminal case where Trump could end up doing time in jail, he prompted Kay with, "I really do at times wonder, with all these things weighing down on one person, how the guy keeps going. I mean, it is incoming constantly."

"Yeah," Kay agreed. "Obviously, at this point, there are many on the legal side wishing we were dealing with the Jack Smith January 6th case or the Mar-a-Lago documents case, both of which I'm sure you'd agree, look more solid than the hush money case, but that's the case we have."

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"Even that, because you say it's a criminal case, that has to be weighing on Donald Trump," she continued. "It looks like it'll go ahead within the next month, even with this small delay. All of those things, the fact that he's not raising money, the complications around getting money from donors but some of it having to be siphoned off to pay his legal fees, the trials themselves, the prospect of losing a huge amount of his assets to pay this bond, it's very hard to imagine how that's not weighing on Donald Trump."

"All he can do, I guess, is take solace from the fact that when he turns up at those rallies — which are not as big as they were in 2020 or 2016, the crowds are not as huge that are greeting him as they were back then — he's still getting the adulation from his die-hard supporters," she added. "And he hasn't, from when you look at the polling, as remarkable as it might seen from 2020 to 2024, he doesn't seem to be losing much of that base."