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District Attorney Alvin Bragg is learning how to prosecute Donald Trump on criminal charges by watching successful civil cases that have slammed the former president with hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties, legal experts said Monday.

Former federal prosecutors Andrew Weissmann and Joyce Vance appeared on Lawrence O'Donnell's MSNBC show Monday night to discuss the looming hush money case in New York City.

Former President Donald Trump is facing hundreds of millions of dollars in fraud damages after his loss in the New York property valuation case — $464 million including both damages and interest — and it's unclear how he will be able to come up with that kind of money if he can't appeal.

There might be a deus ex machina solution for him, though, his niece Mary Trump wrote on her Substack Monday: Truth Social, the alternative social media platform he built after getting banned from Twitter four years ago.

As House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) finds himself in the same situation as his predecessor, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), several conservative lawmakers "are privately worried" that "a full government shutdown" could happen as early as next week, according to an exclusive Axios report.

McCarthy was ousted in September after he made a deal with the Democrats in order to avoid a government shut down. Johnson not only faces a shutdown if he agrees to negotiate with Democratic colleagues, but he also is at risk of alienation from the far-right House Freedom Caucus.

One name came up repeatedly Monday night when a group of legal experts discussed on CNN a new gag order request against former President Donald Trump in his upcoming hush money trial.

"The Michael Cohen issue is a concern," said Karen Friedman Agnifilo, a former prosecutor with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. "If Michael Cohen continues to speak out about Donald Trump, Donald Trump will say he has a right to respond."

Donald Trump Jr. claims Black men frequently approach him to say he's their hero in a Rumble interview that spurred more than a few raised eyebrows on X Monday night.

Trump Jr. spoke on his show " Triggered" with guest Scott Presler about the challenges of bringing the conservative vision to Black Americans in "urban environments."

Former Republican strategist Tara Setmayer was stunned by new reporting that former President Donald Trump's allies are pushing Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) for an endorsement of the former president, and that Trump expects McConnell will cave soon.

This is in spite of the fact that the two of them have had an icy relationship since the Jan. 6 attack, with McConnell publicly condemning Trump's actions, and the former president repeatedly attacking McConnell and suggesting he would be forced out under Trump's second presidency.

Pundit Laura Ingraham was raked Monday night over a strange question she asked on Fox News Monday night: "Is Russia stronger now than it was under Trump?"

The video, when it hit X, spurred the obvious response, noting Vladimir Putin, not Trump, is the nation's president: "Russia was never under Trump."

Donald Trump Jr. received a letter accompanied by an unidentified "white powder" at his residence on Monday, triggering a police response, a new report shows.

According to The Daily Beast, three sources said "Multiple fire trucks and men in hazmat suits were spotted outside Donald Trump Jr.’s home in Jupiter, Florida, on Monday evening."

Former President Donald Trump is so vainglorious about his looks that everything else, including the Constitution plays second fiddle, according to his former aide.

Sarah Matthews, who served former the Trump administration as deputy press secretary, laughed with MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace over the former president's singular vanities.

New revelations about Kenneth Chesebro's secret social media account make him worthless as a cooperator in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' election racketeering case against former President Donald Trump, former federal prosecutor Elie Honig told CNN's Jake Tapper on Monday.

Chesebro, who accepted a plea deal as the architect of Trump's fake electors plot that sought to overturn the 2020 presidential election, was revealed this week to have run a social media account, "BadgerPundit," pushing to overturn the election. Much of what he advocated on the account contradicts what he told prosecutors in Georgia and Michigan about his role in the plot.

A month and a day ahead of trial in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's hush money case against Donald Trump, the New York prosecutor requested that the judge place a "narrowly tailored" gag order on the former president.

According to the Hill, "Prosecutors argued in their motion that 'the need for such protection is compelling,' adding that the 'defendant has a long history of making public and inflammatory remarks about the participants in various judicial proceedings against him, including jurors, witnesses, lawyers, and court staff.'"

Donald Trump's former deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews on Monday slammed Republicans who refuse to speak out against her old boss at the 2024 presidential election looms.

This prompted MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace to hone in on one particular group: "Where are the men?"

Former President Donald Trump's allies are waging a behind-the-scenes battle to push Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the only major Republican leader who has not yet endorsed Trump's bid for re-election, to do so, reported The New York Times on Monday — in the face of years of bad blood between the two of them that has rifted any sort of professional relationship.

"Assuming it happens, Mr. McConnell’s endorsement of Mr. Trump would have enormous symbolic value to the former president, giving him the embrace of the last holdout of Republican power whose rejection of him represents the final patch of unconquered territory in Mr. Trump’s march to the party’s 2024 presidential nomination," reported Jonathan Swan, Maggie Haberman, and Shane Goldmacher. "The support of Mr. McConnell ... would also carry huge value in signaling to an entire class of donors and Trump-resistant Republican elites that it’s acceptable to get behind the party’s expected nominee — no matter their misgivings. This is no small thing, given that Mr. Trump has been forced to spend more than $50 million already on legal bills, and the groups supporting him are expected to be vastly outspent by President Biden’s operation."