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After Eric Trump's disastrous testimony on Thursday in the $250 million financial fraud suit filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James, one CNN legal analyst suggested Donald Trump throw in the towel and continually plead the Fifth Amendment when he takes the stand next week.

Speaking with CNN hosts Kate Bolduan and John Berman, former prosecutor Elie Honig said Eric Trump's testimony could not have gone more poorly after he was tripped up over his knowledge of Trump Organization financial statements.

As Honig pointed out, with the younger Trump about to be grilled again on Friday, Judge Arthur Engoron has good cause to not take anything he says seriously or as being an approximation of the truth.

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That prompted CNN's Bolduan to point out that Engoron has already ruled that the Trump Org and its executives are guilty of financial fraud and the trial proceedings, at this stage of the game, are being used to arrive at the financial penalty and whether the Trump family's business should be dismantled.

With that in mind, she asked Honig if Donald Trump should just take the Fifth since he has nothing left to lose in this trial, and that would keep him from increasing his legal exposure elsewhere.

After already claiming, "Yesterday went really poorly for Eric Trump," Honig turned to Donald Trump's upcoming testimony scheduled for Monday and how he should approach answering questions under oath.

"It's such an interesting and really difficult strategic decision Donald Trump and his lawyers will have," he told the hosts. "When he was deposed over a year ago he took the Fifth, he wouldn't answer anything other than his name and he took the Fifth as he is entitled to do."

"But the world has changed for Donald Trump," Honig elaborated. "Back then, there were all these swirling criminal investigations; none of the four indictments we have now had landed. The world was a bit more uncertain for him. A year and change later he's been indicted on four things, none relating to this particular fraud. If he takes the Fifth he protects himself against any of those cases roaring back to life."

"It's possible he takes the stand and says something that piques prosecutors' interest, they may think maybe we should open a criminal case on him for fraud," the ex-prosecutor suggested. "The risk of taking the Fifth is that the judge in this case, this civil case, can say I'm using that against you."
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Not so long ago, right-wing congresswomen like Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Lauren Boebert (R-CO), and Nancy Mace (R-SC) were the stars of the MAGA movement. But they seem to be fading, and many of their erstwhile allies are turning on them — and that's no accident, argues Amanda Marcotte for Salon.

The ultimate problem, she wrote, is that conservative women in the Trump movement are held to an impossible and contradictory standard. They are supposed to be confrontational firebrands exactly the same way the men are — and yet the "deeply misogynist" wing of the movement doesn't care for women who are overly assertive or stand up for themselves, setting them up for failure when they inevitably have to do that as well.

The recent uptick in late-night filings from lawyers for Donald Trump seeking trial delays is a sign that the former president is growing increasingly worried thaat he could be saddled with more than one criminal conviction on his record going into the 2024 presidential election — should be the GOP nominee.

In her Substack column, former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance noted that legal maneuvering by Trump's multiple legal teams are designed to throw up roadblocks that the respective judges in each jurisdiction are required to consider before filing a response.

This week, former President Donald Trump proclaimed in one of his Truth Social tirades that, "Our Founding Fathers are looking down at Biden with scorn right now. They’re looking down at Biden and this administration with disbelief.”

But the irony of this statement, wrote conservative commentator Charlie Sykes for The Bulwark on Friday, is that in fact, the founders spent an enormous amount of their writings preoccupied with the worry a person like Trump would take power. And indeed, Alexander Hamilton made an almost "prophetic" warning of a person like Trump in a letter to George Washington in 1792.

A Michigan candidate for city council is doubling down on comments he made about Jews and the Holocaust as well as child marriage and homosexuality, the Detroit Metro Times reported.

Nasr Hussain, who is running for a seat on the Hamtramck City Council, made posts on Facebook where he said the Holocaust was “advance punishment” for Israel’s “savagery” against Palestinians in the wake of the Oct. 7 terror attacks by Hamas.

With the California State Bar indicating that the disbarment of attorney John Eastman could be in the offing, all eyes now turn to the former Donald Trump lawyer as the next major player in the criminal case against the former president over his attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

On Thursday, Judge Yvette Roland issued “a preliminary finding of culpability,” against Eastman for his part in advising the former president to dispute the 2020 election results.

Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) drew a rebuke from Fox News chief national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin on Friday over comments he made earlier in the week comparing the duties of a Marine Commandant to his past duties as a college football coach.

The comments in question came when Tuberville was asked about the fact that his hold on all military promotions forced Marine Commandant Eric Smith, who was hospitalized earlier this week after suffering a heart attack, to work 18-hour days.

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough and Willie Geist slammed Donald Trump as "repulsive" for comparing Jan. 6 rioters to Israelis kidnapped by Hamas terrorists.

The former president opened his rally Thursday night in Houston with a recording of "The Star-Spangled Banner" performed by a male prison choir he referred to as “hostages, not prisoners," and the "Morning Joe" co-hosts were disgusted by the former president's defense of his supporters who were convicted of attacking law enforcement officers in an effort to overthrow the government.

A legal analyst who sat through two days of Donald Trump Jr's testimony in the $250 million financial fraud lawsuit argued on Friday that the president's eldest son needs a reality check if he walked away thinking he did well.

Appearing on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," legal analyst Lisa Rubin suggested Donald Trump's oldest son's testimony was "damning" to the Trump Organization's defense against the civil suit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Speaking with co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Willie Geist, Rubin stated that Don Jr. appears to believe he did well but that Judge Arthur Engoron easily saw through his attempts to pass the blame onto others for committing financial fraud.

POLL: Should Trump be allowed to run for office?

Asked by Geist what she saw in the courtroom, she replied, "Willie, I'll say this again, every day in court on this matter is like a roller coaster and certainly yesterday was no exception."

"The examination of Donald Trump Jr. was one that seemed really calm and placid on the surface but was really damning if you think about what they got him to admit," she explained. "The fact that it was relatively pleasant in terms of the exchange with him and the attorney general's lawyer doesn't disguise the fact that Donald Trump Jr., who his father famously refers to as 'a kid' in order to infantilize him, was actually the co-trustee of what effectively was the Trump Organization for the entirety of the presidency."

"And in that capacity he not only signed financial statements over to banks and lenders, he certified that that information was true and accurate," she elaborated, "and he did that to Deutsche Bank repeatedly. He also did that to Mazars, his accountants."

"Donald Trump Jr. wants everybody to think he got a fast one over on people by saying, 'Oh, god, what did I do? I relied on accountants to do accounting,'" she explained. "The problem is, when you are a fiduciary, and when you're a trustee, you don't get to pass that buck. The buck stops with you. Donald Trump Jr., who has outsourced everything in his life, wasn't willing to concede that."

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A conservative group tested anti-Donald Trump ads focusing on his legal woes but found those concerns backfired among supporters of the twice-impeached ex-president.

One of the spots claimed Trump's indictments had worn him down, while another claimed he had "too much baggage" to win, and a third warned that the Republican frontrunner could be convicted, allowing President Joe Biden to "cruise" to re-election – but all of those flopped with GOP viewers, reported Politico.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) this week successfully jammed through an aid package for Israel that also slashed funding for the Internal Revenue Service.

However, Punchbowl News reports that Johnson is "about to run into a legislative buzzsaw" given that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and even many Senate Republicans have signaled that Johnson's package is dead on arrival.