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Just before former President Donald Trump's defense team rested in the Manhattan criminal hush money case, their key witness, attorney Robert Costello, endured a cross-examination that legal experts widely considered a complete disaster for Trump's case.

Costello, the former legal adviser to Trump's ex-attorney Michael Cohen, was brought up to testify that Cohen was lying about Trump's involvement in the scheme to pay off adult film star Stormy Daniels, which the prosecution argues was effectively a criminal scheme to defraud voters in the 2016 election.

Four years ago, during the United States' 2020 presidential race, supporters of then-President Donald Trump accused "Real Time" host Bill Maher of "Trump derangement syndrome" when he predicted that Trump would not accept the election results if he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

But Trump, just as Maher predicted, refused to acknowledge that he lost the election. Now, in 2024, Trump is the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, and Congress — according to the Associated — is full of Republican lawmakers who have either falsely claimed that the 2020 election was stolen or won't commit to accepting the election results if Trump loses to Biden a second time in November.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito opened the door to Congress issuing a subpoena to his wife after he implicated her in the display of an upside-down American flag that may have violated his statutory duties, a New York Times writer said Tuesday.

The conservative justice told reporters that his wife displayed the symbol of Donald Trump's "stop the steal" movement in the days between the Jan. 6 insurrection and president Joe Biden's election, when the court was considering the former president's election challenges, and a member of the New York Times editorial board called that out as a potential crime.

A criminal defense attorney who had been approached to defend Donald Trump concluded that the former president had a "devastating day" in court Monday.

During a Tuesday interview on CNN, attorney David Oscar Markus reflected on the anger of Justice Juan Merchan on Monday when defense witness Robert Costello was nearly found in contempt for taunting the judge.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) humiliated the whole Republican Party with her out-of-order personal attack on Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) last week, wrote left-libertarian author Froma Harrop for RealClearPolitics — but Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) took away from that humiliation by focusing the spotlight onto her.

The drama began when Greene told Crockett in an Oversight Committee hearing, "I think your fake eyelashes are messing up what you're reading."

Former President Donald Trump's attorneys have openly talked about working to get a hung jury in their client's hush-money trial.

However, New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman on Tuesday appeared to pour cold water on this by noting the extreme infrequency of such events.

Former FBI Director James Comey has overcome his initial skepticism about the hush money case against Donald Trump and now believes he's quite likely to be convicted.

The former president has been charged with falsifying financial records to cover up hush money payments to an adult film actress to prevent voters from learning about their sexual relationship, which prosecutors say amounts to an illegal campaign contribution, and Comey told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" the evidence is much stronger than the indictment indicated.

Former President Donald Trump's Truth Social account caused a stir on late Monday evening by promoting a video that, among other things, shows a newspaper headline announcing a hypothetical Trump presidential victory clearing the way for a "unified reich" — an apparent reference to Nazi Germany, which famously referred to its own dictatorship as the "Third Reich" to signify it was the third great empire to unite the Germanic people.

The video promptly earned condemnation on social media, not just from Democrats and media outlets, but from some disaffected Republicans as well.

Bloomberg is reporting that swing voters across the United States are telling focus groups that they fear former President Donald Trump will not willingly relinquish power should he win back the White House in 2024.

Seiji Carpenter, vice president at David Binder Research, and Sarah Longwell, the chief executive officer of Longwell Partners, both tell Bloomberg that fears of Trump not leaving office have been cropping up in recent focus groups they've conducted.

Rebecca Roiphe, a former Manhattan assistant district attorney and current New York Law School professor, told The New Republic's Greg Sargent this week that she believes prosecutors have almost cinched their case against former President Donald Trump.

Appearing on Sargent's Daily Blast podcast, Roiphe said that the one "fault line" in the case is solidifying Trump's involvement in the scheme to create false records to cover up hush-money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels in the weeks leading up to the 2016 presidential election.

Donald Trump casually discusses using the FBI as his secret police to punish enemies, according to a former White House aide.

Anthony Scaramucci, who briefly served as White House communications director in 2017 and has been an outspoken critic ever since Trump told four congresswomen of color to "go back" to their home countries two years later, told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" that he fears the former president would seek retribution against him if he's re-elected to a second term – although he strongly believes Trump will implode.

Robert Costello, the lone witness called by former President Donald Trump's lawyers in defense of their client, was admonished by Judge Juan Merchan on Monday after he delivered outbursts in court and even tried to stare the judge down.

Breaking down his testimony on CNN, former federal prosecutor Elliot Williams said that Costello's behavior in court did absolutely nothing to help the former president's case.

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough called BS on the "double standard" that's keeping Donald Trump and his allies out of jail for violating court rules in his hush money trial.

New York Justice Juan Merchan cleared the courtroom to admonish attorney Robert Costello, who had angered the judge for making comments and facial expressions indicating his disagreement with rulings, and the "Morning Joe" host said that anyone else would have already been held in contempt and thrown in jail.