All posts tagged "Witness"

A man who claims to have seen the shooter who injured Donald Trump while the former president was speaking at his Pennsylvania rally on Saturday has raised a lot of serious questions about how the attack occurred.

Trump is reportedly fine after the shooting, although he posted on Truth Social that "much bleeding took place." One individual in the crowd was killed, as was the alleged shooter.

CNN Saturday evening replayed a video of a BBC interview in which an individual claims to have seen the shooter several minutes before any shots had been fired. He said he tried to warn those protecting Trump, to no avail....

Donald Trump's own request for discovery led to "some gems" for the team of prosecutors charging him with a hush money cover-up case, a legal expert said Sunday.

MSNCB legal analyst Lisa Rubin flagged the observation over the weekend, noting that, while the "Trump trial will resume tomorrow morning," the expert sought "to share an observation from my review of exhibits shown to Hope Hicks."

"Several of Hicks’s communications from the campaign — including the ones below with & about the WSJ regarding Karen McDougal — were initially produced to the feds by the Trump ‘16 campaign," Rubin explained on her social media, including various emails associated with the case. "How do I know? The combinations of numbers and letters used to designate this page — DJTFP__SDNY (aka its Bates stamp) —reflects it was first produced by Donald J. Trump for President to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York ('SDNY') and was then shared with defendant Trump by the DA."...

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg made a sharp move by putting former National Enquirer chief David Pecker on the stand first to testify at former President Donald Trump's criminal hush money trial, former court staffer and Lawfare correspondent Anna Bower explained on MSNBC Friday.

The reason for that, she said, is that unlike a witness like Michael Cohen, Pecker remains friendly with the former president, and so it is much harder to spin his claims about Trump's alleged "catch and kill" schemes to manipulate the 2016 election as false.

"I wonder if, from the jury's perspective, how meaningful is it that two of his friends are taking the stand to offer, not supportive evidence against him, and also on his wife's birthday, the wife for whom he is lying and creating elaborate scenarios, she's not there. None of the family has been in the courtroom," said anchor Alex Wagner....

Former President Donald Trump's comments about his longtime ally and former National Enquirer head David Pecker are the most compelling case for witness intimidation, legal expert Lisa Rubin told MSNBC's Joy Reid on Friday's edition of "The ReidOut."

Pecker, who helped Trump in a "catch and kill" scheme to bury stories about his alleged affair with Playboy model Karen McDougal, has been the prosecution's first witness in the criminal hush money trial against Trump in Manhattan. The former president has not directly attacked Pecker — but, Rubin said, he has issued what could be interpreted as a threat to him.

All of this comes as Trump is waiting on a decision from Judge Juan Merchan on whether he his social media postings amount to contempt of court....

Donald Trump's long-time friend David Pecker, the former chief of AMI/National Enquirer, detailed their relationship and efforts to work together to help Trump get elected in 2016. The defense team never went after him nor questioned whether he was lying. There's another witness who will likely be similar.

Speaking to MSNBC on Friday after Pecker finished his testimony, political analyst John Heilemann said that during the 2016 campaign, the only two people who were backstage were his assistant Rhona Graff and Hope Hicks. Trump never even spoke out about the likes of Steve Bannon or Paul Manafort.

"They were the people who had the most access to him. The one who ran his life in different respects, one more administrative, one more in politics, but I think she will be a fascinating witness," he said....

Defendant Donald Trump sat through another day of the prosecution's witness, National Enquirer head honcho David Pecker, continue to lay out how the supermarket tabloid served as an aggressive sentry to prevent Trump's alleged sultry secrets from seeing the light of day, and also as a political pitbull against political adversaries.

Conservative lawyer George Conway went on CNN to say that the testimony was especially "damaging" and "damning" against the former president because it provided a map on how Trump used the the publication and money to illegally influence the 2016 presidential election.

At one point Pecker said he told Trump's former fixer and attorney Michael Cohen (who is now a witness for the prosecution): "We committed a campaign violation." ...