Trump News

In a deep dive into how the "de facto national campaign manager" for Donald Trump has brought a sense of calm to his third bid for the presidency, NBC reported that she did butt heads with the former president over his plan to crash the Philadelphia Sneaker Con in mid-February to sell Trump-branded shoes.

According to the report, there is no official campaign manager for Trump's run, with top aides labeled as "senior advisers" and those surrounding the former president admitting "that no one is really a Trump-whisperer and that anyone with the title 'campaign manager' will be the first to be sent packing if Trump grows dissatisfied."

Special Counsel Jack Smith's prosecution of Donald Trump in the Espionage Act case, which will be tried in Florida, will not be stalled by the U.S. Dept. of Justice's policy of not taking certain actions 60 days before an election. The case, often referred to as the classified documents case, includes 31 charges under the Espionage Act.

MSNBC legal analyst and contributor Katie Phang Friday afternoon reports on the "BIG news out of Ft. Pierce."

At the same time that Judge Aileen Cannon was pressing lawyers for Donald Trump and Department of Justice prosecutors for a timetable to bring the Mar-a-Lago document case to trial, a former Florida judge was telling CNN that he believes special counsel Jack Smith has a "plan" to move forward no matter how Cannon rules.

Speaking with CNN's Dana Bash, Jeff Swartz noted a DOJ lawyer telling Cannon earlier that they plan to pursue the trial of the former president even it bumps up against the November election.

Former US president Donald Trump was in a federal court in Florida on Friday for a hearing to set a date for his trial on charges of mishandling classified documents.

Special counsel Jack Smith, who brought the charges, has asked District Judge Aileen Cannon to move the scheduled start date for Trump's trial from the current May 20 to July 8.

Even if the Republican National Committee was flush with cash — which it is not — there is only so much it can do to bail Donald Trump out of his legal predicament when it comes to funneling cash to him.

With the imminent departure of chair Ronna McDaniel and plans by the former president to load the leadership up with MAGA loyalists like his daughter-in-law Lara Trump, concerns have been raised by Republicans that the RNC would become another cash cow for the embattled ex-president while ignoring GOP officeholders going into the November election.

Special counsel Jack Smith would like the trial date for the Mar-a-Lago documents case to begin in July, but Judge Aileen Cannon on Friday sent a signal that might be too ambitious of a timeline.

Reporting from Florida, CNN chief legal affairs correspondent Paula Reid brought word that Judge Cannon appeared skeptical that starting the trial on July 8th would be realistic.

Donald Trump and his lawyers are claiming any attempt to hold a 2024 trial conflicts with Justice Department rules requiring a pause of any investigation into a presidential candidate 60 days prior to an election — but a legal expert has debunked that as wishful thinking.

University of Alabama School of Law Professor Joyce Vance explained that a Friday morning hearing before Judge Aileen Cannon had the goal of outlining a trial schedule for the classified documents case in Florida. Trump's preference is to pause the trial indefinitely or, at the very least, hold it after the 2024 election — which could allow him to order his Justice Department to stop the prosecution.

With Donald Trump facing major federal criminal trials in Georgia, Washington, D.C. and Florida, CNN legal analyst Elie Honig explained to his colleagues that he believes the former president is fine with the Florida Mar-a-Lago documents case proceeding first — but not because the judge presiding over it is one of his own appointees.

Speaking with host John Berman, Honig said the obstruction of justice case that Jack Smith is bringing in Florida may be the most rock-solid for special counsel Jack Smith when it comes to evidence — but the embattled former president believes that's the case where he might find the most sympathetic jurors.

Early Friday morning, writer E. Jean Carroll announced for all the world to see that Donald Trump has yet to cough up the $83.3 million he owes her after she defeated him in two separate civil trials.

Taking to X, Carroll dropped a message to the former president with a simple message that Trump has "one week to pay" on her social media platform, while also linking to a Fortune summary of his courtroom loss to her as well as his other courtroom financial setbacks that have him scrambling to come up with almost a half billion dollars quickly.

With the clock ticking and interest piling up by the day, Donald Trump faces a "nightmare" scenario where he has only about three weeks to come up with approximately a half billion dollars just to appeal a ruling from Judge Arthur Engoron that some legal experts claim he has no chance of winning.

As CNN is reporting, it is not that the former president can't raise the money, but more to what extremes he will have to go, which could include an asset fire sale in a bad market where buyers can take advantage of him or finding a bank willing to take a wild gamble that they might not get their money back.

With the former president having to come up with $454 million to satisfy a financial fraud judgment authored by Judge Arthur Engoron and another $83.3 million owed to writer E. Jean Carroll stemming from two civil trials, "Trump’s lawyers said he may have to dump some of his properties under 'exigent circumstances' to raise cash quickly," reports CNN.

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As the report notes, Trump is facing some major roadblocks if he wants to avoid the courts and lawyers seizing his assets, one of which is that he reportedly doesn't have up-to-date personal financial info to hand over to any potential lender.

In an effort to make sure the Republican Party doesn't lose control of the House — and with that, his speakership — House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has been working behind the scenes with Donald Trump to quash possible "toxic" GOP candidates, some of whom are ardent boosters of the former president.

According to a report from Politico's Olivia Beavers and Ally Mutnick, Johnson made a pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago to conspire with Trump to clamp down on the burgeoning candidacies of at least two conservatives who could gather up the nomination but lose the general election.

A day after the U.S. Supreme Court announced that they have agreed to hear Donald Trump's argument that he has absolute immunity from federal prosecution, CNN's John Fritze and Tierney Sneed point out Tierney Sneed point out that legal experts are paying attention to the "first 29" words the justices "used to lay out the 'question presented' in Trump’s immunity appeal – the question they "will focus on when they meet in April to hear arguments and then sit down to craft an opinion that will either greenlight [special counsel Jack] Smith’s prosecution of the former president or shut it down."

Fritze and Sneed report:

According to more than one legal scholar, Judge Arthur Engoron's comprehensive 92-page opinion following the Donald Trump financial fraud trial is so concise, bulletproof, and detailed that it will withstand any appeal the former president may make to avoid paying the nearly half billion dollars he has been ordered to pay.

With the clock ticking that sets up a scenario where, should Trump be unable to secure an appeals bond in the next few weeks, Engoron will be in the position where he can order the seizure of one or more Trump properties to ensure his debt to society is paid.

In interviews with the Daily Beast's Jose Pagliery, a Brooklyn Law School appeals expert and a former prosecutor teaching at the esteemed John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York praised Engoron's precisely written opinion that would remove the need by any appeals court to have to peruse the entire 6,758-page trial transcript from the 11-week trial.

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According to Brooklyn Law's Jennifer B. Arlin, "The reason why this opinion is so long and so specific is to emphasize to the appellate court how much care the judge took in issuing this decision."