The ruling, issued by Circuit Court Judge Tracie Porter on Wednesday, agreed with arguments made by Colorado’s Supreme Court when it kicked Trump off the ballot in that state.

Porter’s ruling followed a determination by Illinois’ State Board of Elections in January that Trump’s name should remain on the ballot, but also recommended that a court make the ultimate decision in the case.

Trump’s attorneys filed two separate motions in the case, including an appeal of the ruling. They have asked the Illinois Appellate Court to reverse Porter’s decision and to reinstate the Board of Elections’ ruling in the case.

A second motion was also filed to clarify the terms of Porter’s stay in the case. The ruling had been placed on hold pending the expected filing of the appeal, but Trump’s attorneys are arguing that the ruling should be stayed until the appeal is decided upon, or until the U.S. Supreme Court makes a ruling in a similar case in Colorado.

Porter issued a revised ruling on Thursday, saying that the decision would be put on hold until a decision is reached by the Appellate Court.

That Colorado case, in which Trump’s name was removed from that state’s primary ballot on the same grounds, is pending before the U.S. Supreme Court. Porter said in her ruling that the order would be put on hold if the Supreme Court’s ruling was “inconsistent” with hers.

The Illinois Republican Party issued the following statement in reaction to Porter’s Wednesday ruling.

“As we’ve stated repeatedly, the Illinois Republican Party believes the people, not activist courts or unelected bureaucrats, should choose who represents them in the White House. This decision to remove President Trump from the ballot without due process is an affront to democracy and limits the voting rights of Illinois citizens,” Illinois Republican Party Chairman Don Tracy said.

The former president’s spokesperson Steven Cheung also issued a statement.

“Democrat front-groups continue to attempt to interfere in the election and deny President Trump his rightful place on the ballot,” the statement read. “Today, an activist Democrat judge in Illinois summarily overruled the state’s board of elections and contradicted earlier decisions from dozens of other state and federal jurisdictions. This is an unconstitutional ruling that we will quickly appeal. In the meantime, President Trump remains on the Illinois ballot, is dominating the polls, and will Make America Great Again!” 

The Supreme Court heard arguments in the Colorado case in early February, and according to legal experts cited by The New York Times and other publications, there was skepticism in the arguments made to keep the former president off the ballot.

The Illinois ruling repeatedly cited findings from the Colorado case, saying that Trump’s actions in the lead-up to, and on the day of Jan. 6, 2021, should be construed as insurrection, making him ineligible to hold the office of president.

Colorado’s Supreme Court concluded “that because President Trump is disqualified from holding the office of president under Section Three, it would be a wrongful act under the Election Code for the secretary to list President Trump as a candidate on the presidential primary ballot.”

Trump’s attorneys have disputed that characterization in appeals, saying that his actions fell well short of the 14^th Amendment’s definition of insurrection. They cited tweets the president had sent calling for peace in Washington amid the chaos at the Capitol, but Porter dismissed those remarks as “plausible deniability” of potential crimes.

“This tweet could not possibly have had any other intended purposes besides to fan the flames. The hearing office determines that these calls to peace via social media, coming after an inflammatory tweet are the product of trying to give himself plausible deniability,” the ruling read.

She argued that the Capitol riot’s purpose was “the furtherance of the president’s plan to disrupt the electoral count taking place before the joint meeting of Congress,” and therefore qualified as insurrection under the Constitution.

The ruling, issued by Circuit Court Judge Tracie Porter on Wednesday, agreed with arguments made by Colorado’s Supreme Court when it kicked Trump off the ballot in that state. Porter’s ruling followed a determination by Illinois’ State Board of Elections in January that Trump’s name should remain on the ballot, but also recommended that a court make the ultimate decision in the case.

That Colorado case is pending before the U.S. Supreme Court, with a ruling expected before that state’s primary election. Porter said in her ruling that the order would be put on hold if the Supreme Court’s ruling was “inconsistent” with hers.

She also put the ruling on hold until at least Friday due to an anticipated appeal in Illinois court.

The Illinois Republican Party issued the following statement in reaction to the ruling:

“As we’ve stated repeatedly, the Illinois Republican Party believes the people, not activist courts or unelected bureaucrats, should choose who represents them in the White House. This decision to remove President Trump from the ballot without due process is an affront to democracy and limits the voting rights of Illinois citizens,” Illinois Republican Party Chairman Don Tracy said.

The former president’s spokesperson Steven Cheung promised a swift appeal to the ruling.

“Democrat front-groups continue to attempt to interfere in the election and deny President Trump his rightful place on the ballot,” the statement read. “Today, an activist Democrat judge in Illinois summarily overruled the state’s board of elections and contradicted earlier decisions from dozens of other state and federal jurisdictions. This is an unconstitutional ruling that we will quickly appeal. In the meantime, President Trump remains on the Illinois ballot, is dominating the polls, and will Make America Great Again!” 

The Supreme Court heard arguments in the Colorado case in early February, and according to legal experts cited by The New York Times and other publications, there was skepticism in the arguments made to keep the former president off the ballot.

The Illinois ruling repeatedly cited findings from the Colorado case, saying that Trump’s actions in the lead-up to, and on the day of Jan. 6, 2021, should be construed as insurrection, making him ineligible to hold the office of president.

Colorado’s Supreme Court concluded “that because President Trump is disqualified from holding the office of president under Section Three, it would be a wrongful act under the Election Code for the secretary to list President Trump as a candidate on the presidential primary ballot.”

Trump’s attorneys have disputed that characterization in appeals, saying that his actions fell well short of the 14^th Amendment’s definition of insurrection. They cited tweets the president had sent calling for peace in Washington amid the chaos at the Capitol, but Porter dismissed those remarks as “plausible deniability” of potential crimes.

“This tweet could not possibly have had any other intended purposes besides to fan the flames. The hearing office determines that these calls to peace via social media, coming after an inflammatory tweet are the product of trying to give himself plausible deniability,” the ruling read.

She argued that the Capitol riot’s purpose was “the furtherance of the president’s plan to disrupt the electoral count taking place before the joint meeting of Congress,” and therefore qualified as insurrection under the Constitution.

While the court set a course for a quick resolution, it maintained a hold on preparations for a trial focused on Trump’s efforts to overturn his election loss. The court will hear arguments in late April, with a decision likely no later than the end of June.

That timetable is much faster than usual, but assuming the justices deny Trump’s immunity bid, it’s not clear whether a trial can be scheduled and concluded before the November election. Early voting in some states will begin in September.

Trump’s lawyers have sought to put off a trial until after the election.

In the end, the timing of a possible trial could come down to how quickly the justices rule. They have shown they can act fast, issuing a decision in the Watergate tapes case in 1974 just 16 days after hearing arguments. The decision in Bush v. Gore came the day after arguments in December 2000.

By taking up the legally untested question now, the justices have created a scenario of uncertainty that special counsel Jack Smith had sought to avoid when he first asked the high court in December to immediately intervene. In his latest court filing, Smith had suggested arguments a full month earlier than the late April timeframe.

Trump wrote on Truth Social that legal scholars “are extremely thankful” the court stepped in to decide on immunity. “Presidents will always be concerned, and even paralyzed, by the prospect of wrongful prosecution and retaliation after they leave office,” he wrote.

A Smith spokesperson declined to comment.

The trial date, already postponed once by Trump’s immunity appeal, is of paramount importance to both sides. Prosecutors are looking to bring Trump to trial this year while defense lawyers have been seeking delays in his criminal cases. If Trump were to be elected with the case pending, he could presumably use his authority as head of the executive branch to order the Justice Department to dismiss it or could potentially seek to pardon himself.

Though their Supreme Court filing did not explicitly mention the upcoming November election or Trump’s status as the Republican primary front-runner, prosecutors described the case as having “unique national importance” and said that “delay in the resolution of these charges threatens to frustrate the public interest in a speedy and fair verdict.”

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Trump’s lawyers have cast the prosecution in partisan terms, telling the justices that “a months-long criminal trial of President Trump at the height of election season will radically disrupt President Trump’s ability to campaign against President Biden — which appears to be the whole point of the Special Counsel’s persistent demands for expedition.”

The court said in an unsigned statement that it will consider “whether and if so to what extent does a former President enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office.”

The Supreme Court has previously held that presidents are immune from civil liability for official acts, and Trump’s lawyers have for months argued that that protection should be extended to criminal prosecution as well.

Lower courts have, so far, rejected Trump’s novel claim that former presidents enjoy absolute immunity for actions that fall within their official job duties. A panel of appellate judges in Washington ruled earlier in February that U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who would preside over the election interference trial, was right to say that the case could proceed and that Trump could be prosecuted for actions undertaken while in the White House and in the run-up to Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol.

The issue reached the high court because the appeals court refused to grant the delay that Trump had sought.

The case is separate from the high court’s consideration of Trump’s appeal to remain on the presidential ballot despite attempts to kick him off because of his efforts following his election loss in 2020. During arguments on Feb. 8, the court seemed likely to side with Trump. A decision could come at any time.

The high court also will hear an appeal in April from one of the more than 1,200 people charged in the Capitol riot. The case could upend a charge prosecutors have brought against more than 300 people, including Trump.

The election interference case in Washington is one of four prosecutions Trump faces as he seeks to reclaim the White House. Of those, the only one with a trial date that seems poised to hold is his state case in New York, where he’s charged with falsifying business records in connection with hush money payments to a porn actor. That case is set for trial on March 25, and a judge this month signaled his determination to press ahead.

A separate case charging him with illegally hoarding classified records is set for trial on May 20, but a pivotal hearing on Friday seems likely to result in a delay. No date has been set in a separate state case in Atlanta charging him with scheming to subvert that state’s 2020 election.

Judge Arthur Engoron’s mail is all pre-screened daily, so he never came into contact with the letter. The source says it was addressed to him at 60 Centre Street in a standard business-sized envelope.

Two court staffers were exposed to the powder, according to the source, but did not immediately appear to have been harmed by their exposure. There was also a letter to the judge in the envelope, the source said.

The building did not have to be evacuated, and the powder was deemed to be safe.

Separately, New York State Police said they were investigating an envelope of white powder that was sent to 1 Empire State Plaza in Albany, where New York Attorney General Letitia James has an office.

State Police declined to say if it was sent to James, who brought the case against Trump, though two senior law enforcement officials said her office received a letter. The AG’s office confirmed they had received a letter containing white powder on Tuesday, but did not state to whom it was addressed.

No exposed individuals have reported symptoms, New York State Police say. They sent the substance to a lab for testing.

Trump’s attorneys have called the prosecution a witchhunt and Engoron’s judgment “unprecedented and punitive.” They filed a motion on Wednesday to stay the judgment.

The former president’s lawyers filed a notice of appeal earlier in the week asking the state’s mid-level appeals court to overturn Engoron’s Feb. 16 verdict.

Trump’s lawyers wrote in court papers that they’re asking the appeals court to decide whether Engoron “committed errors of law and/or fact” and whether he abused his discretion and/or his jurisdiction.

Engoron found that Trump, his company and top executives, including his sons Eric and Donald Trump Jr., schemed for years to deceive banks and insurers by inflating his wealth on financial statements used to secure loans and make deals. Among other penalties, the judge put strict limitations on the ability of Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, to do business.

The appeal ensures that the legal fight over Trump’s business practices will persist into the thick of the presidential primary season, and likely beyond, as he tries to clinch the Republican presidential nomination in his quest to retake the White House.

If upheld, Engoron’s ruling will force Trump to give up a sizable chunk of his fortune. Engoron ordered Trump to pay $355 million in penalties, but with interest the total has grown to nearly $464 million. That total increases by nearly $112,000 per day until he pays.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office is asking for what it described as a “narrowly tailored” order that would bar Trump from making or directing others to make public statements about potential witnesses and jurors, as well as statements meant to interfere with or harass the court’s staff, prosecution team or their families.

The district attorney’s office is also seeking approval to show jurors the infamous “Access Hollywood” video, made public in the final weeks of Trump’s 2016 White House campaign, in which he bragged about grabbing women’s genitals without asking for permission.

Prosecutors contend the release of the 2005 footage, followed by a flurry of women coming forward to accuse Trump of sexual assault, hastened his efforts to keep negative stories out of the press, leading to one of the hush-money arrangements at the heart of the case.

Trump’s lawyers wrote in court papers Monday that the “Access Hollywood” video “contains inflammatory and unduly prejudicial evidence that has no place at this trial about documents and accounting practices.”

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The judge, Juan Manuel Merchan, didn’t rule immediately on the requests. Jury selection is scheduled to start March 25. Barring a last-minute delay, it will be the first of Trump’s four criminal cases to go to trial.

Imposing a gag order on Trump would add to restrictions put in place after his arraignment last April that prohibit him from using evidence in the case to attack witnesses. Prosecutors are also proposing that the names of jurors be kept from the public to “minimize obstacles to jury selection, and protect juror safety.”

Without limits, prosecutors said, Trump’s rhetoric would “create a significant and imminent threat to the trial by distracting personnel, diverting government resources, and delaying the administration of justice.”

A spokesperson for Trump’s presidential campaign called the gag order request “election interference pure and simple” and called the hush-money case a “sham orchestrated by partisan Democrats desperately attempting to prevent” Trump from returning to the White House.

Trump lawyer Susan Necheles said the defense will respond in court papers later this week.

The Manhattan case centers on allegations that Trump falsified internal records kept by his company to hide the true nature of payments made to his former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen. The lawyer paid porn actor Stormy Daniels $130,000 as part of an effort during Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign to bury claims he’d had extramarital sexual encounters.

Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records, a felony punishable by up to four years in prison, though there is no guarantee that a conviction would result in jail time.

Trump, the Republican presidential front-runner, has lashed out about the case repeatedly on social media, warning of “potential death & destruction” before his indictment last year, posting a photo on social media of himself holding a baseball bat next to a picture of District Attorney Alvin Bragg and complaining that the Judge Merchan is “a Trump-hating judge” with a family full of “Trump haters.”

Trump is already under a similar gag order in his Washington, D.C., election interference criminal case and was fined $15,000 for twice violating a gag order imposed in his New York civil fraud trial after he made a disparaging social media post about the judge’s chief law clerk. In January, a Manhattan federal judge threatened Trump with expulsion from court in a civil trial on writer E. Jean Carroll’s defamation claims against him after he was heard saying “it is a witch hunt” and “it really is a con job.”

“Self-regulation is not a viable alternative, as defendant’s recent history makes plain,” prosecutors wrote in court papers. Trump, they said, “has a longstanding and perhaps singular history” of using social media, campaign speeches and other public statements to “attack judges, jurors, lawyers, witnesses and other individuals involved in legal proceedings against him.”

In a statement, Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said: “Today, the 2-tiered system of justice implemented against President Trump is on full display, with the request by another Deranged Democrat prosecutor seeking a restrictive gag order, which if granted, would impose an unconstitutional infringement on President Trump’s First Amendment rights, including his ability to defend himself, and the rights of all Americans to hear from President Trump.”

The requested gag order would not bar Trump from commenting about Bragg, an elected Democrat.

Still, prosecutors contend that Trump’s enmity for Bragg — including Truth Social posts calling Manhattan’s first Black D.A. a “degenerate psychopath” who “hates the USA” — has led to a spike in threats against the prosecutor and the district attorney’s office.

Last year, prosecutors said, police recorded 89 threats to Bragg, his family or staff, up from just a single threat in 2022, his first year in office. The wave of threats started March 18, according to an affidavit by the head of Bragg’s police detail, the day Trump falsely posted online that he was about to be arrested and encouraged supporters to protest and “take our nation back!”

A few days later, prosecutors noted, Bragg’s office received a letter containing a small amount of white powder and a note stating, “Alvin: I’m going to kill you.”

Trump has referred to a key witness in the case, his former lawyer Cohen, as a “convicted felon, disbarred lawyer, with zero credibility” and has made posts mocking Daniels.

The gag order request Monday mirrored portions of an order imposed on Trump in October in his separate Washington federal case, where he is charged with scheming to overturn the results of his 2020 election loss to Democratic rival Joe Biden.

A federal appeals court panel in December largely upheld Judge Tanya Chutkan’s gag order but narrowed it in an important way by freeing Trump to criticize special counsel Jack Smith, who brought the case. Manhattan prosecutors echoed that ruling by excluding Bragg from their proposed gag order.

Last May, Merchan issued what’s known as a protective order, warning Trump and his lawyers they risked being held in contempt if they disseminated evidence from the hush-money case to third parties, used it to attack witnesses or posted sensitive material to social media.

Merchan, noting Trump’s “special” status as a former president and current candidate, tried to make clear at the time that the protective order shouldn’t be construed as a gag order, saying, “It’s certainly not my intention to in any way impede Mr. Trump’s ability to campaign for the presidency of the United States.”

___

Associated Press reporter Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.

The former president’s lawyers filed a notice of appeal Monday asking the state’s mid-level appeals court to overturn Judge Arthur Engoron’s Feb. 16 verdict in Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit.

Trump’s lawyers wrote in court papers that they’re asking the appeals court to decide whether Engoron “committed errors of law and/or fact” and whether he abused his discretion and/or his jurisdiction.

Engoron found that Trump, his company and top executives, including his sons Eric and Donald Trump Jr., schemed for years to deceive banks and insurers by inflating his wealth on financial statements used to secure loans and make deals. Among other penalties, the judge put strict limitations on the ability of Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, to do business.

The appeal ensures that the legal fight over Trump’s business practices will persist into the thick of the presidential primary season, and likely beyond, as he tries to clinch the Republican presidential nomination in his quest to retake the White House.

If upheld, Engoron’s ruling will force Trump to give up a sizable chunk of his fortune. Engoron ordered Trump to pay $355 million in penalties, but with interest the total has grown to nearly $454 million. That total will increase by nearly $112,000 per day until he pays.

James has been tracking the amount Trump owes through posts on X.

Trump maintains that he is worth several billion dollars and testified last year that he had about $400 million in cash, in addition to properties and other investments.

Trump’s appeal was expected. Trump had vowed to appeal and his lawyers had been laying the groundwork for months by objecting frequently to Engoron’s handling of the trial.

Trump said Engoron’s decision, the costliest consequence of his recent legal troubles, was “election interference” and “weaponization against a political opponent.”

Trump complained he was being punished for “having built a perfect company, great cash, great buildings, great everything.”

Trump’s lawyer Christopher Kise said after the verdict that the former president was confident the appeals court “will ultimately correct the innumerable and catastrophic errors made by a trial court untethered to the law or to reality.”

“Given the grave stakes, we trust that the Appellate Division will overturn this egregious verdict and end this relentless persecution against my clients,” Trump lawyer Alina Habba said.

If the decision stands, Habba said, “it will serve as a signal to every single American that New York is no longer open for business.”

Trump wasn’t able to appeal the decision immediately because the clerk’s office at Engoron’s courthouse had to file paperwork known as a judgment to make it official. That was done on Friday.

Trump’s appeal is likely to focus on Engoron, whom Trump’s lawyers have accused of “tangible and overwhelming” bias, as well as objections to the legal mechanics involved in James’ lawsuit. Trump contends the law she sued him under is a consumer-protection statute that’s normally used to rein in businesses that rip off customers.

Trump’s lawyers have already gone to the Appellate Division at least 10 times to challenge Engoron’s prior rulings, including during the trial in an unsuccessful bid to reverse a gag order and $15,000 in fines for violations after Trump made a disparaging and false social media post about a key court staffer.

Trump’s lawyers have long argued that some of the allegations are barred by the statute of limitations, contending that Engoron failed to comply with an Appellate Division ruling last year that he narrow the scope of the trial to weed out outdated allegations.

If Trump is unsuccessful at the Appellate Division, he can ask the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, to consider taking his case.

The appeal is one of Trump’s many legal challenges. He has been indicted on criminal charges four times in the last year. He is accused in Georgia and Washington, D.C., of plotting to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden. In Florida, he is charged with hoarding classified documents.

He is scheduled to go on trial next month in Manhattan for falsifying business records related to hush money paid to porn actor Stormy Daniels on his behalf.

In January, a jury ordered Trump to pay $83.3 million to writer E. Jean Carroll for defaming her after she accused him in 2019 of sexually assaulting her in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s. That’s on top of the $5 million a jury awarded Carroll in a related trial last year.

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The lawyers made the request in Manhattan federal court, where a civil jury in late January awarded the sum to advice columnist E. Jean Carroll after a five-day trial that focused only on damages. A judge had ordered the jury to accept the findings of another jury that last year concluded Trump sexually abused Carroll in 1996 and defamed her in 2022.

The second jury focused only on statements Trump made in 2019 while he was president in a case long delayed by appeals.

In the filing Friday, Trump’s lawyers wrote that Judge Lewis A. Kaplan should suspend the execution of a judgment he issued on Feb. 8 until a month after he resolves Trump’s post-trial motions, which will be filed by March 7. Otherwise, they said, he should grant a partially secured stay that would require Trump to post a bond for a fraction of the award.

The lawyers said the $65 million punitive award, atop $18.3 in compensatory damages, was “plainly excessive” because it violates the Constitution and federal common law.

“There is a strong probability that the disposition of post-trial motions will substantially reduce, if not eliminate, the amount of the judgment,” they said.

Trump did not attend a trial last May when a Manhattan jury awarded Carroll $5 million after concluding that the real estate magnate sexually attacked Carroll in spring 1996 in the dressing room of a luxury Bergdorf Goodman store across the street from Trump Plaza in midtown Manhattan.

Since Carroll, 80, first made her claims public in a memoir in 2019, Trump, 77, has repeatedly derided them as lies made to sell her book and damage him politically. He has called her a “whack job” and said that she wasn’t “his type,” a reference that Carroll testified was meant to suggest she was too ugly to rape.

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Carroll also testified that she has faced death threats from Trump supporters and has had her reputation shattered after remarks Trump continued to make even as the trial was going on.

At the second trial, Trump attended regularly and briefly testified, though he did most of his communication with the jury through frequent shakes of his head and disparaging comments muttered loudly enough that a prosecutor complained that jurors surely heard them and the judge threatened to banish him from the courtroom.

Roberta Kaplan, a lawyer for Carroll and no relation to the judge, declined comment Friday.

Alina Habba, one of Trump’s attorneys, said in a statement that January’s jury award was “egregiously excessive.”

“The Court must exercise its authority to prevent Ms. Carroll’s (sic) from enforcing this absurd judgment, which will not withstand appeal,” Habba said.

Since the January verdict, a state court judge in New York in a separate case has ordered Trump and his companies to pay $355 million in penalties for a yearslong scheme to dupe banks and others with financial statements that inflated his wealth. With interest, he owes the state nearly $454 million.

“I got indicted a second time and a third time and a fourth time, and a lot of people said that that’s why the Black people like me, because they have been hurt so badly and discriminated against, and they actually viewed me as I’m being discriminated against,” he said.

“I’m being indicted for you, the American people. I’m being indicted for you, the Black population. I am being indicted for a lot of different groups by sick people, these are sick sick people,” Trump said Friday night in a speech at the Black Conservative Federation’s annual gala, at which he received the “Champion of Black America” award.

Trump, throughout his nearly two-hour speech, suggested his support from Black Americans stem from their understanding of how corrupt systems can lead to “great evil.”

“Some of the greatest evils in our nation’s history have come from corrupt systems that try to target and subjugate others to deny them their freedom and to deny them their rights,” Trump said. “I think that’s why the Black people are so much on my side now because they see what’s happening to me happens to them.”

Trump said Black Americans showcased their support for him through their embrace of merchandize emblazoned with his mug shot.

“My mug shot — we’ve all seen the mug shot, and you know who embraced it more than anybody else? The Black population,” Trump said. “You see Black people walking around with my mug shot, you know, they do shirts and they sell them for $19 apiece. It’s pretty amazing — millions by the way.”

Trump appeared at the event with other Black Republican politicians, including Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, Reps. Wesley Hunt of Texas and Byron Donalds of Florida, and Ben Carson, who was Trump’s Department of Housing and Urban Development secretary.

Adam Wasolis Sr., 33, from the Bronx, N.Y., said he agreed with Trump’s characterization of his appeal to Black voters.

“I definitely understand why some Black men may feel they resonate with his issues, because most of the issues that have plagued black men were legal issues,” said Wasolis, who is vice chair of New York Young Republican Black Caucus.

Ahead of the gala, Jasmine Harris, the Biden campaign’s Black media director, called Trump an “anti-Black tyrant” and “the proud poster boy for modern racism.”

“This is the same man who falsely accused the Central Park Five, questioned George Floyd’s humanity, compared his own impeachment trial to being lynched, and ensured the unemployment gap for Black workers spiked during his presidency,” Harris said.

“Donald Trump has been showing Black Americans his true colors for years: An incompetent, anti-Black tyrant who holds us to such low regard that he publicly dined with white nationalists a week after declaring his 2024 candidacy,” she added.

Trump, for his part, called Biden a “racist” Friday night.

“Joe Biden really has proven to be a very nasty and vicious racist. He’s been a racist,” Trump said. “Whether you like it or don’t like it. I happen not to like it. Joe Biden really has proven to be a very nasty and vicious racist. He’s been a racist. Whether you like it or don’t like it. I happen not to like it. … Biden spent years palling around with notorious segregationist you know that.”

The Biden campaign did not immediately return a request for comment on Trump’s remarks.

Biden served with segregationists like former South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond, and he has touted his ability to compromise with them. This week, Biden said he had served with “real racists” in in his long career but that the current Republican Party was worse.

“I’ve served with Strom Thurmond. I’ve served with all these guys that have set terrible records on race. But guess what? These guys are worse. These guys do not believe in basic democratic principles,” he said at a fundraiser in California.

Trump’s comments come as his allies prepare to launch an effort to deliver a historic chunk of the Black vote to Republicans in the 2024 elections.

“We have coalition groups across the country that are set to roll out initiatives very, very soon in those communities, that will focus on voter outreach and engagement and things like messaging in Black communities,” Darrell Scott, a Black Ohio-based pastor who is a Trump adviser and helping lead the effort, told NBC News.

Organizers for the Black Conservative Federation said during their event that they’re mobilizing groups nationwide in hopes of ensuring Trump wins the majority of the Black male vote in a general election match-up against Biden.

“I believe that President Trump is going to get 50% of the Black male vote,” Black Conservative Federation Diante Johnson said. “The Democratic Party has literally pushed Black men aside.”

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The action starts the clock on the amount of time Trump has to file an appeal and to post a bond for the award. If he does not do so, the New York attorney general’s office will be able to begin collection proceedings against Trump and his co-defendants in the civil fraud case.

The vast majority of the $464,576,230.62 judgment — $454,156,783.05 of it, to be exact — is against Trump and his companies. The rest of the judgment is against his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, who’ve been running the Trump Organization since 2017, and former top executives Allen Weisselberg and Jeff McConney.

The amount includes the prejudgment interest that’s accrued on the more than $350 million award Judge Arthur Engoron handed down last week.

Trump’s lawyers had sought to delay the judgment from being entered, presumably to allow them more time to line up financing for the bond, but Engoron rejected that request Thursday.

“You have failed to explain, much less justify, any basis for a stay,” Engoron told Trump attorney Clifford S. Robert in an email before he signed the judgment. The judgment became official Friday after it was entered in by the clerk.

Trump attorney Alina Habba told Fox News on Monday that “we will be prepared” to post the bond amount.

The bond will likely be very costly. While courts have discretion in setting exactly how much is required for a bond, New York courts typically require up to 120% of the judgment, including all pre-judgment interest. That means he could have to post a bond for well over $500 million.  

In a ruling last week following a months-long trial, Engoron found Trump and his top executives had intentionally engaged in a massive and long-running scheme to improperly inflate his assets in financial statements so he could take advantage of favorable loan and insurances rates he wasn’t actually entitled to. The judge ordered him to pay what he found were the “ill-gotten gains” from his years-long fraud and also barred Trump “from serving as an officer or director of any New York corporation or other legal entity in New York for a period of three years,” including his namesake company.

Trump maintained he hadn’t done anything wrong and the case was a part of a giant Democratic conspiracy designed to take him down.

Engoron cited the lack of remorse from Trump and his executives in his ruling, saying their “complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological.”

“They are accused only of inflating asset values to make more money. The documents prove this over and over again. This is a venial sin, not a mortal sin,” Engoron wrote. “Defendants did not commit murder or arson. They did not rob a bank at gunpoint. Donald Trump is not Bernard Madoff. Yet, defendants are incapable of admitting the error of their ways.”

He found their “refusal to admit error — indeed, to continue it, according to the Independent Monitor — constrains this Court to conclude that they will engage in it going forward unless judicially restrained.”

Last month, Trump was hit last month with an $83.3 million verdict in writer E. Jean Carroll’s defamation case against him. The judgment in that case was entered on Feb. 8. Trump has said he plans to appeal that verdict as well.

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

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“The Republican Party should always be on the side of the Miracle of Life — and the side of Mothers, Fathers, and their Beautiful Babies,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that marked his first comment on a topic that has roiled the GOP this week.

For some in the GOP, the ruling amounted to an unforeseen consequence of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision, which paved the way for states to restrict abortion. Trump has pointed to his selection of three of the justices who voted in the majority on the Dobbs decision as evidence of his anti-abortion credentials.

But on Friday, he took issue with the Alabama court’s conclusion that embryos are children under state law.

“Like the OVERWHELMING MAJORITY of Americans, including the VAST MAJORITY of Republicans, Conservatives, Christians, and Pro-Life Americans, I strongly support the availability of IVF for couples who are trying to have a precious baby,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Today, I am calling on the Alabama Legislature to act quickly to find an immediate solution to preserve the availability of IVF in Alabama.”

President Joe Biden’s campaign criticized Trump’s statement as an attempt to “whitewash the reality he created.”

“American women couldn’t care less what Donald Trump posts on Truth Social, they care that they can’t access fertility treatment because of him,” said Biden-Harris campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez. “Let’s be clear: Alabama families losing access to IVF is a direct result of Donald Trump’s Supreme Court justices overturning Roe v. Wade. Trump is responsible for 20-plus abortion bans, restrictions on women’s ability to decide if and when to grow a family, and attacks on contraception. He proudly overturned Roe, and brags about it on the campaign trail — as recently as last night.”

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, said in a statement earlier in the week that she also wants the legislature to send her a bill protecting IVF treatments.

“Following the ruling from the Alabama Supreme Court, I said that in our state, we work to foster a culture of life,” she said. “This certainly includes some couples hoping and praying to be parents who utilize IVF.”   

Lawmakers in Alabama’s House have already filed legislation that would protect IVF services.

It states: “Any fertilized human egg or human embryo that exists in any form outside of the uterus of a human body shall not, under any circumstances, be considered an unborn child, a minor child, a natural person, or any other term that connotes a human being for any purpose under state law.”

Republican state Sen. Tim Melson told the Alabama Reflector that he planned to introduce similar legislation in the upper chamber.

Before Trump weighed in on the matter for the first time, his lone remaining rival for the Republican presidential nomination, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, struggled to define her position. In an interview with NBC News Wednesday, she said, “Embryos, to me, are babies.”

On Thursday, she said in an interview with CNN that she opposes the Alabama court decision.

President Joe Biden, who is seeking re-election, harshly denounced the state court’s IVF ruling Thursday.

“Today, in 2024 in America, women are being turned away from emergency rooms and forced to travel hundreds of miles for health care, while doctors fear prosecution for providing an abortion. And now, a court in Alabama put access to some fertility treatments at risk for families who are desperately trying to get pregnant,” Biden said in a statement. “The disregard for women’s ability to make these decisions for themselves and their families is outrageous and unacceptable.”

Biden also called the court opinion a “direct result” of the Dobbs decision, which overturned the longstanding Roe vs. Wade opinion that had protected abortion rights, and Vice President Kamala Harris directly blamed Trump.

“Ask who’s to blame,” Harris said at a roundtable event in Michigan on Thursday. “And I’ll answer that question: When you look at the fact that the previous president of the United States was clear in his intention to hand-pick three Supreme Court justices who would overturn the protections of Roe v. Wade. And he did it. And that’s what got us to this point today.”

Biden has vowed to fight to restore those rights at the federal level.

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

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“President Trump’s alleged decision to designate records as personal under the PRA and cause them to be removed from the White House—which underlies Counts 1 through 32 of the Superseding Indictment—was an official act by the incumbent president,” the former president’s attorneys wrote in court papers filed in federal court in West Palm Beach, Florida.

They argued that because the decision was an official act made while Trump was still in office, it is subject to presidential immunity.

A spokesperson for Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment on Thursday night.

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New York Attorney General Letitia James told ABC News on Tuesday that she will seek to seize some of the former president’s assets if he’s unable to cover the bill from Judge Arthur Engoron’s Feb. 16 ruling.

Engoron concluded that Trump lied for years about his wealth as he built the real estate empire that vaulted him to stardom and the White House. Trump denies wrongdoing and has vowed to appeal.

“If he does not have funds to pay off the judgment, then we will seek judgment enforcement mechanisms in court, and we will ask the judge to seize his assets,” James, a Democrat, said in an interview with ABC reporter Aaron Katersky.

Trump’s ability to pay his mounting legal debts is increasingly murky after back-to-back courtroom losses. In January, a jury ordered him to pay $83.3 million for defaming writer E. Jean Carroll.

Trump claimed last year that he has about $400 million in cash — reserves that would get eaten up by his court penalties. The rest of his net worth, which he says is several billion dollars, is tied up in golf courses, skyscrapers and other properties, along with investments and other holdings.

But don’t expect James to try to grab the keys to Trump Tower or Mar-a-Lago immediately. Trump’s promised appeal is likely to halt collection of his penalty while the process plays out.

Here's a look at where things stand in the wake of Trump’s costly verdict.

Could the state really seize Trump's assets?

Yes. If Trump isn't able to pay, the state “could levy and sell his assets, lien his real property, and garnish anyone who owes him money,” Syracuse University Law Professor Gregory Germain said.

Seizing assets is a common legal tactic when a defendant can’t access enough cash to pay a civil penalty. In a famous example, O.J. Simpson’s Heisman Trophy was seized and sold at auction in 1999 to cover part of a $33.5 million wrongful death judgment against him.

Trump could avoid losing assets to seizure if he has enough cash — or is able to free up enough cash — to pay his penalty and mounting interest.

How much he has isn't clear because most information about Trump’s finances comes from Trump himself via his government disclosures and the annual financial statements that Engoron has deemed fraudulent.

Trump reported having about $294 million in cash or cash equivalents on his most recent annual financial statement for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2021.

After that, according to state lawyers, he added about $186.8 million from selling the lease on his Washington hotel in May 2022 and the rights to manage a New York City golf course in June 2023. Part of Trump’s penalty requires that he give those proceeds to the state, plus interest.

Engoron’s decision last week spared Trump’s real estate empire from what the Republican front-runner deemed the “corporate death penalty,” reversing a prior ruling and opting to leave his company in business, albeit with severe restrictions including oversight from a court-appointed monitor.

James didn’t specify to ABC which of Trump’s assets the state might want to seize, though she noted that her office happens to be right across the street from a Trump-owned office building in Lower Manhattan that was the subject of some of the fraud allegations in her lawsuit.

“We are prepared to make sure that the judgment is paid to New Yorkers,” James told ABC. “And yes, I look at 40 Wall Street each and every day.”

How will an appeal affect Trump's penalty?

With Trump promising to appeal, it's unlikely he'll have to pay the penalty — or face the prospect of having some of his assets seized — for a while. If he wins, he might not have to pay anything.

Under state law, Trump will receive an automatic stay if he puts up money, assets or an appeal bond covering the amount he owes. A stay is a legal mechanism halting enforcement of a court decision while the appeals process plays out.

“Even if we choose to appeal this – which we will – we have to post the bond, which is the full amount and some, and we will be prepared to do that,” Trump lawyer Alina Habba told Fox News on Monday.

Trump’s lawyers can also ask the appeals court to grant a stay without obtaining a bond or with a bond for a lower amount.

In his Georgia election interference criminal case, Trump paid $20,000 — or 10% — for a $200,000 release bond. After losing at a first trial involving Carroll last year, Trump put $5.55 million in escrow to cover the cost of the judgment while he appeals. He has said he would appeal the $83.3 million January verdict but has yet to do so.

“If he can’t post a bond or meet the appellate division’s bonding requirements, then I would expect him to file bankruptcy to take advantage of the automatic stay on collection,” Germain said. “But that’s a couple of chess moves away, so we will just have to see what happens.”

Trump’s vow to appeal all but assures the legal fight over his business practices will persist into the thick of the presidential primary season as he tries to clinch the Republican nomination in his quest to retake the White House.

The appeal is also likely to overlap with his criminal trial next month in his New York hush-money case, the first of his four criminal cases to go to trial.

Trump can’t appeal yet because the clerk’s office at Engoron’s courthouse must first file paperwork to make the verdict official. Once that happens, Trump will have 30 days to appeal and get the penalty stayed, or pay up. Trump’s lawyers wrangled Wednesday with state lawyers and the judge over what that paperwork should say. Trump lawyer Cliff Robert told Engoron in a letter late Wednesday that he wants enforcement of the penalty delayed 30 days “to allow for an orderly post-Judgment process, particularly given the magnitude of Judgment.”

Does Trump really owe $87,502 a day in interest?

With each passing day, Trump owes an additional $87,502 in interest on his civil fraud penalty. By Thursday, that’ll be an extra $525,000 since the decision was issued on Feb. 16. The interest will continue to accrue even while he appeals. Barring court intervention or an earlier resolution, his bill will soar to a half-billion dollars by August 2025.

Trump’s underlying penalty is $355 million, the equivalent of what the judge said were “ill-gotten gains” from savings on lower loan interest and windfall profits from development deals he wouldn’t have been able to make if he'd been honest about his wealth.

Under state law, he is being charged interest on that amount at an annual rate of 9%.

As of Wednesday, Trump owed just over $99 million in interest, bringing his total to just under $454 million — that’s $453,981,779 to be exact, according to the Associated Press' calculations. Trump’s interest will keep accruing until Trump pays. Trump owes the money individually and as the owner of corporate entities that were named as defendants in James' lawsuit.

Engoron said the interest Trump owes on about half of the total penalty amount — pertaining to loan savings — can be calculated from the start of James’ investigation in March 2019. Interest on the remaining amount — which pertains to the sale of Trump’s Washington hotel and Bronx golf course rights — can be calculated starting in May 2022 or June 2023.

In all, Engoron ordered Trump and his co-defendants to pay $363.9 million in penalties, or about $464.3 million with interest. The total bill increases by $89,729 per day, according to AP's calculations.

Trump’s sons, Eric and Donald Jr., must each pay about $4.7 million, including interest, to the state for their shares of the Washington hotel sales. Weisselberg was ordered to pay $1 million — for half of the $2-million severance he’s receiving — plus about $100,000 in interest.

Until they pay, Weisselberg is on the hook for another $247 per day, while Trump’s sons each owe an extra $990 per day, according to AP’s calculations.

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President Joe Biden and other Western leaders have blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin for the 47-year-old’s death, responding with anger and demands for answers.

But Trump made no mention of Putin or Navalny’s family in the post Monday morning that instead cast himself as a victim and continued to paint the U.S. as a nation in decline.

“The sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me more and more aware of what is happening in our Country,” he wrote. “It is a slow, steady progression, with CROOKED, Radical Left Politicians, Prosecutors, and Judges leading us down a path to destruction. Open Borders, Rigged Elections, and Grossly Unfair Courtroom Decisions are DESTROYING AMERICA. WE ARE A NATION IN DECLINE, A FAILING NATION! MAGA2024.”

Donald Trump Feb 17

Trump faces a new reality after NY civil fraud trial decision. Here's how his business is likely impacted

Donald Trump Feb 17

Trump hawks $399 branded shoes at ‘Sneaker Con,' a day after $355 million ruling against him

A New York judge on Friday ordered Trump to pay $355 million in penalties in a civil fraud trial, finding the former president had inflated his wealth for years, scheming to dupe banks, insurers and others. Trump has also been criminally charged in four separate investigations, the first of which is scheduled to go to trial next month.

Trump’s post drew immediate denunciation from his rivals, including Nikki Haley, his last remaining challenger in the Republican nominating contest, who has been stepping up her criticism of the former president heading into Saturday’s South Carolina primary.

“Donald Trump could have condemned Vladimir Putin for being a murderous thug,” she wrote. “Trump could have praised Navalny’s courage.” Instead, “he stole a page from liberals’ playbook, denouncing America and comparing our country to Russia.”

On Monday morning in Sumter, she further accused Trump of “siding with a thug” in Putin, whom she called “a dictator who killed his political opponents.”

Biden’s campaign posted on X, formerly Twitter, that after days of silence, Trump finally responded by comparing Navalny to himself in a “deranged social media post.”

Trump has been criticized for nearly a decade now for his refusal to denounce the Russian leader and his frequent complimentary statements.

As president, Trump drew outrage when he openly questioned his own intelligence agencies ’ finding that Russia meddled in the 2016 U.S. election to help him win, seeming to accept Putin’s insistence that Moscow’s hands were clean.

This month he again caused an uproar when he said he once warned a NATO ally that he “would encourage” Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to countries in the alliance that don’t spend enough on defense.

Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, has accused Putin of killing her husband in a remote prison and refusing to turn over his body as part of a cover-up.

Russian authorities have said Navalny’s cause of death Friday is still unknown and is the subject of a new investigation. Its findings are likely to be met with deep skepticism.

Trump’s reference to Navalny’s “sudden death” was notable.

Prison officials allegedly told Navalny’s mother when she arrived at the penal colony Saturday that her son had perished from “sudden death syndrome,” Ivan Zhdanov, the director of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, wrote on X.

Navalny had been imprisoned since January 2021, when he returned to Moscow after recuperating from a nerve agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin.

___

Associated Press writer Meg Kinnard contributed to this report from Sumter, South Carolina.

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A New York judge ordered Trump and his companies Friday to pay $355 million in fines, plus interest, after ruling that he had manipulated his net worth in financial statements.

The stiff penalty comes just weeks after Trump was ordered to pay $83.3 million to the writer E. Jean Carroll for damaging her reputation after she accused him of sexual assault. A separate jury last year awarded Carroll $5 million from Trump for sexual abuse and defamation.

Add interest payments on top of that and the judgments could deal a staggering blow to the personal fortune that remains core to Trump’s political appeal. He has adamantly denied wrongdoing and pledged to appeal, a process that could take months or even years.

In the meantime, here’s what we know about what Trump owes, whether he’ll have to pay up, and what comes next:

The verdict in the civil fraud trial requires Trump to pay interest on some of the deal profits he has been ordered to give up. New York Attorney General Letitia James, who brought the case, said the interest payments totaled $99 million and would “continue to increase every single day until it is paid.”

Between Friday’s ruling and the two judgments in Carroll’s case, Trump would be on the hook for about $542 million in legal judgments.

Trump owes another $110,000 for refusing to comply with a subpoena in the civil fraud case and $15,000 for repeatedly disparaging the judge’s law clerk in violation of a gag order. As part of Friday’s ruling, the judge also ordered both of Trump’s sons to pay $4 million apiece.

Trump’s court-ordered debts don’t end there. Last month, he was ordered to pay nearly $400,000 in legal fees to The New York Times after suing the newspaper unsuccessfully. He is currently appealing a judgment of $938,000 against him and his attorney for filing what a judge described as a “frivolous” lawsuit against Hillary Clinton.

It’s not uncommon for the size of judgments, particularly high-dollar amounts, to be reduced on appeals.

The appeal in Trump’s civil fraud case will go before an intermediate-level court first. If it returns an unfavorable ruling, Trump could try to get the case taken up by New York’s top appellate court, though legal experts say that is unlikely.

Trump has already deposited $5 million owed to Carroll for the first defamation case into a court-controlled account, along with an additional $500,000 in interest required by New York law. Carroll will not have access to the funds until the appeals process plays out.

He may soon be forced to do the same for the $83.3 million judgment in the second Carroll verdict. Alternatively, he could secure a bond and pay only a portion up front — though that option would come with interest and fees and likely require some form of collateral. Trump would have to find a financial institution willing to front him the money.

In the civil fraud case, it will be up to the courts to decide how much Trump must put up as he mounts his appeal. And he may be required to pay the full sum immediately after the appellate court rules, which could come as soon as this summer, according to University of Michigan law professor Will Thomas.

“New York’s judicial system has shown a willingness to move quickly on some of these Trump issues,” Thomas said. “When we hear from the first appellate court, that’s a point where money is almost certainly going to change hands.”

Trump has claimed he’s worth over $10 billion. Most estimates, including an assessment by the New York attorney general, put that figure closer to $2 billion.

In his 2021 statement of financial condition, Trump said he had just under $300 million in “cash and cash equivalents.” He has since made a number of sales, including his New York golf course and his Washington, D.C., hotel, and may also soon get a windfall when his social media company, Truth Social, goes public.

But even with those income streams, it’s unclear whether Trump and his family members have enough cash on hand to pay all the money they now owe.

Federal election law prohibits the use of campaign funds for personal use. But the rules are far murkier when it comes to tapping political action committees — or PACs — for a candidate’s expenses.

Over the last two years, Trump’s Save America political action committee, his presidential campaign and his other fundraising organizations have devoted $76.7 million to legal fees. Campaign finance experts expect Trump will try to spend PAC money to defray the cost of his judgments in some way.

“The likelihood of the Federal Election Commission in its current configuration pursuing these violations is not terribly great,” said Daniel Weiner, director of the Brennan Center’s Elections and Government Program.

Under the judge’s ruling Friday, Trump would still be liable to pay even if the Trump Organization declares bankruptcy. If Trump personally declared bankruptcy, the enforcement of the judgment against him would be paused. But political commenters say such a drastic step is unlikely.

Despite the fact that several of his previous companies have gone bankrupt, Trump has repeatedly bragged about the fact that he has never, personally, declared bankruptcy.

Legally, Trump would face the same consequences as any American refusing to pay a legal judgment, including the possibility of having his assets seized and his wages garnished.

“The president is not a king and the president’s assets are not sacrosanct just because he happened to be the president,” Weiner said.

On Friday, the judge overseeing Trump’s civil fraud case appointed an additional monitor to oversee the Trump Organization’s finances, finding they could not be trusted to follow the law. In the event that Trump refused to hand over payments, the courts would have additional discretion to go after Trump and his businesses.

“They have a huge amount of power particularly for someone like Trump who has physical assets inside the state,” Thomas, the law professor, said. “The court might say we’re going to freeze your bank account. Or even worse, they could say, ’We’re seizing Trump Tower and we’re putting it up for sale.'”

A New York judge on Friday spared the ex-president that worst case punishment as he ruled in a civil case alleging Trump fraudulently misrepresented financial figures to get cheaper loans and other benefits.

Still, Trump got slammed hard, facing big cash penalties, outside supervision of his companies and restrictions on his borrowing.

In a pretrial ruling last year, the same judge threatened to shut down much of the Republican presidential front-runner’s business by calling for the “dissolution” of corporate entities that hold many of his marquee properties. That raised the specter of possible fire sales of Trump Tower, a Wall Street skyscraper and other properties.

But New York Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron called off the dissolution.

Donald Trump Feb 17

Trump hawks $399 branded shoes at ‘Sneaker Con,' a day after $355 million ruling against him

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Instead, he said the court would appoint two monitors to oversee the Trump Organization to make sure it doesn’t continue to submit false figures.

“It’s a complete reversal,” said real estate lawyer Adam Leitman Bailey. “There’s a big difference between having to sell your assets and a monitor who gets to look over your shoulders.”

In his ruling, Engoron banned Trump from serving as an officer or director in any New York corporation for three years, prohibited him from taking out loans with New York banks and said his company and other defendants have to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in fines.

Here is how the decision is likely to impact his business:

CASH DRAIN

This is possibly the worst hit from the ruling.

Trump and his businesses were told they would have to pay $355 million for “ill gotten gains.” Trump’s sons, Eric and Donald Trump Jr., who help run the business, were ordered to pay $4 million each. Trump’s former chief financial officer was ordered to pay $1 million, for a total judgment of $364 million.

“I don’t think there is any way Trump can continue to operate his business as usual,” said Syracuse University law professor Gregory Germain. “It’s a lot of money.”

The penalties will slam Trump’s finances at a moment he is facing other steep legal bills stemming from several criminal cases. Trump separately was hit with $88 million in judgments in sexual abuse and defamation lawsuits brought by writer E. Jean Carroll.

It gets worse.

Trump is also required to pay interest from the dates when he received benefits from his alleged fraud. That so-called pre-judgement interest adds another $100 million to Trump’s bills, according to New York’s attorney general.

But don’t expect him to dig into his pocket anytime soon.

Trump lawyers have said they will appeal. That means he won’t have to hand over the whole amount yet, though he will have to post a bond or escrow, which could tie up cash while waiting for the appeal.

In any case, Trump already has enough in cash to pay much of that penalty, assuming he is telling the truth about his finances. In a deposition in the fraud case, he said he had more than $400 million in cash.

NO TRUMP PROPERTY FIRE SALE

The judge’s summary ruling in September was vague in exactly what he meant by a “dissolution” of Trump businesses. But several legal experts told The Associated Press that in the worse case it could have led to a sale of not only of his New York properties, but his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, a Chicago hotel and condo building, and several golf clubs, including ones in Miami, Los Angeles and Scotland.

One of Trump’s lawyers, Christopher Kise, called that potential outcome a “corporate death penalty.”

Not even the New York attorney general, who filed the lawsuit against Trump, had asked for a “dissolution.”

An Associated Press investigation confirmed how unusual such a punishment would have been if carried out: Trump’s case would have been the only big business in nearly 70 years of similar cases shut down without a showing of obvious victims who suffered major financial losses. The main alleged victim of the real estate mogul ’s fraud, Deutsche Bank, had itself not complained it had suffered any losses.

But Engoron on Friday backed down, saying monitors were good enough, basically handing New York Attorney General Letitia James most of what she had sought: bans, monitors and a massive penalty.

THREE-YEAR BAN

The ban on Trump serving as an officer or director for a New York corporation suggests a big shakeup at the Trump Organization, but the real impact isn’t clear.

Trump may be removed from the corner office, but as an owner of the business his right to appoint someone to act on his behalf has not been revoked.

“It’s not that he can’t have influence at these enterprises,” said University of Michigan law professor William Thomas. “He just can’t hold any actually appointed positions.”

Thomas added, however, much depends on how the monitor will handle Trump’s attempt to run his company by proxy.

“He might want to walk in the office and tell them what to do, but there will be pushback,” he said. “It could limit the avenues through which he can exert control.”

Two obvious candidates to help Trump maintain control, his two adult sons, are already off-limits. The judge’s ruling barred Donald Jr. and Eric from being officers of New York companies for two years.

BUSINESS LOANS

Trump is also banned from getting loans from New York-chartered banks, a potentially devastating blow given so many major lenders are based in the city.

Luckily for Trump, he has cut his debt by hundreds of millions in recent years and so won’t need to refinance as much. He also has pushed out the maturity of many loans still on the books by several years.

The impact on funding for future businesses could be crushing, though. Without access to banks, he may be forced to use cash to finance new ventures, something that real estate moguls are loath to do and that won’t be easy given his cash payments.

Still, only banks appear banned in the ruling, leaving Trump free to borrow from fast-growing alternative financiers, the private equity and hedge funds that make up the so-called shadow banking world.

“I could imagine a load of private equity funds with very little prospects sitting on a bunch of dry powder saying, ’Hey, we’ll lend you $300 million,’” Columbia law school professor Eric Talley said, adding, “I can imagine the Saudis lending him $300 million.”

Trump was met with loud boos as well as cheers at the Philadelphia Convention Center as he unveiled what he touted as the first official Trump footwear. The shoes, gold lame high tops with an American flag detail on the back, are being sold as “The Never Surrender High-Tops” for $399 on a new website that also sells Trump-branded “Victory47” cologne and perfume for $99 a bottle.

The website says it has no connection to Trump’s campaign, though Trump campaign officials promoted the appearance in online posts.

The launch comes a day after a judge in New York ordered Trump to pay a whopping $355 million in penalties, finding that the former president lied about his wealth for years, scheming to dupe banks, insurers and others by inflating his wealth on financial statements.

The stiff penalty came after Trump was ordered to pay another $83.3 million to the writer E. Jean Carroll for damaging her reputation after she accused him of sexual assault. With interest payments, Trump’s legal debts might now exceed a half-billion dollars — an amount it is unclear he can afford to pay.

This isn’t the first money-making venture Trump has announced since launching his third campaign for the White House in 2022. Trump last year reported making between $100,000 and $1 million for a series of digital trading cards that portrayed him photoshopped in a series of cartoon-like images, including an astronaut, a cowboy and a superhero.

Trump’s appearance was met with clashing boos from his detractors and chants of “USA!” from supporters who arrived at the sneaker event decked out in Trump gear. The dueling chants made it difficult, at times, to hear Trump speak. Some held signs that read “SNEAKERHEADS LOVE TRUMP.”

“There’s a lot of emotion in this room,” Trump said, after holding up and showing off the gold shoes and then placing them on either side of his podium.

“This is something that I’ve been talking about for 12 years, 13 years,” he said.

As he spoke, the smell of weed occasionally wafted through the room.

Some of those who attended said they were unaware Trump would be there, and continued to shop as a crowd gathered around the stage. Many in the audience said they were not from the city and instead hailed from nearby states and Washington, D.C. The attendees skewed younger and more diverse than Trump’s usual rally crowds and some Black attendees were seen leaving to continue shopping as Trump spoke.

Trump’s campaign is hoping he will be able to win over more young and minority voters, particularly young Black men, in a likely rematch against President Joe Biden in November.

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Trump ordered to pay $454 million in fines and interest in NY business fraud case

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Trump hush money trial to start March 25, judge denies dismissal request

The new sneaker website says it is run by CIC Ventures LLC, a company that Trump reported owning in his 2023 financial disclosure. A similarly-named company, CIC Digital LLC, owns the digital trading card NFTs, or non-fungible tokens.

The website states the new venture “is not political and has nothing to do with any political campaign.

A Trump spokesman did not respond to questions about the event.

The website touts the shoes as a limited-edition “true collector’s item” that is “Bold, gold, and tough, just like President Trump.”

“The Never Surrender sneakers are your rally cry in shoe form. Lace-up and step out ready to conquer,” the description reads.

Biden-Harris 2024 Communications Director Michael Tyler slammed the appearance saying: “Donald Trump showing up to hawk bootleg Off-Whites is the closest he’ll get to any Air Force Ones ever again for the rest of his life.”

Trump will hold a rally later Saturday in Michigan in the suburbs of Detroit.

A New York judge on Friday spared the ex-president that worst case punishment as he ruled in a civil case alleging Trump fraudulently misrepresented financial figures to get cheaper loans and other benefits.

Still, Trump got slammed hard, facing big cash penalties, outside supervision of his companies and restrictions on his borrowing.

In a pretrial ruling last year, the same judge threatened to shut down much of the Republican presidential front-runner’s business by calling for the “dissolution” of corporate entities that hold many of his marquee properties. That raised the specter of possible fire sales of Trump Tower, a Wall Street skyscraper and other properties.

But New York Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron called off the dissolution.

Instead, he said the court would appoint two monitors to oversee the Trump Organization to make sure it doesn’t continue to submit false figures.

“It’s a complete reversal,” said real estate lawyer Adam Leitman Bailey. “There’s a big difference between having to sell your assets and a monitor who gets to look over your shoulders.”

In his ruling, Engoron banned Trump from serving as an officer or director in any New York corporation for three years, prohibited him from taking out loans with New York banks and said his company and other defendants have to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in fines.

Here is how the decision is likely to impact his business:

This is possibly the worst hit from the ruling.

Trump and his businesses were told they would have to pay $355 million for “ill gotten gains.” Trump’s sons, Eric and Donald Trump Jr., who help run the business, were ordered to pay $4 million each. Trump’s former chief financial officer was ordered to pay $1 million, for a total judgment of $364 million.

“I don’t think there is any way Trump can continue to operate his business as usual,” said Syracuse University law professor Gregory Germain. “It’s a lot of money.”

The penalties will slam Trump’s finances at a moment he is facing other steep legal bills stemming from several criminal cases. Trump separately was hit with $88 million in judgments in sexual abuse and defamation lawsuits brought by writer E. Jean Carroll.

It gets worse.

Trump is also required to pay interest from the dates when he received benefits from his alleged fraud. That so-called pre-judgement interest adds another $100 million to Trump’s bills, according to New York’s attorney general.

But don’t expect him to dig into his pocket anytime soon.

Trump lawyers have said they will appeal. That means he won’t have to hand over the whole amount yet, though he will have to post a bond or escrow, which could tie up cash while waiting for the appeal.

In any case, Trump already has enough in cash to pay much of that penalty, assuming he is telling the truth about his finances. In a deposition in the fraud case, he said he had more than $400 million in cash.

The judge’s summary ruling in September was vague in exactly what he meant by a “dissolution” of Trump businesses. But several legal experts told The Associated Press that in the worse case it could have led to a sale of not only of his New York properties, but his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, a Chicago hotel and condo building, and several golf clubs, including ones in Miami, Los Angeles and Scotland.

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One of Trump’s lawyers, Christopher Kise, called that potential outcome a “corporate death penalty.”

Not even the New York attorney general, who filed the lawsuit against Trump, had asked for a “dissolution.”

An Associated Press investigation confirmed how unusual such a punishment would have been if carried out: Trump’s case would have been the only big business in nearly 70 years of similar cases shut down without a showing of obvious victims who suffered major financial losses. The main alleged victim of the real estate mogul ’s fraud, Deutsche Bank, had itself not complained it had suffered any losses.

But Engoron on Friday backed down, saying monitors were good enough, basically handing New York Attorney General Letitia James most of what she had sought: bans, monitors and a massive penalty.

The ban on Trump serving as an officer or director for a New York corporation suggests a big shakeup at the Trump Organization, but the real impact isn’t clear.

Trump may be removed from the corner office, but as an owner of the business his right to appoint someone to act on his behalf has not been revoked.

“It’s not that he can’t have influence at these enterprises,” said University of Michigan law professor William Thomas. “He just can’t hold any actually appointed positions.”

Thomas added, however, much depends on how the monitor will handle Trump’s attempt to run his company by proxy.

“He might want to walk in the office and tell them what to do, but there will be pushback,” he said. “It could limit the avenues through which he can exert control.”

Two obvious candidates to help Trump maintain control, his two adult sons, are already off-limits. The judge’s ruling barred Donald Jr. and Eric from being officers of New York companies for two years.

Trump is also banned from getting loans from New York-chartered banks, a potentially devastating blow given so many major lenders are based in the city.

Luckily for Trump, he has cut his debt by hundreds of millions in recent years and so won’t need to refinance as much. He also has pushed out the maturity of many loans still on the books by several years.

The impact on funding for future businesses could be crushing, though. Without access to banks, he may be forced to use cash to finance new ventures, something that real estate moguls are loath to do and that won’t be easy given his cash payments.

Still, only banks appear banned in the ruling, leaving Trump free to borrow from fast-growing alternative financiers, the private equity and hedge funds that make up the so-called shadow banking world.

“I could imagine a load of private equity funds with very little prospects sitting on a bunch of dry powder saying, ’Hey, we’ll lend you $300 million,’” Columbia law school professor Eric Talley said, adding, “I can imagine the Saudis lending him $300 million.”

Judge Arthur Engoron’s decision after a trial in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit punishes Trump, his company and executives, including his two eldest sons, for scheming to dupe banks, insurers and others by inflating his wealth on financial statements. It forces a shakeup at the top of his Trump Organization, putting the company under court supervision and curtailing how it does business.

The decision is a staggering setback for the Republican presidential front-runner, the latest and costliest consequence of his recent legal troubles. The magnitude of the verdict on top of penalties in other cases could dramatically dent Trump’s financial resources and damage his identity as a savvy businessman who parlayed his fame as a real estate developer into reality TV stardom and the presidency. He has vowed to appeal and won’t have to pay immediately.

Trump’s true punishment could be far costlier because under state law he is also required to pay interest on the penalties, which James said puts him on the hook for a total of more than $450 million. The amount, which would be paid to the state, will grow until he pays.

The judge made clear, however, that the Trump Organization will continue to operate, backing away from an earlier ruling that would have dissolved Trump’s companies.

Engoron, a Democrat, concluded that Trump and his company were “likely to continue their fraudulent ways” without the penalties and controls he imposed. Engoron concluded that Trump and his co-defendants “failed to accept responsibility” and that experts who testified on his behalf “simply denied reality.”

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“This is a venial sin, not a mortal sin,” Engoron wrote in a searing 92-page opinion. “They did not rob a bank at gunpoint. Donald Trump is not Bernard Madoff. Yet, defendants are incapable of admitting the error of their ways.”

He said their “complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological” and “the frauds found here leap off the page and shock the conscience.”

Trump said the decision was “election inference” and “weaponization against a political opponent,” complaining to reporters at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida that he was being penalized for “having built a perfect company, great cash, great buildings, great everything.”

James, a Democrat, told reporters “justice has been served” and called the ruling “a tremendous victory for this state, this nation, and for everyone who believes that we all must play by the same rules — even former presidents.”

“Now, Donald Trump is finally facing accountability for his lying, cheating, and staggering fraud. Because no matter how big, rich or powerful you think you are, no one is above the law,” James said.

Trump still owns the Trump Organization, but he put his assets into a revocable trust and relinquished a leadership role when he became president in 2017, putting his sons Eric and Donald Trump Jr. in charge of day-to-day operations. Engoron’s ruling imposes a three-year ban on Trump serving as an officer or director of any New York company and bars his sons for two years, effectively requiring the company to find new leadership, at least temporarily.

The monetary penalties involve what Engoron said were “ill-gotten gains” that Trump attained by making himself seem richer. They include money Trump saved by securing lower loan interest rates and profits from the sale of properties that he might not have been able to develop without that financing.

Eric and Donald Trump Jr. were each ordered to pay $4 million, their share of profits from the 2022 sale of Trump’s Washington, D.C. hotel, and the company’s former longtime chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg was ordered to pay $1 million — half of the $2 million severance he’s receiving. All told, Trump and his co-defendants owe $364 million, which James’ office said grows to $464 million when interest is included. Weisselberg and another longtime company executive, Jeffrey McConney, were barred from ever holding a corporate finance or leadership role in the state.

Engoron put the Trump Organization under the supervision of a independent monitor for at least three years, extending oversight he ordered after James sued Trump in 2022, and said the company must hire an independent compliance director to ensure that it follows financial reporting obligations and rules.

Engoron wrote that stripping Trump of his companies, as he’d previously ordered, was no longer necessary because the company will be under a “two-tiered oversight” with the independent monitor, retired federal judge Barbara Jones, and the compliance director keeping an eye on any activities that could lead to fraud.

Because it was civil, not criminal, the case did not carry the potential of prison time.

Engoron issued his decision after a 2½-month trial that Trump turned into a frequent, albeit unorthodox campaign stage. He trekked to court nearly a dozen times, watching testimony, grousing to news cameras outside the courtroom and bristling under oath that he was the victim of a rigged legal system.

During the trial, Trump called Engoron “extremely hostile” and James “a political hack.” He also incurred $15,000 in fines for violating a gag order that the judge imposed after he made a disparaging and untrue social media post about a key court staffer.

In a six-minute diatribe during closing arguments in January, Trump proclaimed “I am an innocent man” and called the case a “fraud on me.”

Trump has boasted for years about his wealth, but James’ lawsuit alleged that his claims weren’t just harmless bragging but years of deceptive practices as he built the multinational collection of skyscrapers, golf courses and other properties that catapulted him to wealth, fame and the White House.

The suit accused Trump and his co-defendants of routinely puffing up his financial statements to create an illusion his properties were more valuable than they really were. State lawyers said Trump exaggerated his wealth by as much as $3.6 billion one year.

James brought the case under a New York law that authorizes her to investigate persistent fraud in business dealings. Trump incorporated the Trump Organization in New York in 1981.

Even before the trial began, Engoron ruled that James had proven Trump’s financial statements were fraudulent. The judge ordered some of Trump’s companies removed from his control and dissolved. An appeals court put that decision on hold.

In that earlier ruling, the judge found that, among other tricks, Trump’s financial statements had wrongly claimed his Trump Tower penthouse was nearly three times its actual size and overvalued his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, based on the idea that the property could be developed for residential use, even though he had surrendered rights to develop it for any uses but a club.

Trump, one of 40 witnesses to testify at the trial, said his financial statements actually understated his net worth. Trump maintains that he is worth several billion dollars and testified last year that he had about $400 million in cash, in addition to properties and other investments.

Reiterating his testimony, Trump said Friday, “There were no victims because the banks made a lot of money.”

Trump and his lawyers have said outside accountants who helped prepare the statements should have flagged any discrepancies and have said the documents came with disclaimers that shielded him from liability. They also argued that some of the allegations were barred by the statute of limitations.

Engoron decided the case because neither side sought a jury and state law doesn’t allow for juries for this type of lawsuit.

The suit is one of many legal headaches for Trump as he campaigns for a return to the White House. He has been indicted four times in the last year — accused in Georgia and Washington, D.C., of plotting to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden, in Florida of hoarding classified documents, and in Manhattan of falsifying business records related to hush money paid to porn actor Stormy Daniels on his behalf.

On Thursday, a judge confirmed Trump’s hush-money trial will start March 25. A judge in Atlanta heard arguments Thursday and Friday on whether to remove Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from his Georgia election interference case because she had a personal relationship with a special prosecutor she hired.

Those criminal accusations haven’t appeared to undermine his march toward a rematch with President Joe Biden, but civil litigation has threatened him financially.

Last month, a jury ordered Trump to pay $83.3 million to writer E. Jean Carroll for defaming her after she accused him in 2019 of sexually assaulting her in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s. That’s on top of the $5 million a jury awarded Carroll in a related trial last year.

In 2022, the Trump Organization was convicted of tax fraud and fined $1.6 million in an unrelated criminal case for helping executives dodge taxes on extravagant perks such as Manhattan apartments and luxury cars.

James, who campaigned for office as a Trump critic and watchdog, started scrutinizing his business practices in March 2019 after his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen testified to Congress that Trump exaggerated his wealth on financial statements provided to Deutsche Bank while trying to obtain financing to buy the NFL’s Buffalo Bills.

James’ office previously sued Trump for misusing his own charitable foundation to further his political and business interests. Trump was ordered to pay $2 million to an array of charities as a fine and the charity, the Trump Foundation, was shut down.

Willis agreed to testify in the extraordinary hearing that could lead to her removal from the case over her relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade, which defense attorneys have described as a conflict of interest.

Robin Yeartie, a former co-worker of Willis, testified earlier Thursday that Willis’ relationship with Wade began before he was hired as special prosecutor in November 2021. Wade testified that they didn’t start dating until 2022, and that their relationship ended last summer.

During personal and uncomfortable testimony that spanned hours, Wade admitted to having sex with Willis during his separation from his estranged wife.

Together, the testimony directly contradicts an earlier sworn statement from Wade, who said their relationship hadn’t begun until after he was hired to lead the case. The revelation of earlier encounters threatens to undermine the prosecutors’ credibility and upend the case against Trump and others who are charged with conspiring to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia.

Trump and others involved in the case have argued that the relationship presents a conflict of interest that should force Willis off the case. Wade sought to downplay the matter, casting himself and Willis as “private people.”

“There is nothing secret or salacious about having a private life,” he said. “Nothing.”

Wade said the relationship ended last summer, but that he remains good friends with Willis. He added that they were “probably closer than ever because of these attacks.”

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georgia Feb 2

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But the hours of probing questions for Wade underscored the extent to which the prosecutors who pledged to hold Trump accountable are themselves now under a public microscope, with revelations about their personal lives diverting attention away from Trump’s own conduct and threatening to derail one of the four prosecutions he confronts as he vies to reclaim the White House.

Willis could also be forced to testify in the hearing though her lawyers are fighting to keep her off the witness stand.

Ashleigh Merchant, an attorney representing Trump co-defendant Michael Roman, has described the relationship as a conflict of interest that should disqualify Willis — and her entire office — from the case. If that were to happen, a council that supports prosecuting attorneys in Georgia would find a new attorney to take over who could either proceed with the charges against Trump and 14 others or drop the case altogether.

Merchant alleges that Willis personally profited from the case, paying Wade more than $650,000 for his work and then benefiting when Wade used his earnings to pay for vacations the pair took together.

The judge refused to quash a subpoena for Wade and he took the witness stand after Yeartie’s testimony. He insisted that the pair didn’t start dating until after he was hired as special prosecutor in 2022. He also testified that he and Willis traveled together to Belize, Aruba and California and took cruises together, but said Willis paid him back in cash for some travel expenses that he had charged to his credit card.

“She was very emphatic and adamant about this independent, strong woman thing so she demanded that she paid her own way,” Wade said.

Wade was pressed by defense attorneys to answer uncomfortable questions about his relationship with Willis, prompting objections from the district attorney’s office. The hearing began with lengthy sparring between lawyers over who must answer questions. It is expected to stretch into Friday.

Willis’ removal would be a stunning development in the most sprawling of the four criminal cases against Trump. Even if a new lawyer went forward with the case, it would very likely not go to trial before November, when Trump is expected to be the Republican nominee for president. At a separate hearing in New York on Thursday, a judge ruled that Trump’s hush-money criminal case will go ahead as scheduled with jury selection starting on March 25.

In a court filing earlier this month, Willis’ office insisted that she has no financial or personal conflict of interest and that there are no grounds to dismiss the case or to remove her from the prosecution. Her filing called the allegations “salacious” and said they were designed to generate headlines. Wade said in an affidavit filed in court that their relationship began after he was hired and that they have never lived together.

Since the allegations of an inappropriate relationship surfaced, Trump has used them to try to cast doubt on the legitimacy of Willis’ case against him. Other Republicans have cited them in calling for investigations into Willis, a Democrat who’s up for reelection this year.

Roman’s lawyer, Merchant, subpoenaed Willis, Wade, seven other employees of the district attorney’s office and others, including Wade’s former business partner, Terrence Bradley. Bradley took the witness stand earlier Thursday but refused to answer questions from Merchant, citing attorney-client privilege.

McAfee said during a hearing Monday that Willis could be disqualified “if evidence is produced demonstrating an actual conflict or the appearance of one.”

He said the issues he wants to explore at the hearing are “whether a relationship existed, whether that relationship was romantic or nonromantic in nature, when it formed and whether it continues.” Those questions are only relevant, he said, “in combination with the question of the existence and extent of any personal benefit conveyed as a result of the relationship.”

In leaving the trial date intact, Judge Juan Manuel Merchan took advantage of a delay in a separate prosecution in Washington charging Trump with plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. That case has been effectively on hold pending the outcome of an appeal from Trump.

The decision means that a case centered on years-old accusations that Trump sought to bury stories about extramarital affairs that arose during his 2016 presidential campaign will be the first of the four criminal prosecutions against Trump to proceed to trial. Other cases charge him seeking to undo the election and illegally hoarding classified documents at his Florida estate.

Trump’s attorneys blasted the decision to keep the March date, complaining that Trump will have to stand trial in New York at the same time as he is attempting to sew up the Republican nomination.

“It is completely election interference to say ‘you are going to sit in this courtroom in Manhattan,” said defense lawyer Todd Blanche.

Trump entered the courthouse shortly before 9 a.m.

It was Trump’s first return visit to court in the New York case since that historic indictment made him the first ex-president charged with a crime. Since then, he has also been indicted in Florida, Georgia and Washington, D.C. In recent weeks, he’s blended campaign events with court appearances, attending on Monday a closed hearing in a Florida case charging him with hoarding classified records.

Over the past year, Trump has lashed out at Merchan as a “Trump-hating judge,” asked him to step down from the case and sought to move the case from state court to federal court, all to no avail. Merchan has acknowledged making several small donations to Democrats, including $15 to Trump’s rival Joe Biden, but said he’s certain of his “ability to be fair and impartial.”

Thursday’s proceeding is part of a busy, overlapping stretch of legal activity for the Republican presidential front-runner, who has increasingly made his court involvement part of his political campaign.

The recent postponement of a March 4 trial date in Trump’s Washington, D.C. election interference case removed a major hurdle to starting the New York case on time.

Just as the New York hearing was getting underway, a judge in Atlanta was set to hear arguments Thursday over whether Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis should be disqualified from Trump’s Georgia election interference case because of a “personal relationship” with Nathan Wade, a special prosecutor she hired for the case.

Trump is also awaiting a decision, possibly as early as Friday, in a New York civil fraud case that threatens to upend his real estate empire. If the judge rules against Trump, who is accused of inflating his wealth to defraud banks, insurers and others, he could be on the hook for millions of dollars in penalties among other sanctions.

Along with clarifying the trial schedule, Merchan is also expected to rule on key pretrial issues, including a request by Trump’s lawyers to throw out the case, which they have decried in court papers as a “discombobulated package of politically motivated charges marred by legal defects.”

Trump’s lawyers, Todd Blanche and Susan Necheles, accuse Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, of bringing the case to interfere with Trump’s chances of retaking the White House. Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus Vance Jr., declined to pursue a case on the same allegations.

The charges are punishable by up to four years in prison, though there is no guarantee that a conviction would result in prison time.

The case centers on payoffs to two women, porn actor Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, as well as to a Trump Tower doorman who claimed to have a story about Trump having a child out of wedlock. Trump says he didn’t have any of the alleged sexual encounters.

Trump’s lawyer at the time, Michael Cohen, paid Daniels $130,000 and arranged for the publisher of the National Enquirer supermarket tabloid to pay McDougal $150,000 in a practice known as “catch-and-kill.”

Trump’s company then paid Cohen $420,000 and logged the payments as legal expenses, not reimbursements, prosecutors said. Bragg charged Trump last year with falsifying internal records kept by his company, the Trump Organization, to hide the true nature of payments.

Trump’s legal team has argued that no crime was committed.

Trump asked the justices to put on hold an appeals court ruling that rejected his broad claim of presidential immunity in relation to events leading up to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia issued a ruling against Trump on Tuesday that it said would be implemented Feb. 12 unless the former president filed an emergency application at the Supreme Court.

The stakes are high because if the court rejects Trump’s request, the case would return to Washington-based U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, with the possibility of a trial going ahead before the November election. Chutkan has already backed off on her original plan to hold the trial in March.

If Trump wins the election, he would be in a position to order that the charges be dismissed or seek to pardon himself.

Trump ultimately would like the Supreme Court to hear his case and overturn the appeals court decision, but before the justices can reach that issue they have to decide whether to put the lower court ruling on hold.

The appeals court ruled that as “citizen Trump,” the former president cannot benefit from any of the immunity defenses that a sitting president can deploy.

Trump’s lawyers say that presidents should have total immunity for official acts as president and that his actions in questioning the election results were part of his official duties.

The court has a 6-3 conservative majority, with three Trump appointees. Trump would need at least five votes to prevent the appeals court ruling going into effect.

The justices have several options in how to handle the case, including granting Trump’s request while fast-tracking a ruling on the immunity issue, or denying Trump’s request outright. Even if the court agrees to intervene, it could still issue a decision fast enough for the trial to go ahead before the election.

Despite the court’s ideological make-up, Trump has not fared well in recent cases.

On Thursday, the justices heard arguments in yet another Trump-related case on the former president’s attempt to avoid being kicked off the ballot in Colorado. In that case, the court seems likely to rule in his favor.

Trump’s appeal arose from the four-count indictment in Washington, including charges of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding. He has pleaded not guilty.

Chutkan in December rejected Trump’s plea to dismiss the indictment on presidential immunity and other constitutional grounds. The case is on hold while the appeals process plays out.

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The decision marks the second time in as many months that judges have spurned Trump’s immunity arguments and held that he can be prosecuted for actions undertaken while in the White House and in the run-up to Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. But it also sets the stage for additional appeals from the Republican ex-president that could reach the U.S. Supreme Court. The trial was originally set for March, but it was postponed last week and the judge didn’t immediately set a new date.

The judges gave Trump until February 12 to ask the Supreme Court to pause the ruling.

The trial date carries enormous political ramifications, with the Republican primary front-runner hoping to delay it until after the November election. If Trump defeats President Joe Biden, he could presumably try to use his position as head of the executive branch to order a new attorney general to dismiss the federal cases or he potentially could seek a pardon for himself.

“Presidential immunity against federal indictment would mean that, as to the President, the Congress could not legislate, the Executive could not prosecute and the Judiciary could not review. We cannot accept that the office of the Presidency places its former occupants above the law for all time thereafter,” the judges wrote.

They also sharply rejected Trump’s claim that “a President has unbounded authority to commit crimes that would neutralize the most fundamental check on executive power — the recognition and implementation of election results.”

“Nor can we sanction his apparent contention that the Executive has carte blanche to violate the rights of individual citizens to vote and to have their votes count,” they wrote.

Trump campaign spokesman Steve Cheung responded to the ruling in a statement, saying Trump disagrees with the appeal’s court decision and will appeal the order. “If immunity is not granted to a President, every future President who leaves office will be immediately indicted by the opposing party. Without complete immunity, a President of the United States would not be able to properly function!”

The appeals court took center stage in the immunity dispute after the Supreme Court in December said it was at least temporarily staying out of it, rejecting a request from special counsel Jack Smith to take up the matter quickly and issue a speedy ruling. But the court could yet still decide to act on a Trump team appeal, adding to the uncertainty of a trial date.

The Supreme Court has held that presidents are immune from civil liability for official acts, and Trump’s lawyers have for months argued that that protection should be extended to criminal prosecution as well.

They said the actions Trump was accused of in his failed bid to cling to power after he lost the 2020 election to Biden, including badgering his vice president to refuse to certify the results of the election, all fell within the “outer perimeters” of a president’s official acts.

But Smith’s team has said that no such immunity exists in the U.S. Constitution or in prior cases and that, in any event, Trump’s actions weren’t part of his official duties.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is presiding over the case, rejected Trump’s arguments in a Dec. 1 opinion that said the office of the president “does not confer a lifelong ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ pass.”

Trump’s lawyers then appealed to the D.C. appeals court, but Smith asked the Supreme Court to weigh in first, in hopes of securing a fast and definitive ruling and preserving the March 4 trial date. The high court declined the request, leaving the matter with the appeals court.

The case was argued before Judges Florence Pan and J. Michelle Childs, appointees of Biden, a Democrat, and Karen LeCraft Henderson, who was named to the bench by President George H.W. Bush, a Republican. The judges made clear their skepticism of Trump’s claims during arguments last month, when they peppered his lawyer with tough questions and posed a series of extreme hypotheticals as a way to test his legal theory of immunity — including whether a president who directed Navy commandos to assassinate a political rival could be prosecuted.

Trump’s lawyer, D. John Sauer, answered yes — but only if a president had first been impeached and convicted by Congress. That view was in keeping with the team’s position that the Constitution did not permit the prosecution of ex-presidents who had been impeached but then acquitted, like Trump.

The case in Washington is one of four criminal prosecutions Trump faces as he seeks to reclaim the White House this year. He faces federal charges in Florida that he illegally retained classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate, a case that was also brought by Smith and is set for trial in May. He’s also charged in state court in Georgia with scheming to subvert that state’s 2020 election and in New York in connection with hush money payments made to porn actor Stormy Daniels. He has denied any wrongdoing.

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But when the survey’s final question re-asks voters what their ballot choice would be if Trump is found guilty and convicted of a felony this year, Biden narrowly pulls ahead of Trump, 45%-43%.

Some of the most pronounced shifts come among voters who backed Biden strongly in 2020, but among whom he is struggling now as president — younger voters, Latinos and independents.

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On the original ballot, Biden and Trump are tied 42%-42% among voters ages 18 to 34. But when these voters are asked about their ballot choice if Trump is convicted, they break for Biden by 15 points, 47%-32%.

Similarly, Latinos go from Trump 42%, Biden 41% on the first ballot — to Biden 45%, Trump 35% on the second one asking the hypothetical question about Trump’s conviction.

And independents shift from a 19-point lead for Trump on the first ballot to a smaller, 8-point edge for Trump on the second.

Read the full story on NBCNews.com here

In arguments Thursday, the justices will, for the first time, wrestle with a constitutional provision that was adopted after the Civil War to prevent former officeholders who “engaged in insurrection” from reclaiming power.

The case is the court’s most direct involvement in a presidential election since Bush v. Gore, a decision delivered a quarter-century ago that effectively delivered the 2000 election to Republican George W. Bush. It comes to a court that has been buffeted by criticism over ethics, which led the justices to adopt their first code of conduct in November, and at a time when public approval of the court is diminished, at near-record lows in surveys.

The dispute stems from the push by Republican and independent voters in Colorado to kick Trump off the state’s Republican primary ballot because of his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden, culminating in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Colorado’s highest court determined that Trump incited the riot in the nation’s capital and is ineligible to be president again as a result and should not be on the ballot for the state’s primary on March 5.

A victory for the Colorado voters would amount to a declaration from the justices, who include three appointed by Trump when he was president, that he did engage in insurrection and is barred by the 14th Amendment from holding office again. That would allow states to keep him off the ballot and imperil his campaign.

A definitive ruling for Trump would largely end efforts in Colorado, Maine and elsewhere to prevent his name from appearing on the ballot.

The justices could opt for a less conclusive outcome, but with the knowledge that the issue could return to them, perhaps after the general election in November and in the midst of a full-blown constitutional crisis.

The court has signaled it will try to act quickly, dramatically shortening the period in which it receives written briefing and holds arguments in the courtroom.

Trump is separately appealing to state court a ruling by Maine’s Democratic secretary of state, Shenna Bellows, that he was ineligible to appear on that state’s ballot over his role in the Capitol attack. Both the Colorado Supreme Court and the Maine secretary of state’s rulings are on hold until the appeals play out.

The former president is not expected to attend the Supreme Court session this coming week, though he has shown up for court proceedings in the civil lawsuits and criminal charges he is fighting.

Whatever the justices decide, they are likely to see more of Trump, who is facing criminal charges related to Jan. 6 and other issues. Other election-related litigation also is possible.

In 2000, in Bush v. Gore, the court and the parties were divided over whether the justices should intervene at all.

The conservative-driven 5-4 decision has been heavily criticized ever since, especially given that the court cautioned against using the case as precedent when the unsigned majority opinion declared that “our consideration is limited to the present circumstances.”

In the current case, both parties want the matter settled, and quickly.

Trump’s campaign declined to make anyone available for this story, but his lawyers urged the justices not to delay.

“The Court should put a swift and decisive end to these ballot-disqualification efforts, which threaten to disenfranchise tens of millions of Americans and which promise to unleash chaos and bedlam if other state courts and state officials follow Colorado’s lead and exclude the likely Republican presidential nominee from their ballots,” Trump’s lawyers wrote.

Donald Sherman, the top lawyer at the group behind the ballot challenge, said voters and election officials need to have an answer quickly.

“And I think, obviously, voters have a not small interest in knowing whether the Supreme Court thinks, as every fact-finder that has reached this question, that Jan. 6 was an insurrection and that Donald Trump is an insurrectionist,” Sherman said in an interview with The Associated Press. He is executive vice president and chief legal counsel at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Justice Clarence Thomas is the only sitting member of the court who was on the bench for Bush v. Gore. He was part of that majority.

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But three other justices joined the legal fight on Bush’s side: Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Bush eventually put Roberts on a federal appeals court and then appointed him chief justice. Bush hired Kavanaugh to important White House jobs before making him an appellate judge, too.

Kavanaugh and Barrett were elevated to the Supreme Court by Trump, who also appointed Justice Neil Gorsuch.

Thomas has ignored calls by some Democratic lawmakers and ethics professors to step aside from the current case. They note that his wife, Ginni Thomas, supported Trump’s effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Ginni Thomas repeatedly texted White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in the weeks after that election, once referring to it as a “heist,” and she attended the rally that preceded the storming of the Capitol by Trump supporters. Nearly two years later, she told the congressional committee investigating the attack that she regretted sending the texts.

Trump lost 60 different court challenges to his false claims that there was massive voter fraud that would have changed the results of that election.

The Supreme Court ruled repeatedly ruled against Trump and his allies in 2020 election-related lawsuits, as well as his efforts to keep documents related to Jan. 6 and his tax returns from being turned over to congressional committees.

But the conservative majority Trump’s appointees cemented has produced decisions that overturned the five-decade-old constitutional right to abortion, expanded gun rights and struck down affirmative action in college admissions.

The issue of whether Trump can be on the ballot is just one among several matters related to the former president or Jan. 6 that have reached the high court. The justices declined a request from special counsel Jack Smith to rule swiftly on Trump’s claims that he is immune from prosecution, though the issue could be back before the court soon depending on the ruling of a Washington-based appeals court.

In April, the court will hear an appeal that could upend hundreds of charges stemming from the Capitol riot, including against Trump.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan on Friday vacated the March 4 trial date in the case brought by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith but did not immediately set a new date.

The move opens the door for a separate prosecution in New York, charging Trump in connection with hush money payments to a porn actor, to proceed first. That case has long been seen as arguably the least legally perilous of the four indictments Trump faces, with the alleged misconduct less grave than accusations of mishandling classified documents or plotting to subvert a presidential election.

The postponement in Washington comes as a federal appeals court has yet to resolve a pending appeal from Trump arguing that he is immune from prosecution for actions he took in the White House. It is not clear when the three-judge panel might rule, but a ruling in favor of prosecutors that permits the case to move forward is expected to be appealed by the Trump team, likely resulting in additional delays.

For both sides, timing is of the essence. Trump, who faces four indictments and 91 felony counts, is looking to push his criminal cases back as he enjoys front-runner status in the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Smith’s team, meanwhile, is hoping to be able to prosecute Trump this year before the November election. If Trump is elected while the case is pending, he could presumably order the Justice Department to drop it and could potentially try to seek a pardon for himself.

The Washington case had been expected to take place first, but it has been delayed for weeks by Trump’s appeal on grounds that he is shielded from prosecution — a claim that has been vigorously disputed by Smith’s team. The appeals court heard arguments on Jan. 9 and appeared skeptical of a Trump lawyer’s position. Though the court has said it intended to work quickly, it has not yet issued a ruling.

The judge in the New York case, the first of four indictments filed against Trump last year, has long resisted defense demands that he postpone the March 25 start date in light of the conflicting trial date in Washington, figuring — correctly — that the former president’s legal calendar might change as the trial neared.

Trump is due back in court in Manhattan on Feb. 15 for a pretrial hearing where final details are expected to be ironed out. All signs point to the New York case starting on time. Trump’s lawyers and prosecutors have been discussing jury selection procedures with the judge and some witnesses have said they’ve been told to be ready to testify.

The New York case involves steps Trump allegedly took to hide payments that were made on the Republican’s behalf to suppress damaging stories before his 2016 win over Democrat Hillary Clinton, namely logging them as legal expenses. While a guilty verdict would give Trump another historic moniker as the first former president convicted of a crime, potentially complicating his campaign to return to the White House, there’s no guarantee of prison time.

Trump critics and rival campaign aides have long bemoaned that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s indictment was the first, believing that it helped blunt the political impact of more serious charges that followed because voters tuned out or grew confused by the myriad cases.

Bragg has eschewed his case’s “hush money” label, opting in recent weeks to describe it as another Trump “election interference” case — albeit, this one involving behind-the-scenes maneuvering during Trump’s first campaign for the White House in 2016.

Trump, meanwhile, faces dozens of felony charges in Florida accusing him of illegally retaining classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate. That case is set for trial on May 20 but could still be postponed. Another case in Georgia, brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, accuses him of plotting to overturn that state’s 2020 election. No trial date has been set.

Associated Press writers Michael R. Sisak and Jill Colvin in New York contributed to this report.

Judge Karen Steyn said the case Trump filed against Orbis Business Intelligence should not go to trial. The company was founded by Christopher Steele, who created a dossier in 2016 that contained rumors and uncorroborated allegations that caused a political storm just before Trump’s inauguration.

Steele, who once ran the Russia desk for Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, also known as MI6, was paid by Democrats to compile research that included salacious allegations that Russians could potentially use to blackmail Trump. Trump said the dossier was fake news and a political witch hunt.

The former president sought damages from Orbis for allegedly violating British data protection laws.

The firm sought to have the case thrown out.

The Illinois State Board of Elections is expected to consider the recommendation Tuesday. Attorneys for Trump and citizens seeking to keep the Republican former president off the ballot presented their arguments Friday before the hearing officer, Clark Erickson. The retired longtime Kankakee County judge is a Republican.

The Illinois effort to keep Trump off the March ballot is similar to those filed in several other states. The U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear arguments next month in an historic Colorado Supreme Court ruling to remove Trump from that state’s ballot. The case presents the high court with its first look at a provision of the 14th Amendment barring some people who “engaged in insurrection” from holding public office.

Erickson’s 21-page recommendation concluded that a “preponderance of the evidence” presented proves that Trump engaged in insurrection.

But he said the election board can’t engage in the “significant and sophisticated constitutional analysis” required to remove Trump’s name before the March 19 primary.

“All in all, attempting to resolve a constitutional issue within the expedited schedule of an election board hearing is somewhat akin to scheduling a two-minute round between heavyweight boxers in a telephone booth,” he wrote.

Still, Erickson noted that even if the board disagrees with his reasoning, Trump’s name should be removed from the Illinois primary ballot.

The election board is split evenly between four Democrats and four Republicans.

Free Speech for People, which is leading the Illinois ballot effort, praised the recommendation from the Republican retired judge as “significant” but argued that Illinois law allows the board to make the ballot decision.

“We expect that the board and ultimately Illinois courts will uphold Judge Erickson’s thoughtful analysis of why Trump is disqualified from office, but — with the greatest respect — correct him on why Illinois law authorizes that ruling,” Ron Fein, legal director for the group, wrote in a Sunday statement.

Trump’s campaign did not immediately return a message left Sunday.

For years, Donald Trump hurled insults at E. Jean Carroll, saying the advice columnist fabricated a sexual assault allegation against him to sell a book.

Will Trump keep that up, now that he’s been hit with a $83.3 million defamation judgment?

A jury on Friday found that Trump had maliciously damaged Carroll’s reputation in 2019 after she went public with her accusations. Jurors awarded her $18 million to compensate for the personal harm she experienced, then added $65 million more to punish Trump — and maybe prevent him from continuing to go after her on social media.

A different jury concluded last May that Trump was responsible for sexually abusing Carroll in a Manhattan department store dressing room in 1996. Those jurors awarded Carroll $5 million. If both judgments stand, Trump would owe her a total of $88.3 million.

Trump and his lawyers have promised to appeal.

A look at the verdict and where the case might go from here:

Carroll said she was shopping at the Bergdorf Goodman store on Fifth Avenue in 1996 when she bumped into Trump, who lived nearby. She said they recognized each other. At the time, Carroll had a column in Elle magazine and was the host of a cable TV talk show called “Ask E. Jean.”

In court testimony and in her memoir, Carroll said she and Trump went to the store’s lingerie section and then into a dressing room as each tried to persuade the other to try on a lacy item. When they moved into the dressing room, she said, Trump pushed her into a wall, pulled down her tights and sexually assaulted her. Carroll said she broke free and ran.

After she wrote about the alleged encounter in 2019, Trump, who by then has been elected president, told reporters he had no idea who Carroll was, that her accusation was “totally false” and that she motivated by a desire to sell books.

Carroll sued Trump for defamation in 2019, saying his statements about her were false and damaged her reputation. That claim wound up being bogged down for years over the legal question of whether, in denying the allegations, Trump had been fulfilling his duties as president. Trump claimed that the presidency shield him from liability against the defamation lawsuit.

In the meantime, New York changed its law to give sexual abuse survivors a fresh chance to sue over attacks that happened in the distant past. Carroll was one of the first people to take advantage, filing a new legal claim against Trump alleging that he had raped her. She also sued over things he had said about her after leaving the White House.

A jury heard testimony in that lawsuit last year and found that while Carroll had not proved she had been raped, under New York’s definition of that crime, Trump had sexually abused her.

The jury awarded Carroll $2 million for the abuse and nearly $3 million for Trump’s public comments about her, which it said were defamatory — and therefore not protected free speech.

With the main legal issues resolved, one matter remained: Had Carroll also been damaged by Trump’s comments while he was still in the White House.

U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan ruled that there would need to be a new trial to decide that claim, but that trial did not need to revisit the issue of whether Trump had assaulted Carroll or whether the things he had said about her were defamatory. This trial would decide how much more, if anything, Trump owed Carroll for things he had said about her on June 21-22, 2019.

Trump and his lawyers have been outraged that they did not get a chance to make a new argument that he was innocent, but Kaplan said they had already lost that fight.

“It is a very well-established legal principle in this country that prevents do-overs by disappointed litigants,” Kaplan told the lawyers on the day Trump testified in the second trial. “He lost it and he is bound. And the jury will be instructed that, regardless of what he says in court here today, he did it, as far as they’re concerned. That is the law.”

Trump’s legal team is appealing the verdict in the first case and has promised an appeal of the second one, too.

“It will not deter us. We will keep fighting. And I assure you, we didn’t win today, but we will win,” said Trump’s lawyer, Alina Habba.

Among other things, his team wants higher courts to rule that Trump was within his rights to forcefully deny Carroll’s allegations and suggest she had ulterior motives.

“Everyone has a right to defend themselves,” Habba said.

Trump’s lawyers also are contesting Kaplan’s ruling that the jury in the second trial did not need to revisit whether Trump was liable for sexual assault, and that the judge unfairly limited what Trump’s lawyers could say in front of the jury.

Appeals will go to a panel of judges in New York. The appeals eventually could reach the U.S. Supreme Court for the justices to consider.

In the meantime, Trump has put more than $5.5 million in an escrow account to potentially cover the cost of the first verdict while the appeals play out.

Carroll could bring a new lawsuit over each new comment. Potentially, new trials would have to be held at which juries could pile on additional damages.

The $88.3 million in judgments against Trump are actually less than what some of his supporters have faced in recent defamation cases.

A jury last year decided that Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor and Trump ally who tried to keep the-then president in power after he lost the 2020 election, owed $148 million to two former Georgia election workers for spreading a conspiracy theory about them. Juries in Texas and Connecticut have hit Infowars host Alex Jones with $1.5 billion in defamation judgments for promoting a false claim that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a hoax.

Unlike Giuliani and Jones, Trump might have the financial resources to pay a huge judgment. He reported having about $294 million in cash or cash equivalents on his most recent annual financial statement, for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2021. That’s in addition to the value of his real estate assets, which Trump has claimed are worth billions of dollars.

Still, Trump faces other potential financial liabilities. He is awaiting a verdict in a civil fraud trial, where New York state has asked that he forfeit $370 million in what officials say were ill-gotten gains from loans and deals made using financial statements that exaggerated his wealth.

The award, when coupled with a $5 million sexual assault and defamation verdict last year from another jury in a case brought by Carroll, raised to $88.3 million what Trump must pay her. Protesting vigorously, he said he would appeal.

Carroll clutched her lawyers’ hands and smiled as the seven-man, two-woman jury delivered its verdict. Emotional afterward, she shared a three-way hug with her attorneys. She declined comment as she left the Manhattan federal courthouse.

Trump had attended the trial earlier in the day, but stormed out of the courtroom during closing arguments read by Carroll’s attorney. He returned for his own attorney’s closing argument and for a portion of the deliberations, but left the courthouse a half hour before the verdict was read.

“Absolutely ridiculous!” he said in a statement shortly afterward. “Our Legal System is out of control, and being used as a Political Weapon.”

It was the second time in nine months that a civil jury returned a verdict related to Carroll’s claim that a flirtatious, chance encounter with Trump in 1996 at Bergdorf Goodman’s Fifth Avenue store ended violently. She said Trump slammed her against a dressing room wall, pulled down her tights and forced himself on her.

In May, a different jury awarded Carroll $5 million. It found Trump not liable for rape, but responsible for sexually abusing Carroll and then defaming her by claiming she made it up. He is appealing that award, too.

Trump is also awaiting a verdict in a New York civil fraud trial, where state lawyers are seeking the return of $370 million in what they say were ill-gotten gains from loans and deals made using financial statements that exaggerated his wealth.

As for Trump’s ability to pay, he reported having about $294 million in cash or cash equivalents on his most recent annual financial statement, for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2021. Testifying at his civil fraud trial last November, he Trump boasted: “I have very little debt, and I have a lot of cash.”

Trump skipped the first Carroll trial. He later expressed regret for not attending and insisted on testifying in the second trial, though the judge limited what he could say, ruling he had missed his chance to argue that he was innocent. He spent only a few minutes on the witness stand Thursday, during which he denied attacking Carroll, then left court grumbling “this is not America.”

This new jury was only asked how much Trump, 77, should pay Carroll, 80, for two statements he made as president when he answered reporters’ questions after excerpts of Carroll’s memoir were published in a magazine — damages that couldn’t be decided earlier because of legal appeals. Jurors were not asked to re-decide the issue of whether the sex attack actually happened.

Carroll’s attorneys had requested $24 million in compensatory damages and “an unusually high punitive award.” The jury awarded $18.3 million in compensatory damages and another $65 million in punitive damages — meant to deter future behavior.

Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, urged jurors in her closing argument Friday to punish Trump enough that he would stop a steady stream of public statements smearing Carroll as a liar and a “whack job.”

Trump shook his head vigorously as Kaplan spoke, then suddenly stood and walked out, taking Secret Service agents with him. His exit came only minutes after the judge, without the jury present, threatened to send Trump attorney Alina Habba to jail for continuing to talk when he told her she was finished.

“You are on the verge of spending some time in the lockup. Now sit down,” the judge told Habba, who immediately complied.

The trial reached its conclusion as Trump marches toward winning the Republican presidential nomination a third consecutive time. He has sought to turn his various trials and legal vulnerabilities into an advantage, portraying them as evidence of a weaponized political system.

Though there’s no evidence that President Joe Biden or anyone in the White House has influenced any of the legal cases against him, Trump’s line of argument has resonated with his most loyal supporters who view the proceedings with skepticism.

Carroll testified early in the trial that Trump’s public statements had led to death threats.

“He shattered my reputation,” she said. “I am here to get my reputation back and to stop him from telling lies about me.”

She said she’d had an electronic fence installed around the cabin in upstate New York where she lives, warned neighbors of the threats and bought bullets for a gun she keeps by her bed.

“Previously, I was known as simply as a journalist and had a column, and now I’m known as the liar, the fraud, and the whack job,” Carroll testified.

Trump’s lawyer, Habba, told jurors that Carroll had been enriched by her accusations against Trump and achieved fame she had craved. She said no damages were warranted.

To support Carroll’s request for millions in damages, Northwestern University sociologist Ashlee Humphreys told the jury that Trump’s 2019 statements had caused between $7.2 million and $12.1 million in harm to Carroll’s reputation.

When Trump finally testified, Kaplan gave him little room to maneuver, because Trump could not be permitted to try to revive issues settled in the first trial.

“It is a very well-established legal principle in this country that prevents do-overs by disappointed litigants,” Kaplan said.

“He lost it and he is bound. And the jury will be instructed that, regardless of what he says in court here today, he did it, as far as they’re concerned. That is the law,” Kaplan said shortly before Trump testified.

After he swore to tell the truth, Trump was asked if he stood by a deposition in which he called Carroll a “liar” and a “whack job.” He answered: “100 percent. Yes.”

Asked if he denied the allegation because Carroll made an accusation, he responded: “That’s exactly right. She said something, I consider it a false accusation.” Asked if he ever instructed anyone to hurt Carroll, he said: “No. I just wanted to defend myself, my family, and frankly, the presidency.”

The judge ordered the jury to disregard the “false accusation” comment and everything Trump said after “No” to the last question.

Earlier in the trial, Trump tested the judge’s tolerance. When he complained to his lawyers about a “witch hunt” and a “con job” within earshot of jurors, Kaplan threatened to eject him from the courtroom if it happened again. “I would love it,” Trump said. Later that day, Trump told a news conference Kaplan was a “nasty judge.”

Donald Trump stormed out of closing arguments at his defamation trial Friday as a lawyer for E. Jean Carroll urged a jury to award at least $24 million in damages for the “storm of hate” caused by the former president as he reacted to her sexual assault accusation. He later returned to the courtroom.

Just minutes after attorney Roberta Kaplan began her closing argument in Manhattan federal court, Trump suddenly rose from his seat at the defense table and walked toward the exit, pausing to scan the packed courtroom as members of the Secret Service leaped up to follow him out.

The unexpected departure prompted Judge Lewis A. Kaplan to speak up, briefly interrupting the closing argument to note: “The record will reflect that Mr. Trump just rose and walked out of the courtroom.”

The walkout came only minutes after the judge, without the jury present, threatened to send Trump attorney Alina Habba to jail for continuing to talk when he told her she was finished.

“You are on the verge of spending some time in the lockup. Now sit down,” the judge told Habba, who immediately complied.

Roberta Kaplan and the judge are unrelated.

Trump, who was not required to attend the civil lawsuit proceedings, had appeared agitated all morning, vigorously shaking his head as Carroll’s attorney branded him a liar who had incited a “social media mob” to attack her client.

“This case is about punishing Donald Trump for what he’s done and what he continues to do,” Roberta Kaplan continued. “This trial is about getting him to stop.”

Later, Trump returned to the courtroom to hear Habba argue that he should not be made to pay Carroll for comments that set off hate messages from strangers.

Habba showed the jury a video in which Trump said a jury’s verdict last year finding that he had sexually abused Carroll was “a disgrace” and “a continuation of the greatest witch hunt of all time.”

“You know why he has not wavered?” Habba asked the jury. “Because it’s the truth.”

That statement prompted an objection that the judge sustained with a warning that “if you violate my instructions again, Ms. Habba, you may have consequences.”

Nine jurors will start deliberating later in the day whether Carroll, a longtime advice columnist, is entitled to more than the $5 million she was awarded in a separate trial last year.

The final remarks from the lawyers come a day after Trump managed to sneak past a federal judge’s rules severely limiting what he could say during his turn on the witness stand, which wound up lasting just 3 minutes. He left fuming that he hadn’t been given an opportunity to refute Carroll’s sexual abuse accusations.

“She said something that I considered to be a false accusation,” Trump said, later adding: “I just wanted to defend myself, my family and, frankly, the presidency.” The jury was told by the judge to disregard both remarks.

A different jury last May concluded that Trump sexually abused Carroll in the spring of 1996 in the changing room of a luxury Manhattan department store. It also found that he defamed her in 2022 by claiming she made up the allegation to sell a memoir.

Trump, the Republican frontrunner in this year’s presidential election, has long regretted his decision not to testify at that trial, blaming his lawyers for bad advice.

During her closing, Roberta Kaplan told jurors that the current case was not about a sexual assault.

“We had that case,” she said, referencing the first trial. “That’s why Donald Trump’s testimony was so short yesterday. He doesn’t get a do-over this time.”

As she finished her argument, the lawyer urged jurors to support “the principle that the rule of law stands for all of us” by sending an unmistakable message to a man who “time and time again has shown contempt for the law.”

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She said the jury should award $12 million to repair Carroll’s reputation and another $12 million for the suffering she has endured because of Trump’s attacks. Then, she said an “unusually high punitive award” was also necessary against a man worth billions of dollars “to have any hope of stopping Donald Trump.”

The jury in this new trial has been told that it is there for the limited purpose and jurors must accept the verdict reached last year. The current jury will only determine whether additional damages are owed for statements Trump made in June 2019 while he was president. The claims had been delayed for years by court appeals.

Carroll’s lawyers seek over $10 million in compensatory and punitive damages. Habba has argued against damages, saying Carroll’s association with Trump had given her the fame she craved and that death threats she received cannot be blamed on Trump’s remarks.

Carroll, 80, testified at last year’s trial that she had a chance encounter with Trump at a Bergdorf Goodman store that was flirtatious and lighthearted until Trump cornered her in a changing room. Her claim that Trump raped her was rejected by last year’s jury, though it agreed she was sexually abused.

Last week, Carroll testified that her career was shattered by Trump’s statements about her claims over the last five years, most recently on the campaign trail for president. She said she bought bullets for a gun she inherited from her father and installed an electronic fence around her home.

On Thursday, Trump testified that he stood “100%” behind comments he made in an October 2002 deposition in which he denied Carroll’s accusations, calling her “sick” and a “whack job.”

Kaplan intends to instruct jurors Friday that the jury last year concluded that Trump had digitally penetrated Carroll in the department store, but the same jury did not find that he had raped her, according to how rape is defined under New York state law.

The Associated Press typically does not name people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Carroll has done.

Testifying in his own defense in the defamation trial, Trump didn’t look at the jury during his short, heavily negotiated stint on the witness stand. Because of the complex legal context of the case, the judge limited his lawyers to asking a handful of short questions, each of which could be answered yes or no — such as whether he’d made his negative statements in response to an accusation and didn’t intend anyone to harm Carroll.

But Trump nudged past those limits.

“She said something that I considered to be a false accusation,” he said, later adding: “I just wanted to defend myself, my family and, frankly, the presidency.”

After Judge Lewis A. Kaplan told jurors to disregard those remarks, Trump rolled his eyes as he stepped down from the witness stand. The former president and current Republican front-runner left the courtroom during a break soon after, shaking his head and declaring to spectators — three times — that “this is not America.”

Carroll looked on throughout from the plaintiff’s table. The longtime advice columnist alleges that Trump attacked her in 1996, then defamed her by calling her a liar when she went public with her story in a 2019 memoir.

While Trump has said a lot about her to the court of public opinion, Thursday marked the first time he has directly addressed a jury about her claims.

But jurors also heard parts of a 2022 deposition — a term for out-of-court questioning under oath — in which Trump vehemently denied Carroll’s allegations, calling her “sick” and a “whack job.” Trump told jurors Thursday that he stood by that deposition, “100%.”

Trump didn’t attend a related trial last spring, when a different jury found that he did sexually abuse Carroll and that some of his comments were defamatory, awarding her $5 million. This trial concerns only how much more he may have to pay her for certain remarks he made in 2019, while president. She’s seeking at least $10 million.

Because of the prior jury’s findings, Kaplan said Trump now couldn’t offer any testimony “disputing or attempting to undermine” the sexual abuse allegations. The law doesn’t allow for “do-overs by disappointed litigants,” the judge said.

Even before taking the stand, Trump chafed at those limitations as the judge and lawyers for both sides discussed what he could be asked.

“I never met the woman. I don’t know who the woman is. I wasn’t at the trial,” he cut in from his seat at the defense table without jurors in the room. Kaplan told Trump he wasn’t allowed to interrupt the proceedings.

Trump was the last witness, and closing arguments are set for Friday.

Carroll, 80, claims Trump, 77, ruined her reputation after she publicly aired her account of a chance meeting that spiraled into a sexual assault in spring 1996. At the time, he was a prominent real estate developer, and she was an Elle magazine advice columnist who’d had a TV show.

She says they ran into each other at Bergdorf Goodman, a luxury department store close to Trump Tower, bantered and ended up in a dressing room, teasing each other about trying on lingerie. She has testified that she thought it would just be a funny story to tell but then he roughly forced himself on her before she eventually fought him off and fled.

The earlier jury found that she was sexually abused but rejected her allegation that she was raped.

Besides Trump, his defense called only one other witness, a friend of Carroll’s. The friend, retired TV journalist Carol Martin, was among two people the writer told about her encounter with Trump shortly after it happened, according to testimony at the first trial.

Trump lawyer Alina Habba confronted Martin on Tuesday with text messages in which she called Carroll a “narcissist” who seemed to be reveling in the attention she got from accusing and suing Trump. Martin said she regretted her word choices and doesn’t believe that Carroll loved the attention she has been getting.

Carroll has testified that she has gotten death threats that worried her enough to buy bullets for a gun she inherited from her father, install an electronic fence, warn her neighbors and unleash her pit bull to roam freely on the property of her small cabin in the mountains of upstate New York.

Trump’s attorneys have tried to show the jury through their cross-examination of various witnesses that by taking on Trump, Carroll has gained a measure of fame and financial rewards that outweigh the threats and other venom slung at her through social media.

After Carroll’s lawyers rested Thursday, Habba asked for a directed verdict in Trump’s favor, saying Carroll’s side hadn’t proven its case. Kaplan denied the request.

Even before testifying, Trump had already tested the judge’s patience. After he complained to his lawyers last week about a “witch hunt” and a “con job” within earshot of jurors, Kaplan threatened to eject him from the courtroom if it happened again. “I would love it,” Trump said. Later that day, Trump told a news conference Kaplan was a “nasty judge” and that Carroll’s allegation was “a made-up, fabricated story.”

While attending the trial last week, Trump made it clear — through muttered comments and gestures like shaking his head — that he was disgusted with the case. When a video clip from a Trump campaign rally last week was shown in court Thursday, he appeared to lip-synch himself saying the trial was rigged.

The trial had been suspended since early Monday because of a juror’s illness. When it resumed Thursday, the judge said two jurors were being “socially distanced” from the others.

Trump attended the trial fresh off big victories in the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday and the Iowa caucuses last week. Meanwhile, he also faces four criminal cases. He has been juggling court and campaign appearances, using both to argue that he’s being persecuted by Democrats terrified of his possible election.

The Associated Press typically does not name people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Carroll has done.

Former President Donald Trump on Thursday testified for just three minutes in the civil sex defamation case against him by E. Jean Carroll in New York federal court.

Judge Lewis Kaplan, who had limited Trump to answering a handful of pre-approved questions, struck much of the former president’s answers from the record.

Before Trump was called up, Kaplan warned him and his lawyers that Trump cannot dispute the verdict in another trial that found him liable for sexually abusing Carroll in the mid-1990s and then defaming the writer in 2019, when he was in the White House.

When defense lawyer Alina Habba asked if Trump had denied Carroll’s allegations in order to defend himself, Trump said, “I consider it a false accusation.”

Kaplan struck that response.

Asked if he ever instructed anyone to hurt Carroll, Trump replied, “No, I just wanted to defend myself, my family and frankly the presidency.”

Kaplan struck all of that response except the word “no.”

Trump also testified that he stood by the answers he gave in an October 2022 deposition, in which he called the case “rigged” and “a made-up story.”

Before Trump took the stand, Kaplan ejected his campaign spokesman, Steven Cheung, from court because his phone rang during another witness’s testimony.

“Whose telephone is that?” Kaplan snapped before promptly removing Cheung from the courtroom.

The defense rested their case shortly after Trump’s testimony ended. Closing arguments in the trial are set to begin Friday.

Earlier, Trump had watched as clips from his deposition were shown in open court.

The deposition features Trump confusing a photo of Carroll with his ex-wife Marla Maples, despite having claimed elsewhere that Carroll was “not my type” and that he had never met her.

The photo shows Carroll and her then-husband, former broadcast journalist John Johnson, talking to Trump and his first wife, Ivana Trump.

“I have had a lot of hoaxes played on me. This is one of them,” Trump said in the deposition, which Carroll’s attorney took three years after the writer alleged that the former president had raped her in a New York department store in the mid-1990s.

It is “a fake story, a false story, a made-up story,” Trump said. “The Russia Russia Russia hoax. It’s been proven to be a hoax. Ukraine Ukraine Ukraine hoax. The Mueller situation for two-and-a-half years hoax ended in no collusion. It was a whole big hoax. The lying to the FISA court hoax, the lying to Congress many times hoax by all these people, the scum that we have in our country, lying to Congress hoax, the spying on my campaign hoax.”

“That was another hoax, and I could get a whole list of them. And this is a hoax too … this ridiculous situation that we’re doing right now. It’s a big, fat hoax.”

“She is a liar and a sick person in my opinion. Really sick. Something wrong with her,” Trump said of Carroll.

The videos were shown after Carroll’s lawyers questioned their last witness, former Elle magazine Editor-in-Chief Roberta Myers. Carroll previously wrote an advice column for Elle.

The videos marked the end of Carroll’s case in chief.

Before calling their first defense witness, Trump’s lawyers argued with Kaplan about introducing evidence allegedly linking George Soros, a billionaire philanthropist and frequent target of conspiracy theories, with Carroll’s legal bills.

“The door is closed” to that evidence, Kaplan replied.

Carol Martin, a former New York news anchor and a friend of Carroll’s, then took the stand.

Martin has previously testified that Carroll confided in her about Trump’s alleged sexual assault. Trump’s attorney Alina Habba on Thursday approached Martin as a hostile witness, grilling her about Carroll’s social life and alleged publicity-seeking behavior.

At one point, Martin told Habba that she had attended about a half-dozen parties, hosted by Carroll and including journalists, related to Carroll’s two civil lawsuits against Trump.

Trump was initially set to take the witness stand Monday but the trial was postponed after a juror called in sick.

Kaplan gave Habba the chance to continue the case that day with eight jurors instead of nine, but Habba declined, telling Kaplan that she was also feeling ill.

Habba attended Trump’s victory party in New Hampshire on Tuesday night after he defeated Nikki Haley in that state’s primary.

Jurors on Thursday were kept socially distanced as a health precaution. Five of the nine jurors were wearing masks.

Trump has tied his ongoing presidential campaign to his legal battles against Carroll, the New York attorney general, and three different prosecutors.

The former president in recent weeks has attended trials in New York, despite not being required to do so, drawing heavy media attention and new fundraising opportunities for his campaign.

Trump claims all his legal battles are witch hunts being orchestrated by President Joe Biden and other Democrats to harm his presidential bid.

A jury in a related civil case filed by Carroll found Trump liable last year for sexually abusing the writer in a New York department store in the 1990s and then defaming her in statements he made while denying her allegation in late 2022.

That jury ordered Trump to pay $5 million to Carroll. Trump is appealing the verdict.

The ongoing trial is being held solely to determine how much Trump must pay Carroll in damages for defaming her in statements he made in 2019, while serving as president, denying her account.

Kaplan earlier ruled that Trump was liable for defaming her because of the jury verdict in the prior trial, which related to similar statements.

Carroll’s lawyers are seeking at least $10 million in damages from Trump in this case.

Willis has defended her hiring of Nathan Wade, who has little prosecutorial experience, and has not directly denied a romantic relationship. The allegations were first made public in a motion filed earlier this month by defense attorney Ashleigh Merchant, who represents former Trump campaign staffer and White House aide Michael Roman.

Merchant alleges that Willis’ office paid Wade large sums and that Willis improperly benefited when Wade then paid for the two of them to go on vacations. Merchant has not offered any proof of the alleged relationship. But a filing last week by Wade’s wife in their divorce case includes credit card records that show that Wade bought plane tickets for Willis to travel with him to Miami and San Francisco.

Willis, an elected Democrat, has shown no signs of stepping down, but there are ways she could be removed. Here’s a look at some options:

What can the judge do?

Merchant’s motion asks Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee to remove Willis and Wade and their offices from any further prosecution of the case. McAfee has the power to do that.

In fact, another judge, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, took that step in July 2022 when he was presiding over the special grand jury investigation that preceded the indictment in the election case.

Then-Sen. Burt Jones, one of 16 Georgia Republicans who signed a certificate falsely stating that Trump had won the election and declaring themselves the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors, had been told he was a target in the election case. He argued that Willis had a conflict of interest because she had hosted a fundraiser for his Democratic opponent in the lieutenant governor’s race.

McBurney ruled in Jones’ favor, writing that the situation had gone beyond bad optics and had created “a plain — and actual and untenable — conflict.” He prohibited Willis and her office from prosecuting Jones in the case.

If McAfee decides to take similar action and to remove Willis and her office from the election case, it would be up to the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia to find another prosecutor to take the case. That person could continue on the track that Willis has taken, could choose to pursue only some charges or could dismiss the case altogether.

Finding a prosecutor willing and able to take on the sprawling case could be difficult, former Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter said. Only a few district attorneys in the state — all around Atlanta — have the resources to handle such a case, he said.

Could Willis step away from the case in order to save it?

If Willis were to recuse herself, it’s likely her whole office would have to step away from the case, Porter said. In that scenario, too, it would be up to the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council to find someone to take it on.

Attorney Norm Eisen, who served as former President Barack Obama’s ethics czar, said in a press briefing Saturday that based on what he knows so far, “there is absolutely no legal basis under Georgia law” for Willis or Wade to be disqualified.

But, Eisen said, “the wise thing to do at this point is for Mr. Wade to voluntarily end his time on this case.” Even though he is not legally required to do so, Eisen said, “at this point, the conversation about these issues has become a distraction” from the “overwhelming amount of evidence justifying the decision to prosecute Mr. Trump and his co-conspirators.”

Could an oversight commission remove her?

Many Republicans would like to see Willis investigated by Georgia’s new Prosecuting Attorneys Qualification Commission. That body was created last year to discipline and remove prosecutors. But it hit a snag after the state Supreme Court refused to approve the commission’s rules.

Lawmakers this year are seeking to remove the court’s required approval, allowing the commission to begin operating. The commission would be able to remove district attorneys from office or discipline them for a conflict of interest, “conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice which brings the office into disrepute” or for “willful misconduct in office.”

However, it’s unlikely that the commission could remove Willis just from the Trump case, unless she agreed to step aside in a negotiated settlement.

Could state lawmakers impeach Willis?

A few lawmakers have proposed impeaching and removing Willis, an idea Trump endorsed over the summer. However, Georgia’s General Assembly hasn’t impeached anyone in more than 50 years. And a two-thirds majority of the state Senate is required to convict. That’s a tough hurdle because Republicans currently control less than two-thirds in the 56-seat Senate. A Republican is likely to win a vacant seat, bringing the GOP majority back to 33. Even then, five Democrats would have to vote to convict.

Also working against an impeachment proceeding: All of Georgia’s lawmakers are up for reelection this year. Taking up impeachment could keep them in session and off the campaign trail.

State Sen. Colton Moore of Trenton tried to persuade fellow Republicans to call themselves into special session over the summer to go after Willis, but never got close.

Could the state bar step in?

The State Bar of Georgia, which regulates lawyers, adopted special rules in 2021 governing prosecutorial misconduct. But those rules dealt with a prosecutor’s duty to disclose evidence that might prove someone’s innocence.

If Willis were to face consequences from the bar, she would have to be disciplined under the rules applying to all lawyers. The bar has rules against conflicts of interest, but they are mostly geared to private lawyers who may mistreat clients. It’s unclear how those rules might apply to this case.

Are there other consequences?

A Fulton County commissioner, Republican Bob Ellis, sent Willis a letter Friday demanding information on how she spent county money and “whether any payments of county funds to Mr. Wade were converted to your personal gain in the form of subsidized travel or other gifts.” Commissioners could cut Willis’ budget in the future, but Democrats hold a majority on the commission. Fulton County’s government has a code of ethics, but the county doesn’t appear to prohibit consensual relationships. The county Board of Ethics could fine and reprimand Willis, but doesn’t have the power to remove her.

Republican state Sen. Greg Dolezal of Cumming on Monday proposed a special Senate committee to investigate Willis, saying a “thorough and impartial examination” would “ensure transparency, accountability and the preservation of the integrity of our justice system.” Dolezal’s proposed resolution suggests legal or budget changes could follow any inquiry.

For Trump, it’s become a familiar ritual to welcome the backing of someone who once tried to take him on. Nonetheless, it was notable at Sunday’s rally in New Hampshire to see Trump praise DeSantis without calling him “DeSantimonious” or “DeSanctus,” putting an end to perhaps the most bitter rivalry of Republicans’ 2024 campaign.

“I just want to thank Ron and congratulate him on doing a very good job,” Trump said at the outset of his remarks. “He was very gracious, and he endorsed me. I appreciate that, and I also look forward to working with Ron.” Trump described DeSantis as “a really terrific person.”

Earlier in the day, DeSantis said via video that he would be ending his campaign two days before New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation GOP primary. But, Trump’s glee Sunday night aside, it wasn’t the warmest of endorsements.

“It’s clear to me that a majority of Republican primary voters want to give Donald Trump another chance,” DeSantis said, offering matter-of-fact analysis through a forced smile without adding plaudits for Trump.

“I signed a pledge to support the Republican nominee, and I will honor that pledge,” he continued, before adding a dig at the remaining contender, Nikki Haley. DeSantis described the former U.N. ambassador and onetime South Carolina governor as a stand-in for “the old Republican guard of yesteryear, a repackaged form of warmed-over corporatism.”

Trump seemed unbothered by DeSantis’ approach, striking a tone of camaraderie as fellow political combatants. “I will tell you it’s not easy,” Trump said Sunday night in Rochester. “They think it’s easy doing this stuff, right? It’s not easy.”

Brenda Moneypenny, a 64-year-old from Alton, waited in the cold for two hours to see Trump on Sunday night. She whipped out her driver’s license to prove her last name and explained she is a registered independent who often votes Republican. Moneypenny said she has considered Haley, especially because of the chance to elect the first woman to the presidency. But she never considered DeSantis.

“Too flim-flamsy,” Moneypenny said of the governor. “He needs better campaign people. He doesn’t have anybody that’s doing him any favors right now.”

Ultimately, she settled on Trump: “Tried and true,” she said.

The former president seemed to revel in skewering DeSantis throughout the campaign, often making clear it was a personal grudge because he considered the governor’s decision to run in the first place an act of disloyalty. Trump endorsed DeSantis, then a congressman, in a competitive 2018 GOP primary for Florida governor. DeSantis went on to win the nomination and the general election. By the time DeSantis won a landslide reelection four years later, though, he was positioning himself for his own White House campaign.

As recently as November, Trump came to Florida and addressed a boisterous crowd at a state GOP meeting standing in front of a sign that read: “Florida is Trump Country.” That evening, Trump did not mention DeSantis until more than 30 minutes into his speech. Even then, it was to brag about polls showing his advantages over the governor.

“I endorsed him, and he became a rocket ship in 24 hours,” Trump said, claiming that DeSantis had begged for his endorsement. “Now he’s like a wounded falling bird from the sky.”

Trump never did debate DeSantis or any other 2024 rival. He has said he wouldn’t until one proves they are a legitimate threat to him winning the nomination.

DeSantis concentrated his campaign in recent months in Iowa, where he finished in second place in last week’s caucuses — 30 percentage points behind Trump and barely ahead of Haley. Haley, meanwhile, has long prioritized New Hampshire as a potential springboard ahead of her home-state South Carolina primary next month.

In Iowa, APVoteCast surveys of caucusgoers suggested DeSantis’s supporters were much more likely than Haley’s to consider themselves conservatives who would back Trump no matter what if he wins the nomination and faces President Joe Biden in November. If that trend holds in New Hampshire, then Trump could expect at least some boost from DeSantis dropping out, and whatever he gets could stretch out his margin and frustrate Haley’s ability to claim any momentum. Indeed, Trump’s aides have said they expect DeSantis’ support around the country will shift heavily to Trump.

Trump noted Sunday that he won New Hampshire’s 2016 primary by about 20 points. He lost the battleground state twice in general elections.

On Monday, he plans to be in New York at a civil defamation trial stemming from a columnist’s claims he sexually attacked her. Then he is scheduled to return to New Hampshire for an evening rally in Laconia.

The revelation by attorney Roberta Kaplan, who represents advice columnist E. Jean Carroll, means that the Republican front-runner in this year’s presidential race could testify in Manhattan federal court as early as Monday, a day before the New Hampshire primary.

The jury is considering whether Trump owes more to Carroll than the $5 million awarded to her last spring by another jury that concluded Trump sexually abused but did not rape Carroll in the dressing room of a luxury Manhattan department store in spring 1996 and then defamed her in October 2022.

US & World News

Donald Trump Jan 20

Trump confuses Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi when talking about Jan. 6

decision 2024 Jan 20

Nikki Haley questions whether Trump is ‘mentally fit' after he confuses her with Nancy Pelosi

news Jan 18

Judge rejects Trump bid to hold special counsel Jack Smith in contempt in election case

Trump attended the trial for two of its first three days, only skipping it on Thursday, when he attended the funeral of his mother-in-law in Florida.

Kaplan said late Saturday in a letter to the judge that she would not show jurors the 2005 tape in which Trump is caught on a hot mic speaking disparagingly of women to keep the issues in the trial “focused.”

For the same reason, she said she won’t call two other Trump accusers as witnesses: Natasha Stoynoff and Jessica Leeds.

Both women testified at the trial that ended last May. Leeds, a former stockbroker, said Trump abruptly groped her against her will on an airline flight in the 1970s, while Stoynoff, a writer, said Trump forcibly kissed her against her will while she was interviewing him for a 2005 article.

Kaplan noted that Trump’s lawyers had said he is entitled to testify concerning the “Access Hollywood” tape and the allegations of Stoynoff and Leeds, though he would not be if they were not introduced into the case by Carroll’s attorneys.

The judge in the case has instructed the jury that it must accept the findings of the jury last year and thus the evidence has focused almost exclusively on what harm has been caused to Carroll by Trump’s continuous claims that he never attacked her and doesn’t know her and that she is lying.

Trump, 77, has denied her claims in the last week during campaign stops, on social media and at a news conference. And he continues to assert that Carroll, 80, made false claims against him to sell the 2019 memoir in which she first revealed the allegations publicly and for political reasons.

The judge has severely limited what Trump can testify about if he takes the witness stand, and Carrol’s lawyers likely decided to limit the introduction of more evidence to prevent Trump from straying into subjects such as what he maintains are many false claims against him.

However, Kaplan said she does plan to show the jury statements Trump has made since her client finished testifying in the case on Thursday.

In the News

news Jan 18

Judge loses patience with Trump lawyer in E. Jean Carroll sex assault defamation trial

news Jan 17

Trump says ‘I would love it' when judge threatens to kick him out of E. Jean Carroll trial

news Jan 16

Jurors in Trump defamation trial told: ‘It's time to hold him accountable'

Kaplan said Trump said he plans to repeat his claims that he never attacked Carroll and doesn’t know her “a thousand times.”

“Such statements,” she wrote, “are of course relevant to the issue of punitive damages, as they illustrate that Defendant has no intention of ceasing his defamation campaign against Ms. Carroll, even in the face of judicial proceedings in which his liability for defaming her is settled.”

A lawyer for Trump did not return a request for comment on Kaplan’s letter Saturday night.

The mixup came during Trump’s remarks to a crowd of supporters in Concord, N.H., where he spoke for more than 90 minutes and repeatedly bashed Haley, who served in his administration as an ambassador to the United Nations and has never been a member of Congress.

“Nikki Haley, you know they, do you know they destroyed all of the information, all of the evidence, everything, deleted and destroyed all of it. All of it because of lots of things like Nikki Haley is in charge of security. We offered her 10,000 people, soldiers, National Guard, whatever they want. They turned it down. They don’t want to talk about that. These are very dishonest people,” Trump said.

NBC News has reached out to Trump’s campaign for comment on his remarks.

Read the full story on NBCNews.com here.

news Jan 19

Alex Soros says a Trump win is a done deal for the Davos elite — but they're always wrong

Donald Trump Jan 18

Trump lawyers tell Supreme Court keeping him off ballot will unleash ‘chaos and bedlam'

Months before Donald Trump‘s defiant turn as a witness at his New York civil fraud trial, the former president came face-to-face with the state attorney general who is suing him when he sat for a deposition last year at her Manhattan office.

Video made public Friday of the seven-hour, closed-door session last April shows the Republican presidential frontrunner’s demeanor going from calm and cool to indignant — at one point ripping Attorney General Letitia James lawsuit against him as a “disgrace” and “a terrible thing.”

Sitting with arms folded, an incredulous Trump complained to the state lawyer questioning him that he was being forced to “justify myself to you” after decades of success building a real estate empire that’s now threatened by the court case.

Trump, who contends James’ lawsuit is part of a politically motivated “witch hunt” was demonstrative from the outset. The video shows him smirking and pouting his lips as the attorney general, a Democrat, introduced herself and told him that she was “committed to a fair and impartial legal process.”

James’ office released the video Friday in response to requests from media outlets under New York’s Freedom of Information Law. Trump’s lawyers previously posted a transcript of his remarks to the trial docket in August.

James’ lawsuit accuses Trump, his company and top executives of defrauding banks, insurers and others by inflating his wealth and exaggerating the value of assets on annual financial statements used to secure loans and make deals.

Judge Arthur Engoron, who will decide the case because a jury is not allowed in this type of lawsuit, has said he hopes to have a ruling by the end of January.

Friday’s video is a rare chance for the public at large to see Trump as a witness.

Cameras were not permitted in the courtroom when Trump testified on Nov. 6, nor were they allowed for closing arguments in the case on Jan. 11, where Trump defied the judge and gave a six-minute diatribe after his lawyers spoke.

Here are the highlights from Trump’s videotaped deposition:

Telling James and her staff, “you don’t have a case,” Trump insisted the banks she alleges were snookered with lofty valuations suffered no harm, got paid in his deals, and “to this day have no complaints.”

“Do you know the banks made a lot of money?” Trump asked, previewing his later trial testimony. “Do you know I don’t believe I ever got even a default notice and, even during COVID, the banks were all paid. And yet you’re suing on behalf of banks, I guess. It’s crazy. The whole case is crazy.”

Banks “want to do business with me because I’m rich,” Trump told James. “But, you know what, they’re petrified to do business because of you.”

Trump complained New York authorities “spend all their time investigating me, instead of stopping violent crime in the streets.”

He said they’d put his recently jailed ex-finance chief Allen Weisselberg “through hell and back” for dodging taxes on company-paid perks.

At a previous deposition in the case, in August 2022, Trump invoked his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination and refused to answer questions more than 400 times. He said he did so because he was certain his answers would be used as a basis for criminal charges.

Trump said he never felt his financial statements “would be taken very seriously,” and that people who did business with him were given ample warning not to trust them.

Trump described the statements as “a fairly good compilation of properties” rather than a true representation of their value. Some numbers, he noted, were “guesstimates.”

Trump claimed the statements were mainly for his use, though he conceded financial institutions sometimes asked for them. Even then, he insisted it didn’t matter legally if they were accurate or not, because they came with a disclaimer.

“I have a clause in there that says, ’Don’t believe the statement. Go out and do your own work,” Trump testified. “You’re supposed to pay no credence to what we say whatsoever.”

Trump estimated that his “brand” alone is worth “maybe $10 billion.”

He called it “the most valuable asset I have” and attributed his political success to the ubiquity of his name and persona.

“I became president because of the brand, OK,” Trump said. “I became president. I think it’s the hottest brand in the world.”

After Trump was elected, he put the Trump Organization into a trust overseen by his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., and longtime finance chief, Weisselberg.

Trump claimed he did so not because it was required but because he wanted to be a “legitimate president” and avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest.

Plus, Trump said, he was busy solving the world’s problems — like preventing North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un from launching a nuclear attack.

“I considered this the most important job in the world, saving millions of lives,” Trump testified. “I think you would have nuclear holocaust if I didn’t deal with North Korea. I think you would have a nuclear war, if I weren’t elected. And I think you might have a nuclear war now, if you want to know the truth.”

In one of his more animated moments, Trump urged his inquisitors to look right out the window for a view of his 40 Wall Street office tower — just across the street from James’ office where he testified.

Asked how the building was doing, financially, Trump gestured toward the building with his thumb and answered: “Good. It’s right here. Would you like to see it?”

“I don’t think we’re allowed to open the windows,” Wallace said.

“Open the curtain,” Trump suggested, bobbing his head around waiting for someone to oblige.

“No,” Wallace said.

“Open the curtain, go ahead,” Trump said. “It’s right here. I just looked out the window.”

“Can’t open it?” defense lawyer Clifford Robert asked, after a beat.

“I wouldn’t,” Wallace said.

Trump showed off his knack for superlatives, uttering the words “beautiful” and “incredible” 15 times each and “phenomenal” six times as he described his properties.

Trump called his Turnberry, Scotland, golf course “one of the most iconic places in the world,” and the renovated villas at his Doral golf resort near Miami “the most beautiful rooms you’ve ever seen.”

Trump described his 213-acre Seven Springs estate north of New York City as “the greatest house in New York State.”

His golf courses in Aberdeen, Scotland? “Really incredible.” Jupiter, Florida? “An incredible facility.” Just outside Los Angeles? “An incredible property … an unbelievable property … a phenomenal property that fronts on the ocean.”

“I don’t want to sell any of them,” Trump testified. “But if I ever sold them — if I ever put some of these things up for sale — I would get numbers that were staggering.”

He said he could get $1.5 billion for his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and maybe $2.5 billion for Doral.

Trump suggested he could get “a fortune” from the Saudi Arabia-backed LIV golf league for the Turnberry course, a former British Open site.

“There would be people that would do anything to own Doral. There are people that would do anything to own Turnberry or Mar-a-Lago or … Trump Tower or 40 Wall Street.”

__

Follow Sisak at x.com/mikesisak and send confidential tips by visiting https://www.ap.org/tips

In a written filing, Trump’s lawyers called on the court to reverse a first-of-its-kind Colorado Supreme Court decision that said Trump should not be on the state’s Republican primary ballot because of his role in the events that culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The justices are hearing arguments Feb. 8 in a case that both sides say needs to be resolved quickly so that voters know whether Trump, the leading Republican candidate for president, is eligible to hold the presidency.

The court is dealing with the dispute under a compressed timeframe that could produce a decision before Super Tuesday on March 5, when the largest number of delegates are up for grabs in a single day, including in Colorado.

The case presents the high court with its first look at a provision of the 14th Amendment barring some people who “engaged in insurrection” from holding public office. The amendment was adopted in 1868, following the Civil War.

Efforts to keep Trump off the ballot “threaten to disenfranchise tens of millions of Americans and … promise to unleash chaos and bedlam if other state courts and state officials follow Colorado’s lead and exclude the likely Republican presidential nominee from their ballots,” Trump’s lawyers wrote.

Trump should win on many grounds, they wrote, including that he has not engaged in insurrection. “In fact, the opposite is true, as President Trump repeatedly called for peace, patriotism, and law and order,” the lawyers wrote.

The Colorado court noted that Trump had held a rally outside the White House and exhorted his supporters to “fight like hell” before they walked to the Capitol.

Trump’s Supreme Court team is led by Texas-based lawyer Jonathan Mitchell, who devised aspects of the anti-abortion legislation that largely shut down abortions in Texas months before the Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade decision in June 2022.

Republican members of Congress, attorneys general and Republican legislative leaders in 27 states, and three former U.S. attorneys general, including one who served Trump, are among those who have weighed in to back him in the Colorado case.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Mike Johnson are among nearly 180 Republicans in Congress who have warned that a ruling upholding Colorado’s decision to remove Trump from the ballot would inevitably lead to tit-for-tat disqualifications of political opponents.

Colorado’s Supreme Court, by a 4-3 vote, ruled last month that Trump should not be on the Republican primary ballot.

A two-sentence provision in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment states that anyone who swore an oath to uphold the Constitution and then “engaged in insurrection” against it is no longer eligible for state or federal office. After Congress passed an amnesty for most of the former confederates the measure targeted in 1872, the provision fell into disuse until dozens of suits were filed to keep Trump off the ballot this year. Only the one in Colorado was successful.

Trump is separately appealing to state court a ruling by Maine’s Democratic secretary of state, Shenna Bellows, that he is ineligible to appear on that state’s ballot over his role in the Capitol attack. Both the Colorado Supreme Court and the Maine secretary of state’s rulings are on hold until the appeals play out.

The high court’s decision to intervene, which both sides have called for, is the most direct involvement in a presidential election since Bush v. Gore in 2000, when a conservative majority effectively decided the election for Republican George W. Bush. Only Justice Clarence Thomas remains from that court.

Three of the nine current Supreme Court justices were appointed by Trump, though they have repeatedly ruled against him in 2020 election-related lawsuits, as well as on his efforts to keep documents related to Jan. 6 and his tax returns from being turned over to congressional committees.

The issue of whether Trump can be on the ballot is not the only matter related to the former president or Jan. 6 that has reached the high court. The justices last month declined a request from special counsel Jack Smith to swiftly take up and rule on Trump’s claims that he is immune from prosecution in a case charging him with plotting to overturn the 2020 presidential election, though the issue could be back before the court soon depending on the ruling of a Washington-based appeals court.

And the court has said that it intends to hear an appeal that could upend hundreds of charges stemming from the Capitol riot, including against Trump.

A motion filed last week by a defense attorney in the election case alleges that Willis was involved in a romantic relationship with attorney Nathan Wade. A lawyer for Willis wrote in a filing Thursday that lawyers for Wade’s wife, Joycelyn Wade, served a subpoena to the district last week.

The filing says that the subpoena is being sought “in an attempt to harass and damage” Willis’ professional reputation and accuses Joycelyn Wade of having “conspired with interested parties in the criminal Election Interference Case to use the civil discovery process to annoy, embarrass, and oppress” the district attorney.

The attempt to question Willis is “obstructing and interfering” with an ongoing criminal case, lawyer Cinque Axam wrote in the court filing Thursday seeking to quash the subpoena.

Andrea Hastings, a lawyer for Joycelyn Wade, said they want to help her “resolve her divorce fairly and privately” and that any response to Willis’ motion will come in a filing with the court.

Willis was served with the subpoena the same day that defense attorney Ashleigh Merchant, who represents former Trump campaign staffer and onetime White House aide Michael Roman, filed a motion alleging an inappropriate relationship between Willis and Nathan Wade. She asserted that their alleged actions created a conflict of interest and led to Willis profiting personally from the prosecution. The motion seeks to have the indictment thrown out and to have Willis and Wade removed from the case.

Willis’ office has said they will respond to Merchant’s motion in a court filing but have not provided a timeline for that. Her filing on Thursday in the divorce case does not address whether she and Wade have been romantically involved.

The district attorney’s lawyer wrote that Nathan and Joycelyn Wade have been separated for more than two years and are involved in “an uncontested no-fault divorce” and there is an “absence of any relevant basis” to question Willis.

Merchant has not provided any solid proof to support her allegations of an inappropriate relationship. She mentioned “sources close” to Willis and Wade without elaborating.

Merchant’s motion also mentions that filings in Wade’s pending divorce are sealed but that she has filed a motion to unseal them. A coalition of news organizations, including The Associated Press, filed a motion Tuesday to gain access to those filings.

“Ms. Willis alleges that her deposition is being sought in an attempt to harass and damage her professional reputation. Why would her truthful testimony risk damaging her reputation?” Merchant wrote in an email Thursday.

She accused Willis of trying “to create a conspiracy where none exists,” noting that she filed her motion on the deadline for pretrial motions in the election case.

“We believe her filing in Cobb County is just another attempt to avoid having to directly answer the important questions Mr. Roman has raised,” Merchant wrote.

Merchant wrote in her motion last week that Wade has been paid large sums and has used some of his earnings to take Willis on vacation to Napa Valley, Florida and the Caribbean. She said that amounts to the pair “profiting significantly from this prosecution at the expense of the taxpayers.”

Merchant said she can find no evidence that Wade — whose law firm website touts his experience in civil litigation, including car accident and family law cases — has ever prosecuted a felony case. She questioned his qualifications to try this case.

Willis defended her hiring of Wade and his qualifications during an address at a church in Atlanta on Sunday but has not commented publicly on the allegation of a romantic relationship. Among other things, she cited Wade’s 10 years of experience as a municipal court judge and 20 years in private practice.

“Because the parties agree that the marriage is irretrievably broken and the concept of fault is not at issue, there is no information that District Attorney Willis could provide that might prove relevant to granting or denying the divorce,” the filing says.

Also Thursday, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee set a Feb. 15 hearing on Merchant’s motion and ordered prosecutors to file their response by Feb. 2.

Trump and Roman were indicted by a Fulton County grand jury in August along with 17 others. They’re accused of participating in a wide-ranging scheme to try to illegally overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Four of those charged have already pleaded guilty after reaching deals with prosecutors. Trump, Roman and the others who remain have pleaded not guilty.

Roman was the director of Election Day operations for the Trump campaign and also had worked in the White House.

Prosecutors say he helped coordinate an effort to contact state lawmakers on Trump’s behalf to encourage them to “unlawfully appoint presidential electors.”

He is also alleged to have been involved in efforts to have Republicans in swing states that Trump lost, including Georgia, meet on Dec. 14, 2020, to sign certificates falsely saying Trump had won their states and that they were the electors for their states. He was in touch with local Republican officials in several states to set up those meetings.

Trump’s lawyers appealed in state court when Secretary of State Shenna Bellows removed the Republican front-runner from the presidential primary ballot but then asked the judge to pause proceedings to allow the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on the Colorado case, which could render the lawsuit moot.

Superior Court Judge Michaela Murphy denied Trump’s request to stay the proceedings but, with agreement from all parties, she sent the case back to the secretary of state with instructions to await the outcome of the U.S. Supreme Court case before withdrawing, modifying or upholding her original decision.

In her decision, the judge said that the issues raised in the Maine case mirror the issues raised in the Colorado case before the U.S. Supreme Court. She wrote that her decision “minimizes any potentially destabilizing effect of inconsistent decisions and will promote greater predictability in the weeks ahead of the primary election.”

Bellows concluded last month that Trump didn’t meet ballot qualifications under the insurrection clause in the U.S. Constitution, citing his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. She became the first election official to ban Trump from the ballot under the 14th Amendment.

The nation’s highest court has never ruled on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which prohibits those who “engaged in insurrection” from holding office. Some legal scholars say the post-Civil War clause applies to Trump for his role in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election and encouraging his backers to storm the U.S. Capitol after he lost to Democrat Joe Biden. Activists conducted a campaign urging election officials to bar Trump under the clause.

Bellows, a Democrat, was reviewing the judge’s decision Wednesday and had no immediate comment, her spokesperson said. Bellows already had delayed implementation of her decision pending the outcome of the court cases. She had said she would follow the rule of law and abide by any legal decision.

She made her ruling a week after Colorado became the first state to bar Trump from the ballot, although the decision in that state, too, has been paused pending the outcome of its appeal in the nation’s highest court. The U.S. Supreme Court scheduled arguments for Feb. 8.

Trump, who won the Iowa caucuses on Monday, remains on the Maine ballot for the March 5 primary for now, given a Saturday deadline for sending overseas ballots. If the U.S. Supreme Court allows Trump to be kept off the ballot, then Bellows would have to notify local election officials that votes cast for him would not be counted.

Maine has just four electoral votes, but it’s one of two states to split them. Trump earned one of Maine’s electors when he was elected in 2016 and again in 2020 when he lost reelection.

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Judge Lewis A. Kaplan told the former president that his right to be present at the trial will be revoked if he remains disruptive. After an initial warning, Carroll’s lawyer said Trump could still be heard making remarks to his lawyers, including “it is a witch hunt” and “it really is a con job.”

“Mr. Trump, I hope I don’t have to consider excluding you from the trial,” Kaplan said in an exchange after the jury was excused for lunch, adding: “I understand you’re probably very eager for me to do that.”

“I would love it,” the Republican presidential front-runner shot back, shrugging as he sat between lawyers Alina Habba and Michael Madaio at the defense table.

“I know you would. You just can’t control yourself in these circumstances, apparently,” Kaplan responded.

“You can’t either,” Trump muttered.

Afterward, Trump ripped the judge in brief remarks to reporters at an office building he owns near the courthouse. He called the Bill Clinton appointee “a nasty judge” and a “Trump-hating guy,” echoing his own social media posts that Kaplan was “seething and hostile,” and “abusive, rude, and obviously not impartial.”

Trump has made similar comments about the judge in another case: a state of New York lawsuit accusing him of inflating his property values to get better rates on insurance and loans.

On Wednesday, Judge Kaplan denied a request from Trump’s lawyers that he step aside from the case involving Carroll, a longtime Elle magazine advice columnist.

Kaplan cracked down after Carroll lawyer Shawn Crowley complained for a second time that Trump could be heard “loudly saying things” throughout her testimony as he sat at the defense table, frequently tilting back and leaning over to speak with his lawyers.

Crowley suggested that if Carroll’s lawyers could hear Trump from where they were sitting, about 12 feet (3.7 meters) from him, jurors might’ve been able to hear him, too. Some appeared to split their focus between Trump and the witness stand.

“I’m just going to ask that Mr. Trump take special care to keep his voice down when conferring with counsel to make sure the jury does not hear it,” Kaplan said before jurors returned to the courtroom after a morning break.

Earlier, without the jury in the courtroom, Trump could be seen slamming his hand on the defense table and uttering the word “man” when the judge again refused his lawyer’s request that the trial be suspended on Thursday so he could attend his mother-in-law’s funeral in Florida.

Trump, fresh from a win Monday in the Iowa caucuses, has made his various legal fights part of his campaign. He sat in on jury selection Tuesday, then jetted to a New Hampshire rally before returning to court Wednesday and repeating the cycle with another Granite State event Wednesday night.

Carroll was the first witness in a Manhattan federal court trial to determine damages, if any, that Trump owes her for remarks he made while he was president in June 2019 as he vehemently denied ever attacking her or knowing her. A jury last year already found that Trump sexually abused her and defamed her in a round of denials in October 2022.

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Carroll’s testimony was somewhat of a tightrope walk because of limitations the judge has posed on the trial in light of the previous verdict and prior rulings he’s made restricting the infusion of political talk. Habba lobbed multiple objections seeking to prevent the jury from hearing details of Carroll’s allegations.

“I’m here because Donald Trump assaulted me and when I wrote about it, he said it never happened. He lied and he shattered my reputation,” Carroll testified.

“He has continued to lie. He lied last month. He lied on Sunday. He lied yesterday. And I am here to get my reputation back and to stop him from telling lies about me,” Carroll said.

Once a respected columnist, Carroll lamented: “Now, I’m known as the liar, the fraud and the whack job.” She became emotional as she read through some of hundreds of hateful messages she’s received from strangers, apologizing at one point to the jury for reading the nasty language aloud.

Carroll said Trump’s smears “ended the world” she knew, costing her millions of readers and her “Ask E. Jean” advice column, which ran in Elle for more than 25 years. The magazine has said her contract ended for unrelated reasons.

Carroll said her worries about her personal safety after a stream of death threats led her to buy bullets for a gun she inherited from her father, install an electronic fence, warn her neighbors of threats and unleash her pit bull to roam freely on the property of the small cabin in the mountains of upstate New York where she lives alone.

She also brought security along for the trial this week and last May and said she’d thought often about hiring security more often to accompany her.

“Why don’t you?” her attorney, Roberta Kaplan — no relation to the judge — asked.

“Can’t afford it,” Carroll answered.

She took the stand after a hostile encounter between Habba and the judge — culminating in Trump’s desk slam — over his refusal to adjourn the trial on Thursday so Trump could attend the funeral for former first lady Melania Trump’s mother, Amalija Knavs, who died last week.

Habba called Judge Kaplan’s ruling “insanely prejudicial” and the judge soon afterward cut her off, saying he would “hear no further argument on it.”

Habba told the judge: “I don’t like to be spoken to that way, your honor.” When she mentioned the funeral again, the judge responded: “It’s denied. Sit down.”

Carroll’s testimony came nine months after she was in the same chair convincing a jury in the hopes that Trump could be held accountable in a way that would stop him from frequent verbal attacks against her.

Because the first jury found that Trump sexually abused Carroll in the 1990s and then defamed her in 2022, the new trial concerns only how much more — if anything — he’ll be ordered to pay her for other remarks he made in 2019 while he was president.

Carroll accused Trump of forcing himself on her in a luxury department store dressing room in 1996. Then, she alleges, he publicly impugned her honesty, her motives and even her sanity after she told the story publicly in a 2019 memoir.

Trump, 77, asserts that nothing ever happened between him and Carroll, 80, and that he never met her. He says a 1987 party photo of them and their then-spouses “doesn’t count” because it was a momentary greeting.

Trump did not attend the previous trial in the case last May, when a jury found he had sexually abused and defamed Carroll and awarded her $5 million in damages. The jury said, however, that Carroll hadn’t proven her claim that Trump raped her.

Carroll is now seeking $10 million in compensatory damages and millions more in punitive damages.

The Associated Press typically does not name people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Carroll has done.

Fresh from a political win Monday in the Iowa caucuses, the Republican presidential frontrunner detoured for about four hours to a Manhattan courtroom for what amounts to the penalty phase of a civil defamation lawsuit stemming from E. Jean Carroll’s claims he sexually attacked her in a department store dressing room in 1996. Trump left just after a jury of nine people was selected to attend a political rally in New Hampshire.

During his time in the Manhattan federal courtroom, Trump’s lawyers first protested the trial itself, saying he wasn’t being given a fair shake by Judge Lewis A. Kaplan and claiming that it was inappropriate for the trial to occur before appeals were resolved over legal issues.

Then, Trump expressed his displeasure through his gestures. For purposes of this proceeding, it had already been determined at a trial last year that Trump “did sexually assault Ms. Carroll,” Kaplan said, prompting Trump to shake his head from side to side. The ex-president was sitting at the defense table, flanked by his lawyers, about a dozen feet from Carroll and her legal team. They didn’t appear to speak or make eye contact.

Later, when the judge asked during jury selection if anyone felt he had been treated unfairly by the court system, Trump raised his hand slyly. The gesture drew laughter from some prospective jurors and a comment from the judge, who told Trump: “We know how you stand.”

After Trump left the courthouse, opening statements began, with attorney Shawn Crowley saying on Carroll’s behalf that Trump must be held accountable for statements he made after she said publicly for the first time in a 2019 memoir that Trump had sexually abused her in the dressing room of a luxury department store a quarter century earlier.

She said that Trump, while still president, “used the world’s biggest microphone to attack Ms. Carroll, to humiliate her” and to “tear her reputation to shreds.”

The lawyer said Trump launched verbal attacks over four days in June 2019, accusing Carroll of being a liar. “He said this from the White House … where presidents have signed laws, declared wars and decided the fate of the nation.”

On Tuesday, Trump fired off a series of social media posts about the defamation case. Posting on his Truth Social platform, he wrote that Carroll’s rape allegation was an “attempted EXTORTION” involving “fabricated lies and political shenanigans.” He accused the judge of having “absolute hatred” for him.

Crowley told jurors their job was to answer the question: “How much money will it take to get him to stop?”

Trump attorney Alina Habba said the evidence will show that Carroll’s career has prospered and she has been “thrust back into the limelight like she always has wanted.” She said Carroll’s lawyers wanted to portray their client as someone whose reputation was ruined when “the evidence will show you something different.”

Testimony will begin Wednesday, when Carroll is expected to take the witness stand.

Trump did not attend the previous trial in the case last May, when a jury found he had sexually abused Carroll and awarded Carroll $5 million in damages. The jury said Carroll hadn’t proven that Trump raped her. In light of that verdict, Kaplan said the trial beginning Tuesday would focus only on how much money, if any, Trump must pay Carroll for comments he made about her while president in 2019.

As the day began, Kaplan rejected the defense’s request to suspend the trial on Thursday so Trump could attend his mother-in-law’s funeral — part of a combative exchange in which Trump’s lawyers accused the judge of thwarting their defense with pretrial evidence rulings they contend were favorable to Carroll.

“I am not stopping him from being there,” the judge said, referring to the funeral.

Trump lawyer Alina Habba responded: “No, you’re stopping him from being here.”

Habba told the judge that Trump plans to testify. Kaplan said the only accommodation he would make is that Trump can testify on Monday, even if the trial is otherwise finished by Thursday. The judge previously rejected Trump’s request to delay the trial a week.

Trump sat attentively, glaring and scowling at times, as several dozen prospective jurors filed into the courtroom and spent more than an hour responding to questions posed by the judge covering everything from their prior involvement with the judicial system to their political beliefs.

He twisted around in his chair and nodded at two prospective jurors — a man and woman — who stood when asked if they agreed with his false belief that the 2020 election was rigged, and again when three people in the pool indicated they felt the former president was being treated unfairly by the court system.

The process offered a window into the political beliefs of a microcosm of New Yorkers, drawn from a pool that includes Manhattan and northern suburban counties. Some noted personal connections to Trump or his adversaries. One woman said she had done publicity for his daughter’s company. Another said her father provided moving services for some of Trump’s buildings. Neither made the cut.

Jurors selected for the trial will remain anonymous, even to the parties, lawyers and judicial staff, and will be driven to and from the courthouse from an undisclosed location for their safety, Kaplan said.

Trump has increasingly made his courtroom travails — including four criminal cases — part of his run to retake the White House, positioning himself as a victim of partisan lawyers, judges and prosecutors and capitalizing on news coverage that accompanies his court visits. Last week, Trump attended closing arguments in the New York attorney general’s fraud lawsuit against him — and ended up giving a six-minute diatribe after his lawyers spoke.

“I guess you’d consider it part of the campaign,” Trump told reporters last week.

Carroll, 80, plans to testify about the damage to her career and reputation that resulted from Trump’s public statements. She seeks $10 million in compensatory damages and millions more in punitive damages.

If Trump testifies, he will be under strict limits on what he can say. Because of the prior verdict, Kaplan has said, Trump cannot get on the witness stand and argue that he didn’t sexually abuse or defame Carroll.

Trump is appealing and hasn’t paid any of that award, though he placed $5.55 million in escrow to cover the verdict and other costs in the event he loses his appeal. One issue that wasn’t decided in the first trial was how much Trump owed for comments he made about Carroll while president. That will be the new jury’s only job.

Trump, 77, has continued to maintain that he doesn’t know Carroll, that he never met her at the Bergdorf Goodman store in midtown Manhattan in spring 1996 and that Carroll made up her claims to sell her book and for political reasons.

The newspaper and reporters Susanne Craig, David Barstow and Russell Buettner were dismissed from the lawsuit in May. Trump’s claim against his estranged niece, Mary Trump, that she breached a prior settlement agreement by giving tax records to the reporters is still pending.

New York Judge Robert Reed said that given the “complexity of the issues” in the case and other factors, it was reasonable that Donald Trump be forced to pay lawyers for the Times and the reporters a total of $392,638 in legal fees.

“Today’s decision shows that the state’s newly amended anti-SLAPP statute can be a powerful force for protecting press freedom,” Times spokesperson Danielle Rhoads Ha said, referring to a New York law that bars baseless lawsuits designed to silence critics. Such lawsuits are known as SLAPPs or strategic lawsuits against public participation.

“The court has sent a message to those who want to misuse the judicial system to try to silence journalists,” Rhoads Ha said.

In a separate ruling Friday, Reed denied a request by Mary Trump – now the sole defendant – that the case be put on hold while she appeals his June decision that allowed Donald Trump’s claim against her to proceed.

Mary Trump’s lawyers declined comment.

Donald Trump’s lawyer, Alina Habba, said they remain disappointed that the Times and its reporters were dropped from the case. She said they are pleased that the court has “once again affirmed the strength of our claims against Mary and is denying her attempt to avoid accountability.”

“We look forward to proceeding with our claims against her,” Habba said.

Donald Trump’s lawsuit, filed in 2021, accused the Times and its reporters of relentlessly seeking out Mary Trump as a source of information and convincing her to turn over confidential tax records. He claimed the reporters were aware her prior settlement agreement barred her from disclosing the documents, which she’d received in a dispute over family patriarch Fred Trump’s estate.

The Times’ reporting challenged Donald Trump’s claims of self-made wealth by documenting how his father, Fred Trump, had given him at least $413 million over the decades, including through tax avoidance schemes. Mary Trump identified herself in a book published in 2020 as the source of the documents.

The Times’ story said that Donald Trump and his father avoided gift and inheritance taxes by methods including setting up a sham corporation and undervaluing assets to tax authorities. The Times says its report was based on more than 100,000 pages of financial documents, including confidential tax returns for the father and his companies.

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Donald Trump, who sought $100 million in damages, alleged Mary Trump, the Times and the reporters “were motivated by a personal vendetta” against him. He accused them of engaging “in an insidious plot to obtain confidential and highly sensitive records which they exploited for their own benefit.”

In dismissing the Times and its reporters from the lawsuit, Reed wrote that legal news gathering is “at the very core of protected First Amendment activity.”

Mary Trump, 58, is the daughter of Donald Trump’s brother, Fred Trump Jr., who died in 1981 at age 42. She is an outspoken critic of her uncle, whom she has regarded as “criminal, cruel and traitorous.”

In July, Mary Trump filed a counterclaim against Donald Trump under New York’s anti-SLAPP law, arguing that Donald Trump’s lawsuit was “purely retaliatory and lacking in merit” and intended to “chill her and others from criticizing him in the future.”

On the final day of a civil fraud trial that could strip Donald Trump of his ability to do business in the state he called home for most of his life, New York City officials were taking their own steps to sever ties with the former president by erasing his name from a Bronx golf course.

The hulking hillside “Trump Links” sign, visible for nearly a decade to motorists passing over the Whitestone Bridge, was removed this week ahead of a ribbon-cutting Thursday to unveil the new name of the Ferry Point golf course, Bally Links.

The rebranding came months after the Trump Organization offloaded the operations of the 18-hole public course to Bally’s Corporation, a gaming and entertainment company hoping to build a casino in New York.

Speaking at the unveiling, Mayor Eric Adams described the lease takeover as a major upgrade for the Bronx. “This day is about so much more than the changing of a sign,” he said.

Following the Jan. 6th insurrection, then-Mayor Bill de Blasio moved to scrap the contract with the Trump Organization, which had been managing the course since 2015, arguing that Trump’s incitement of rioters had given the city legal authority to do so. A state judge rejected that argument.

In September, the Trump Organization sold the operating rights to Bally’s for $60 million. The terms of the lease were first disclosed in November during the civil fraud trial delving into the ex-president’s finances and the family business’ dealings.

Under questioning, the former president’s son Donald Trump Jr. said the family company had incurred “a lot of costs” managing the course. He said he wasn’t sure if they turned a profit.

That trial came to a close on Thursday, with a decision expected by the end of the month.

The former president changed his legal residence from New York City to Palm Beach, Florida, in 2019.

“Well, I can’t tell you that, really,” Trump told Fox News during a town hall in Iowa on Wednesday when the moderators asked him who is in the running to be on a presidential ticket with him. “I mean, I know who it’s going to be.”

Trump’s campaign quickly sought to downplay the remark. A campaign adviser told NBC News “nothing is finalized” about the vice presidential pick.

“He’ll announce his final pick when he’s ready to,” the adviser said.

Read the full story on NBCNews.com here.

Trump had requested to deliver part of the arguments himself, according to a source with direct knowledge of the situation. But Judge Arthur Engoron told Trump’s lawyers Wednesday that he failed to respond to his requests to agree to precondition, and therefore he will not be allowed to testify.

Engoron had “conceptually approved” the request by attorneys for Trump, the source said, but had told Trump’s attorneys that they must meet certain conditions on the scope and timing and what is considered permissible for a closing argument.

The idea that Trump would speak in court was first reported by ABC News, but without the above details.

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The panel of three judges, two of whom were appointed by President Joe Biden, also questioned whether they had jurisdiction to consider the appeal at this point in the case, raising the prospect that Trump’s appeal could be dismissed.

During lengthy arguments, the judges repeatedly pressed Trump’s lawyer to defend claims that Trump was shielded from criminal charges for acts that he says fell within his official duties as president. That argument was rejected last month by a lower-court judge overseeing the case against Trump, and the appeals judges suggested through their questions that they, too, were dubious that the Founding Fathers envisioned absolute immunity for presidents after they leave office.

“I think it’s paradoxical to say that his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed allows him to violate criminal law,” said Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson, an appointee of former President George H.W. Bush.

The outcome of the arguments carries enormous ramifications both for the landmark criminal case against Trump and for the broader, and legally untested, question of whether an ex-president can be prosecuted for acts committed in the White House. It will also likely set the stage for further appeals before the U.S. Supreme Court, which last month declined a request to weigh in but could still get involved later.

A swift decision is crucial for special counsel Jack Smith and his team, who are eager to get the case — now paused pending the appeal — to trial before the November election. But Trump’s lawyers, in addition to seeking to get the case dismissed, are hoping to benefit from a protracted appeals process that could delay the trial well past its scheduled March 4 start date, including until potentially after the election.

Underscoring the importance to both sides, Trump attended Tuesday’s arguments even though the Iowa caucuses are just one week away and despite the fact that there’s no requirement that defendants appear in person for such proceedings. It was his first court appearance in Washington, D.C., one of the four cities where he faces criminal prosecutions and potential trials, since his arraignment in August.

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His appearance and his comments afterward underscored his broader effort to portray himself as the victim of a justice system he claims is politicized. Trump’s argument could resonate with Republican voters in Iowa as they prepare to launch the presidential nomination process.

After the hearing, Trump spoke to reporters at The Waldorf-Astoria hotel, which used to be the Trump International Hotel, calling Tuesday “a very momentous day.” He insisted he did nothing wrong and claimed he was being prosecuted for political reasons.

“A president has to have immunity,” he said.

Former presidents enjoy broad immunity from lawsuits for actions taken as part of their official White House duties. But because no former president before Trump has ever been indicted, courts have never before addressed whether that protection extends to criminal prosecution.

Trump’s lawyers insist that it does, arguing that courts have no authority to scrutinize a president’s official acts and decisions and that the prosecution of their client represents a dramatic departure from more than two centuries of American history that would open the door to future “politically motivated” cases. They filed a similar motion on Monday in another criminal case against Trump in Georgia.

“To authorize the prosecution of a president for official acts would open a Pandora’s box from which this nation may never recover,” said D. John Sauer, a lawyer for Trump, asserting that, under the government’s theory, presidents could be prosecuted for giving Congress “false information” to enter war or for authorizing drone strikes targeting U.S. citizens abroad.

He later added: “If a president has to look over his shoulder or her shoulder every time he or she has to make a controversial decision and wonder if ‘after I leave office, am I going to jail for this when my political opponents take power?’ that inevitably dampens the ability of the president.”

But the judges were repeatedly skeptical about those arguments. Judges Henderson and Florence Pan noted the lawyer who represented Trump during his impeachment trial suggested that he could later face criminal prosecution, telling senators at the time: “We have a judicial process in this country. We have an investigative process in this country to which no former office holder is immune.”

“It seems that many senators relied on that in voting to acquit” Trump, Pan told Sauer.

Judge J. Michelle Childs also questioned why former President Richard Nixon would need to be granted a pardon in 1974 after the Watergate scandal if former presidents enjoy immunity from prosecution. Sauer replied that in Nixon’s case, the conduct did not involve the same kind of “official acts” Trump’s lawyers argue form the basis of his indictment.

Aside from the merits of the arguments, the judges jumped right into questioning Trump’s lawyer over whether the court has jurisdiction to hear the appeal at this time. Sauer said presidential immunity is clearly a claim that is meant to be reviewed before trial. Smith’s team also said that it wants the court to decide the appeal now.

Smith’s team maintains that presidents are not entitled to absolute immunity and that, in any event, the acts Trump is alleged in the indictment to have taken — including scheming to enlist fake electors in battleground states won by Biden and pressing his vice president, Mike Pence, to reject the counting of electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021 — fall far outside a president’s official job duties.

“The president has a unique constitutional role but he is not above the law. Separation of powers principles, constitutional text, history, precedent and immunity doctrines all point to the conclusion that a former president enjoys no immunity from prosecution,” prosecutor James Pearce said, adding that a case in which a former president is alleged to have sought to overturn an election “is not the place to recognize some novel form of immunity.”

When Judge Henderson asked how the court could write its opinion in a way that wouldn’t open the “floodgates” of investigations against ex-presidents, Pearce said he did not anticipate “a sea change of vindictive tit-for-tat prosecutions in the future.” He called the allegations against Trump fundamentally unprecedented.

“Never before has there been allegations that a sitting president has, with private individuals and using the levers of power, sought to fundamentally subvert the democratic republic and the electoral system,” he said. “And frankly, if that kind of fact pattern arises again, I think it would be awfully scary if there weren’t some sort of mechanism by which to reach that criminally.”

It’s not clear how quickly the panel from the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals from the D.C. Circuit will rule, though it has signaled that it intends to work fast.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan rejected the immunity arguments, ruling last month that the office of the presidency does not confer a “‘get-out-of-jail-free'” pass. Trump’s lawyers appealed that decision, but Smith’s team, determined to keep the case on schedule, sought to leapfrog the appeals court by asking the Supreme Court to fast-track the immunity question. The justices declined to get involved.

The appeal is vital to a Trump strategy of trying to postpone the case until after the November election, when a victory could empower him to order the Justice Department to abandon the prosecution or even to seek a pardon for himself. He faces three other criminal cases, in state and federal court, though the Washington case is scheduled for trial first.

Associated Press writer Ashraf Khalil in Washington contributed to this report.

“We thank you for the upcoming election, Lord — or caucus, as we call it in Iowa,” said Hundley, speaking from the sanctuary of his evangelical Christian church in his slight Texas drawl as his parishioners bowed their heads.

“It doesn’t matter what our opinion is,” he went on. “It’s really what’s your opinion that matters. But you’ve given us the privilege of being able to exercise a beautiful gift. The gift of vote. We thank you for that.”

While Hundley stops short of suggesting to his parishioners which candidate divine guidance should lead them to support, he is among more than 300 pastors and other faith leaders who’ve been described as supporters by former President Donald Trump’s campaign. It’s a message that some members of Hundley’s First Church of God have taken to heart, saying their faith informs their intention to caucus for Trump.

The former president and his rivals for the Republican nomination in 2024 have for months been heavily courting social conservatives and white evangelical Christians, long seen as the most influential group in Iowa’s Republican caucuses.

Ron Betts, a 72-year-old Republican who said he plans to caucus for “Trump all the way,” said he felt the former president “exemplified what Jesus would do.”

Hundley said he doesn’t speak about politics from the pulpit or privately urge members of his congregation to support his favored candidate, but he encourages them to participate and use their faith to make their choices.

“I look at it from a Christian perspective,” he said. “I expect them to look at it from a Christian perspective. What does God say of us?”

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Before weather forced a postponement, the First Church of God on Monday was supposed to host a Trump campaign event featuring Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Trump’s former press secretary, and her father, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister and former presidential candidate, as part of what’s billed as a Team Trump Iowa Faith Tour.

Trump, who has a commanding polling lead in Iowa, has been emphasizing his endorsements from faith leaders and success in seating three Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn the Roe v. Wade decision that protected abortion rights nationwide. The former president, however, has faced some pushback from conservatives for failing to endorse national abortion restrictions.

Trump frequently features a prayer at the start of his campaign events, something his rivals have also included at their stops. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has portrayed himself as more conservative than Trump, features religious rhetoric as he campaigns and has the backing of more than 100 faith leaders, including the influential Iowa evangelical figure Bob Vander Plaats.

Trump has long seemed like an unlikely fit for the conservative faithful who shape the first contest of the Republican primary. He entered politics as a brash, thrice-married former reality television star who spent decades as a New York City tabloid fixture, boasted of his sexual prowess and once supported abortion rights. His frequent lies and distortions in his campaigns and presidency focused on everything from his political rivals to the pandemic to the 2020 election results. And last year a jury found him liable for sexual abuse.

In his first race for the White House in 2016, his image seemed to dog him as he struggled in Iowa, losing the state to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. But as the former president again seeks the White House, he is finding strong support among the faithful.

While about one-third of U.S. adults, 37%, have a favorable opinion of Trump, he’s seen more favorably among those who identify themselves as evangelicals or born-again Christians. About half of evangelicals in an AP-NORC poll conducted in October said they have a favorable view of Trump. That’s even higher among white born-again Christians, at 56%.

Trump has focused his third campaign around a message of retribution and harsh justice, a framework that doesn’t seem to be hurting him with evangelicals. Some members of Hundley’s church pointed to those themes as a reason Trump best aligns with their faith, suggesting his tough stance on the border and calls for harsher punishment for crimes reflect a sense of justice they see as rooted in Christianity.

The 72-year-old Betts likened Trump’s legal troubles — from the 91 criminal charges he currently faces to the effort in some states to keep him off the 2024 presidential ballot because of his push to overturn his 2020 election loss — to a crucifixion.

“I think they are doing the same thing they did to Jesus on the cross,” Betts said. “I can see a lot of correlation there.”

Cliff Carey, a 73-year-old member of Hundley’s congregation, said Trump supported things he supports as a Christian and pointed to his actions around abortion in particular, calling him “the greatest pro-life president we’ve ever seen.”

“I think he’s an imperfect individual just like the rest of us, but I think God used that man to govern in godly principles,” he said.

His sister-in-law, Cindy Carey, agreed.

“I wouldn’t vote for him as my pastor,” she said. “I want him to lead our nation back to that city on a hill, shining city on a hill.”

Carey feels Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan is about returning the country to the Christian principles she believes it was founded on.

“I definitely take my belief and my understanding of the Bible into the voting booth with me.” she said. “I believe 100% that that’s my responsibility.”

Associated Press writers Hannah Fingerhut in Des Moines and Linley Sanders in Washington contributed to this report.

The justices acknowledged the need to reach a decision quickly, as voters will soon begin casting presidential primary ballots across the country. The court agreed to take up a case from Colorado stemming from Trump’s role in the events that culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Underscoring the urgency, arguments will be held on Feb. 8, during what is normally a nearly monthlong winter break for the justices. The compressed timeframe could allow the court to produce a decision before Super Tuesday on March 5, when the largest number of delegates are up for grabs in a single day, including in Colorado.

The court will be considering for the first time the meaning and reach of a provision of the 14th Amendment barring some people who “engaged in insurrection” from holding public office. The amendment was adopted in 1868, following the Civil War. It has been so rarely used that the nation’s highest court had no previous occasion to interpret it.

Colorado’s Supreme Court, by a 4-3 vote, ruled last month that Trump should not be on the Republican primary ballot. The decision was the first time the 14th Amendment was used to bar a presidential contender from the ballot.

Trump is separately appealing to state court a ruling by Maine’s Democratic secretary of state, Shenna Bellows, that he was ineligible to appear on that state’s ballot over his role in the Capitol attack. Both the Colorado Supreme Court and the Maine secretary of state’s rulings are on hold until the appeals play out.

The high court’s decision to intervene, which both sides called for, is the most direct involvement in a presidential election since Bush v. Gore in 2000, when a conservative majority effectively decided the election for Republican George W. Bush. Only Justice Clarence Thomas remains from that court.

Three of the nine Supreme Court justices were appointed by Trump, though they have repeatedly ruled against him in 2020 election-related lawsuits, as well as his efforts to keep documents related to Jan. 6 and his tax returns from being turned over to congressional committees.

At the same time, Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh have been in the majority of conservative-driven decisions that overturned the five-decade-old constitutional right to abortion, expanded gun rights and struck down affirmative action in college admissions.

Some Democratic lawmakers have called on Thomas to step aside from the case because of his wife’s support for Trump’s effort to overturn the results of the election, which he lost to Democrat Joe Biden. Thomas is unlikely to agree, and there was every indication Friday that all the justices are participating. Thomas has recused himself from only one other case related to the 2020 election, involving former law clerk John Eastman, and so far the people trying to disqualify Trump haven’t asked him to recuse.

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The 4-3 Colorado decision cites a ruling by Gorsuch when he was a federal judge in that state. That Gorsuch decision upheld Colorado’s move to strike a naturalized citizen from the state’s presidential ballot because he was born in Guyana and didn’t meet the constitutional requirements to run for office. The court found that Trump likewise doesn’t meet the qualifications due to his role in the U.S. Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021. That day, the Republican president held a rally outside the White House and exhorted his supporters to “fight like hell” before they walked to the Capitol.

The two-sentence provision in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment states that anyone who swore an oath to uphold the constitution and then “engaged in insurrection” against it is no longer eligible for state or federal office. After Congress passed an amnesty for most of the former confederates the measure targeted in 1872, the provision fell into disuse until dozens of suits were filed to keep Trump off the ballot this year. Only the one in Colorado was successful.

Trump had asked the court to overturn the Colorado ruling without even hearing arguments. “The Colorado Supreme Court decision would unconstitutionally disenfranchise millions of voters in Colorado and likely be used as a template to disenfranchise tens of millions of voters nationwide,” Trump’s lawyers wrote.

They argue that Trump should win on many grounds, including that the events of Jan. 6 did not constitute an insurrection. Even if it did, they wrote, Trump himself had not engaged in insurrection. They also contend that the insurrection clause does not apply to the president and that Congress must act, not individual states.

Critics of the former president who sued in Colorado agreed that the justices should step in now and resolve the issue, as do many election law experts.

“This case is of utmost national importance. And given the upcoming presidential primary schedule, there is no time to wait for the issues to percolate further. The Court should resolve this case on an expedited timetable, so that voters in Colorado and elsewhere will know whether Trump is indeed constitutionally ineligible when they cast their primary ballots,” lawyers for the Colorado plaintiffs told the Supreme Court.

The issue of whether Trump can be on the ballot is not the only matter related to the former president or Jan. 6 that has reached the high court. The justices last month declined a request from special counsel Jack Smith to swiftly take up and rule on Trump’s claims that he is immune from prosecution in a case charging him with plotting to overturn the 2020 presidential election, though the issue could be back before the court soon depending on the ruling of a Washington-based appeals court.

And the court has said that it intends to hear an appeal that could upend hundreds of charges stemming from the Capitol riot, including against Trump.

New York state lawyers increased their request for penalties to over $370 million Friday in Donald Trump’s civil business fraud trial, while his defense argued that 10-plus weeks of testimony produced no evidence of fraudulent intentions or ill-gotten gains.

Both sides highlighted their takeaways from the trial in court filings ahead of closing arguments, set for Thursday. Trump is expected to attend, though plans could change.

It will be the final chance for state and defense lawyers to make their case in a lawsuit that is consequential for the leading Republican presidential hopeful even while he fights four criminal cases in various courts.

The New York civil case could end up barring him from doing business in the state where he built his real estate empire, and state Attorney General Letitia James is seeking the $370 million penalty, plus interest — up from a pretrial figure of $250 million, nudged to over $300 million during the proceeding.

The amount reflects what the state says were windfalls from wrongdoing, chiefly $199 million in profits from property sales and $169 million in savings on interest rates, as calculated by an investment banking expert hired by James’ office.

James argues that Trump got attractive rates on loans and insurance because of the wealth he claimed on his personal “statements of financial condition,” or “SFCs” for short. And that wealth was vastly inflated, according to the lawsuit, which accuses Trump, his company and key executives of deceiving banks and insurers.

The suit alleges that the documents gave exorbitant values for golf courses, hotels, and more, including Trump’s former home in his namesake tower in New York and his current home at the Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.

“The conclusion that defendants intended to defraud when preparing and certifying Trump’s SFCs is inescapable,” Kevin Wallace, a lawyer in James’ office, wrote in a filing Friday. “The myriad deceptive schemes they employed to inflate asset values and conceal facts were so outrageous that they belie innocent explanation.”

The defendants, including his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, deny any wrongdoing.

The former president asserts that his financial statements actually came in billions of dollars low, and that any overestimations — such as valuing his Trump Tower penthouse at nearly three times its actual size — were mere mistakes and made no difference in the overall picture of his fortune.

He also says the documents are essentially legally bulletproof because they said the numbers weren’t audited, among other caveats. Recipients understood them as simply starting points for their own analyses, the defense says.

None of his lenders testified that they wouldn’t have made the loans or would have charged more interest if his financial statements had shown different numbers, defense lawyers wrote in a filing Friday for Trump, his Trump Organization and some executives.

The state “adduced no factual evidence from any witness that the gains were ill-gotten,” attorneys Michael Madaio and Christopher Kise wrote. Nor, they said, was there proof that insurers were ripped off.

Separately, defense lawyers argued that claims against Executive Vice Presidents Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. should be dismissed because they never had “anything more than a peripheral knowledge or involvement in the creation, preparation, or use of” their father’s financial statements.

The sons relied on the work of other Trump Organization executives and an outside accounting firm that prepared those documents, attorneys Clifford Robert and Michael Farina said, echoing the scions’ own testimony.

Their father also took the stand and made a stream of comments in the courthouse hallway. He painted the case as a political maneuver by James, Judge Arthur Engoron and other Democrats, saying they’re abusing the legal system to try to cut off his chances of winning back the White House this year.

The verdict is up to the judge because James brought the case under a state law that doesn’t allow for a jury. Engoron has said he hopes to decide by the end of this month.

He will weigh claims of conspiracy, insurance fraud and falsifying business records. But he ruled before trial on the lawsuit’s top claim, finding that Trump and other defendants engaged in fraud for years. With that ruling, the judge ordered that a receiver take control of some of the ex-president’s properties, but an appeals court has frozen that order for now.

In addition to penalties of $370 million, plus interest, James wants Trump to be prohibited from doing business in New York.

During the trial, Engoron fined Trump a total of $15,000 after finding that he violated a gag order that barred all trial participants from commenting publicly on the judge’s staff. The order was imposed after Trump maligned the judge’s principal law clerk.

Trump’s lawyers are appealing the gag order.