Manhattan DA asks judge not to throw out Trump’s criminal hush money conviction
Steven Hirsch-Pool/Getty Images
(NEW YORK) –Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg on Thursday asked a New York judge to reject former President Donald Trump’s attempt to throw out his criminal hush money conviction, arguing that the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling on presidential immunity “has nothing to say about defendant’s conviction.”
Trump earlier this month asked Judge Juan Merchan to vacate his conviction on the grounds that the trial was “tainted” by evidence and testimony that was made off-limits after the Supreme Court ruled Trump has presumptive immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts taken while in office.
Prosecutors said in Thursday’s court filing that paying hush money to an adult film actress is “entirely personal” with “no relationship whatsoever to any official duty of the presidency.”
The former president was found guilty in May of falsifying business records related to a 2016 hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels in order to boost his electoral prospects in the 2016 presidential election.
The jury convicted Trump of 34 felony counts after seeing “overwhelming evidence of the defendant’s guilt,” prosecutors argued in the filing.
Trump argued that certain evidence presented at trial — including testimony from former White House aide Hope Hicks and Trump’s tweets about his former attorney Michael Cohen — related to his official acts as president and should now be considered inadmissible in light of the Supreme Court opinion.
Prosecutors pushed back in their filing.
“The challenged Tweets bear no resemblance to the kinds of public comments that the Supreme Court indicated would qualify as official presidential conduct,” the district attorney’s office said. “Defendant’s Tweets conveying his personal opinion about his private attorney do not bear any conceivable relationship to any official duty of the Presidency.”
Prosecutors also argued that testimony from Hicks, who was once Trump’s communications director, “related solely to unofficial conduct.”
“[T]he evidence that he claims is affected by the Supreme Court’s ruling constitutes only a sliver of the mountains of testimony and documentary proof that the jury considered in finding him guilty of all 34 felony charges beyond a reasonable doubt,” the filing said.
Earlier this month, Judge Merchan postponed Trump’s sentencing in the case from July 11 to Sept. 18 so he could consider Trump’s request to vacate his conviction.
(DETROIT) — The Detroit Police Department is seeking public help in their search for an arson suspect who burned four vehicles and damaged two others late last week.
Authorities released a video of the incident on Aug. 15, which occurred at around 1:45 p.m. in a post office parking lot on Harper Ave, near the intersection with Morang Ave. on the east side of the city.
In the footage, a hooded man can be seen breaking the window of a white 2018 Chevy Traverse in the parking lot, before pouring accelerant inside. The suspect then lit the fuel, with the subsequent explosion throwing him backwards against another vehicle. The suspect fell to the floor and then ran from the scene.
“The suspect is described as a heavy set male,” read the appeal from the Detroit Police Department published on Monday. “He was last seen wearing a dark hooded sweatshirt with a white shirt underneath, and blue jeans. Six vehicles were damaged and four vehicles were burned as a result of this incident.”
Authorities are offering a $500 reward related to the case.
(NEW YORK) — Debby is roaring across Florida as a tropical storm after making landfall as a Category 1 hurricane Monday morning.
Here’s what to expect:
On Monday, Debby will bring very heavy rain from Gainesville and Jacksonville, Florida, up to Savannah, Georgia, where more than 20 inches of rain is possible.
Rain totals have reached 19 inches in Florida so far.
The storm surge will be the highest — up to 10 feet — in Florida’s Big Bend area, from Keaton Beach to Cedar Key.
By Tuesday, Debby is expected to stall over the Southeast, bringing potentially historic rainfall to Georgia and South Carolina. Up to 30 inches of rain is possible through Thursday.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has issued a rare “high risk” warning for extreme flooding in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina over the next two days.
The rainfall from Debby may approach Georgia’s record of 27.85 inches from Tropical Storm Alberto in 1994.
In South Carolina, the rain total could topple the state’s all-time precipitation record for a tropical cyclone: 23.63 inches from Hurricane Florence in 2018.
Debby’s remnants could then move up to North Carolina and Virginia by Friday and this weekend.
(CHICAGO) — Delegates at the Democratic National Convention approved their platform Monday night and made efforts to curb gun violence a top priority.
The 92-page 2024 DNC Platform touted the work President Joe Biden and the Democratic nominee to replace him, Vice President Kamala Harris, have made on combating the scourge of gun violence in America.
A little over five pages of the platform have been dedicated to what the Democrats pledge to do about gun safety, improving policing and public safety, rehabilitating people released from prisons and protecting women against violence.
“All Americans deserve freedom from fear: to be confident that their children will come home safely from the store or the playground, and to know that their loved one will come home safely from their shift policing the streets,” the draft platform states.
The document was written before Biden left the 2024 race and was approved by the DNC’s Rules Committee in July. It was not updated significantly since Harris replaced Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket in late July.
“It makes a strong statement about the historic work that President Biden and Vice President Harris have accomplished hand-in-hand and offers a vision for a progressive agenda that we can build on as a nation and as a Party as we head into the next four years,” The DNC said in a statement released Monday.
Meanwhile, there was little acknowledgment of the nation’s gun violence scourge at the Republican National Convention last month, despite GOP presidential nominee former President Donald Trump being the victim of a would-be assassin wielding an AR-15-style rifle.
In the 2024 GOP convention platform, there was no mention of firearm violence or gun control. In 2020, however, the party’s platform contained three paragraphs supporting reciprocity legislation allowing Americans to carry firearms in all 50 states regardless of which state they received a carry permit, and opposing an assault weapons ban, “frivolous” lawsuits against gun manufacturers and “any effort to deprive individuals of their right to keep and bear arms without due process of law.”
The National Rifle Association has endorsed the Trump-Vance ticket.
“Now, more than ever, freedom and liberty need courageous and virtuous defenders,” Doug Hamlin, executive vice president and CEO of the NRA, said in a statement in July. “President Trump and Senator Vance have the guts and the grit to stand steadfast for the Second Amendment.”
Harris, who was appointed in September 2023 by Biden to oversee the first-ever White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, made it clear in her first presidential campaign rally in Milwaukee that gun control is a top priority.
“We who believe that every person should have the freedom to live safe from the terror of gun violence will finally pass red flag laws, universal background checks and an assault weapons ban,” Harris said at the Milwaukee rally.
The DNC Platform touts the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the first major gun safety law enacted in 30 years that Biden signed in June 2022, about a month after a teenage gunman killed 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. The law enhances background checks for gun buyers under 21, closes the so-called “boyfriend loophole” to prevent people convicted of domestic abuse from purchasing guns and allocates $750 million to help states implement “red flag laws” to remove firearms from people deemed to be dangerous to themselves and others.
According to the Gun Violence Archive (GVA) a website that tracks shootings across the nation, 10,759 people have died this year from wilful malicious or accidental shootings. In 2023, a total of 18,854 people were killed in malicious or accidental shootings, and 20,390 in 2022.
At least 19 people have been killed this year in 352 mass shootings — which the GVA defines as four or more people shot or killed in a single incident, not including the shooter. In 2023, 40 people were killed in 656 mass shootings, and 36 people were fatally shot in 646 mass shootings that occurred in 2022, according to the GVA.
More than 900 children 17 years old and younger, including 154 under the age of 11, have been killed in shootings this year, according to the GVA. In 2023, 1,682 children 17 years old and younger were killed in shootings, and 1,694 were fatally shot in 2022, according to the GVA.
The DNC Platform emphasizes that under Biden, the nation’s 2023 murder rate saw the sharpest decrease in history and violent crime fell to one of the lowest in 50 years.
The Major Cities Police Association’s Violent Crime Survey found double-digit declines in homicide across nearly 70 of America’s largest cities in 2023 compared to 2022. But the numbers are still not as low as they were before the pandemic, officials said.
“The gun violence epidemic is a scourge ripping apart our communities; it is the leading cause of death for children and teens,” the DNC Platform states. “Mass shootings at schools, grocery stores, houses of worship, dancehalls, and nightclubs, as well as daily gun violence at home and on streets, devastate American families.”
The DNC Platform states that the Democrats are determined to establish national universal background checks and red flag laws to keep guns out of the hands of people deemed a danger to themselves and others. According to the platform, the party also wants a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, to require safe storage of guns and end the gun industry’s immunity from liability “so gunmakers can no longer escape accountability.”
“And, because the gun violence epidemic is a public health crisis, we will fund gun violence research across the Centers for Disease Control [CDC] and National Institutes of Health [NIH] as well as community violence interventions,” the DNC platform states.