Trump attacks judge and clerk again in ‘Happy Thanksgiving’ post: Live

In an angry Truth Social post on Wednesday night, Donald Trump hit out at the delay in the release of hostages being held captive by Hamas militants in Gaza – and unsurprisingly sought to blame President Joe Biden.

“Hostage deal substantially delayed. Too much talk, no action!!! Some hostages held by criminal syndicates of which Hamas has no control,” Mr Trump wrote.

“ZERO RESPECT FOR THE UNITED STATES, & OUR INCOMPETENT LEADERSHIP!”

On Wednesday, the Israeli government approved a truce agreement – brokered by the US, Qatar and Egypt – to secure the release of hostages kidnapped by Hamas in the 7 October attacks on Israel which left 1,400 Israelis dead.

Under the terms of the deal, 50 hostages – many of them women and children – would be freed by Hamas in exchange for a four-day pause in Israel’s air and ground campaign in Gaza. An unknown number of Palestinian women and children held in Israeli prisons will also be released as part of the agreement,The Independent learned.

The hostage release had been expected to begin on Thursday morning but is now expected to commence on Friday morning local time.

While Mr Trump seeks to blame Mr Biden for the delay, the Biden administration actually played a key role in getting the deal over the line.

The negotiations are said to have begun when the president travelled to Israel last month and met face to face with Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu.

There are a significant number of former Trump administration officials, staffers, and aides who have become vocal critics of former president Donald Trump, his 2024 campaign, and the prospect of him returning to the White House.

They are running against him (Chris Christie, Nikki Haley, Mike Pence), are testifying against him (Cassidy Hutchinson, Bill Barr), or are more than willing to eviscerate him on cable news (John Bolton, Chris Christie, Bill Bar, Cassidy Hutchinson, Olivia Troya, Stephanie Grisham, etc…).

The Washington Post asked in an article earlier this week whether their declarations that he shouldn’t be president would make a difference, and tapped former White House counsel Ty Cobb, who defended Mr Trump during the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Once a loyal soldier for the former president, he gave this withering quote in the Post article saying it was imperative that people vote against him:

“He has never cared about America, its citizens, its future or anything but himself. In fact, as history well shows from his divisive lies, as well as from his unrestrained contempt for the rule of law and his related crimes, his conduct and mere existence have hastened the demise of democracy and of the nation,” Cobb wrote in an email. “Our adversaries and our allies both recognize that even his potential reelection diminishes America on the world stage and ensures continued acceleration of the domestic decline we are currently enduring. If that reelection actually happens, the consequences will extinguish what, if anything, remains of the American Dream.”

A federal court ruling is teeing up another major Supreme Court case that could radically weaken the Voting Rights Act by blocking private citizens and civil rights groups from filing lawsuits to protect what has become America’s bedrock voting protections.

On Monday, a three-judge panel with the US Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit upheld a lower court ruling that determined that citizens and groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP cannot legally challenge discriminatory state and local election laws.

According to two of the judges on the panel, only the US Department of Justice can do so.

Death threats and antisemitic rants “inundated” Justice Arthur Engoron and his law clerk after Donald Trump attacked them on social media, according to an affidavit by a New York court security official, citing 275 transcribed pages and describing the threats as “serious and credible and not hypothetical or speculative”.

Captain Charles Hollon said: “When Mr Trump violated the gag orders, the number of threatening, harassing and disparaging messages increased.”

“Although Mr Trump did not directly threaten Ms Greenfield, the comments made in his post resulted in hundreds of threatening and harassing voicemail messages that have been transcribed into over 275 single-spaced pages.”

One threat reads: “You should be assassinated.”

The affidavit was attached to Judge Engoron’s opposition to the former president’s motion to lift the partial gag order he had imposed on him after his initial social media attacks on the court clerk.

Judge Engoron has argued the gag order is necessary for the safety of this staff.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign was dealt a blow this week when the chief executive of the super PAC supporting him resigned, The New York Times reported on Wednesday.

Chris Jankowski sent a resignation note to the board of Never Back Down, a super PAC dedicated to electing Mr DeSantis as president.

“Never Back Down’s main goal and sole focus has been to elect Gov. Ron DeSantis as president,” Mr Jankowski said in a statement.

“Given the current environment it has become untenable for me to deliver on the shared goal and that goes well beyond a difference of strategic opinion. For the future of our country I support and pray Ron DeSantis is our 47th president.

Donald Trump appears to be struggling to get into the holiday spirit and is far from feeling thankful – that’s if his latest Truth Social rants are anything to go by.

In the early hours of Thanksgiving morning, the former president took to his social media platform to launch the latest in a growing number of attacks on the judge and court clerk in his New York civil fraud trial.

Bizarrely beginning with the phrase “Happy Thanksgiving”, Mr Trump unleashed on who he described as “the Racist & Incompetent” New York Attorney General Letitia James, “the Radical Left Trump Hating Judge, a “Psycho”” Justice Arthur Engoron and “his Politically Biased & Corrupt Campaign Finance Violator” court clerk Alison Greenfield.

A flood of credible death threats and antisemitic messages have inundated the judge and court staff overseeing Donald Trump’s fraud trial in New York, according to the court’s top public safety officer.

Judge Arthur Engoron and his clerk received “hundreds of threats, disparaging and harassing comments and antisemitic messages” that followed the former president’s harassment, according to a court filing to support a gag order that blocks Mr Trump from attacking the court’s staff.

Transcriptions of threatening voicemails after Mr Trump first targeted Judge Engoron’s chief clerk fill more than 275 single-spaced pages, according to Wednesday’s filing.

The threats against them are “serious and credible and not hypothetical or speculative,” according to the filing from Charles Hollon, an officer-captain with the court’s Department of Public Safety assigned to a judicial threats unit.

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On Wednesday, Donald Trump’s legal team filed three briefs in support of the motion to dismiss the indictment against him in the federal election interference case.

The three filings argue that the charges should be dismissed with prejudice on three grounds: constitutional grounds, statutory grounds, and for vindictive/selective prosecution.

In the first filing, Mr Trump’s attorneys argue that prosecutors have failed to show that the former president deceived or tricked anyone when he claimed that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

Here’s a passage from the document: “According to the prosecution, robotically incanting the claim that President Donald J. Trump’s statements about the 2020 Presidential Election “were false” and that he “knew that they were false” is sufficient to support its charges. The prosecution is wrong. Even taking the prosecution’s preposterous allegations as true, President Trump’s statements were not capable of “tricking” or “deceiving” anyone. Just the opposite, they were pure advocacy, reflecting only one of countless millions of opinions on the integrity of that election. President’s Trump’s listeners—including the sophisticated elected officials described in the indictment—were free to agree or disagree with President Trump’s views, and the prosecution does not allege otherwise.”

A federal court ruling is teeing up another major Supreme Court case that could radically weaken the Voting Rights Act by blocking private citizens and civil rights groups from filing lawsuits to protect what has become America’s bedrock voting protections.

On Monday, a three-judge panel with the US Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit upheld a lower court ruling that determined that citizens and groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP cannot legally challenge discriminatory state and local election laws.

According to two of the judges on the panel, only the US Department of Justice can do so.