Trump DA seeks gag order in hush money case as ex-president appeals $454m fraud trial verdict: Live

After midterm election failures, a cash crunch likely to be squeezed by Trump to pay off his legal bills, and a voter base that is fully backing the former president, the Republican National Committee is poised for new leadership with the departure of Ronna McDaniel.

She will step down after Super Tuesday.

The former president has already endorsed a slate of new leadership for the party’s chief organ, with North Carolina Republican Party chair and election denier Michael Whatley as chair, and his daughter-in-law Lara Trump as a co-chair – solidifying the GOP’s MAGA takeover.

Over the course of Donald Trump’s hush money case, there have been “credible threats of violence, harassment, and intimidation directed at the District Attorney, his staff, and the District Attorney’s Office,” with “hundreds of threats in the wake of, and connected to, [Mr Trump’s] public attacks,” according to prosecutors.

But the agency’s threat assessment unit logged “an extraordinary surge in threat activity that began on the very day [Trump] began targeting the District Attorney, members of the District Attorney’s staff, and this Office with his violent rhetoric and public attacks,” according to prosecutors.

The unit logged 89 threats against the district attorney, his family or employees of his office in 2023, the first of which occurred the same day that the former president called on his supporters to “protest” and “take our nation back,” the filing states.

Police reviewed 600 threatening phone calls and emails in March of last year alone, as the office prepared to indict the former president.

When the final judgment in the sprawling fraud trial against Trump, his adult sons and former Trump Organization employees was approved on Friday, the state attorney general’s X account posted the exact figure down to the last cent.

Twenty four hours later, her account wrote: “+$114,553.04”.

The total owed back to the state among all the defendants – money that is effectively forfeited as “ill-gotten gains” – amounts to roughly $364m, plus at least $100m in interest.

The interest on Trump’s portion of a final judgment comes to more than $112,000 each day.

His attorneys are appealing.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office is asking a criminal court judge to impose a limited gag order against Donald Trump, citing his “long history” of “inflammatory” remarks aimed at the parties involved in his mountain of litigation.

A 30-page filing on Monday cites his threatening social media posts – including a photo he posted that depicts him wielding a baseball bat at the back of District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s head.

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have repeatedly pointed to Donald Trump’s appointment of anti-abortion justices to the Supreme Court when discussing GOP-led threats to reproductive healthcare.

The court’s 2022 reversal of abortion rights protections in a decision to overturn Roe v Wade gave states wide latitude to enact restrictive abortion laws, and define life as beginning at conception – opening the door for severe penalties and threats to reproductive care like IVF.

That 2022 decision has upended care for millions of Americans, with a widely derided ruling from Alabama’s highest court presenting the latest threat.

In her official vice presidential account on X, Ms Harris said the former president is “the architect of this health care crisis” – teeing up a White House message that will likely dominate 2024 campaigns.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office is asking a criminal court judge to impose a limited gag order against Donald Trump, citing his “long history” of “inflammatory” remarks aimed at the parties involved in his mountain of litigation.

A 331-page filing on Monday cites Trump’s threatening social media posts, including a photo he posted that depicts him wielding a baseball bat at the back of District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s head.

Attorneys for Donald Trump and his co-defendants filed paperwork with a New York appellate court on Monday, arguing that the judge overseeing his fraud trial “committed errors” of law or facts, “abused its discretion” and “acted in excess of its jurisdiction”.

But the $455m ruling against him won’t be paused until the former president and his co-defendants post a bond equal to the massive judgment against them.

If a bond is not posted within a 30-day period from the judgment, New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office can begin seizing his assets. Monday’s ruling did not mention the bond.

The former RNC chairman is on good form here tearing into the conservative cable news channel over racist assumptions about Trump’s money-spinning gold high-tops.

The right-wing attorney is accused of concealing a social media account he denied he had from Michigan prosecutors because it carried “dozens of damning posts that undercut his statements about his role in the election subversion scheme”, according to CNN.

The network reports that it has traced Chesebro to an account called BadgerPundit, whose posts “reveal that even before the 2020 election, and then just two days after polls closed, Chesebro promoted a far more aggressive election subversion strategy than he later let on in his Michigan interview”.

Chesebro’s lawyers told CNN the account was his but that he had only used it for “spitballing” theories regarding the election.

Their client was interviewed by investigators from the state’s attorney general’s office in December about the fake electors plot but was not charged with a crime.

He reportedly told his inquisitors that the alternate slates of Republican electors proposed were only ever a contingency plan to have ready in case the Trump campaign won any of its more than 60 lawsuits challenging the election results – which it didn’t.

A spokesman for Michigan attorney general Dana Nessel has since said in a statement: “Our team is interested in the material and will be looking into this matter.”

House Republicans increasingly believe there is little chance of any impeachment vote resulting from the investigations into Joe Biden, according to reporting by Axios.

After a year of looking into the Biden family, little has been revealed regarding the alleged bribery and corruption of which the president, his son Hunter Biden and his brother Jim Biden have been accused.

“I don’t see it going anywhere substantive,” said one House Republican, adding that there “aren’t close to enough” GOP votes to impeach the president.

The lawmaker said there were “easily 40-50” Republicans who would likely vote against an impeachment of President Biden.

Here’s Oliver O’Connell’s report.