Donald Trump’s Thanksgiving message attacks fraud trial judge and clerk: Live

“You should be executed,” one message reads.

“Trust me when I say this,” reads another. “I will come for you. I don’t care. Ain’t nobody gonna stop me either.”

Those are just a few of the messages collected by a top security official with the New York court system who reviewed hundreds of threatening, antisemitic and homophobic messages targeting the judge overseeing Donald Trump’s fraud trial, as well as members of his staff.

We have the court filing that details the threats they received:

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 agreed that citizens and groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP cannot legally challenge discriminatory state and local election laws.

Voters instead would have to rely only on the Justice Department to step in.

But if a highly politicised Justice Department under a Republican president hostile to voting rights declines, they’re out of luck.

Legal analysts and voting rights advocates say the ruling is so extreme that even the conservative-dominated Supreme Court is likely to stop it.

Last week, a Colorado judge decided Trump can stay on the state’s ballots in 2024, following a lawsuit arguing that he is constitutionally barred from office because of his role in the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.

An appeal of that decision now heads to the state’s Supreme Court, but Colorado officials have urged that a final decision must be made by 5 January, 2024, when primary ballots must be finalised.

The plaintiffs, watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, argued in an appeal filing that “there would be no reason to allow presidents who lead an insurrection to serve again while preventing low-level government workers who act as foot soldiers from doing so.”

“And it would defy logic to prohibit insurrectionists from holding every federal or state office except for the highest and most powerful in the land,” the filing added.

Days after a federal appeals court panel grilled Trump’s legal team over their opposition to a gag order in his election interference case in Washington DC, his attorneys struck back in a letter to the court clerk to blast both the gag order and the case itself.

They dismissed death threats in his New York fraud case as irrelevant, while accusing special counsel Jack Smith of bringing “an inflammatory, lawless indictment” against Trump, making “false and misleading statements” about him, and leading “confidential information in order to harm” him.

“Both the indictment and the Gag Order represent an unconstitutional attempt to silence President Trump; they are clearly election interference,” they wrote.

The words echo the former president’s campaign-trail remarks and rhetoric on social media, where he posts conspiracy theories accusing prosecutors and judges of working with Democratic officials to keep him away from the White House.

The wife of a Republican politician in Iowa has been convicted of dozens of criminal charges related to a 2020 voter fraud scheme aimed at getting her husband into office.

Kim Phuong Taylor submitted absentee ballots on behalf of voters who had not given her permission to do so.

She was convicted of 52 counts in total, including 26 counts of providing false information in registering and voting, 23 counts of voter fraud, and three counts of fraudulently registering to vote. She could face up to five years in prison for each charge.

The Independent’s John Bowden has more:

A wave of death threats and antisemitic and homophobic messages were sent to the judge overseeing Donald Trump’s fraud trial, as well as his chief clerk, according to a state court filing this week.

A filing to support New York Justice Arthur Engoron’s opposition to a freeze on a gag order in the case includes a statement from the court’s top security official, who has collected “hundreds of threats, disparaging and harassing comments and antisemitic messages” that followed the former president’s harassment.

Federal prosecutors – who are seeking a separate gag order – shared those threats with the federal appeals court judges who will decide whether Mr Trump should be gagged in his election interference case.

But on Friday, the former president’s attorneys dismissed those threats as “irrelevant”.

Read more from The Independent:

Judge Arthur Engoron already found Donald Trump and his co-defendants liable for fraud outlined in New York Attorney General’s blockbuster lawsuit.

In the eighth week of a trial stemming from her bombshell complaint, attorneys for the former president have narrowed their defence: blame the accountants.

Harrison Floyd, the leader of Black Voices for Trump, has “engaged in a pattern of intimidation” against his co-defendants and witnesses since he was released on bond in the Trump election interferference case in Georgia in August, according to the Fulton County District Attorney’s office.

But following a three-hour hearing on Tuesday, Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee declined to send Mr Floyd back to jail and directed the parties to draft an order that reels in his public statements.

The hearing marked District Attorney Fani Willis’s courtroom debut in the case.

She delivered a fierce defence of her move to strip Mr Floyd’s bond.

“I’m threatened everyday anyway,” she told the judge. “I’m a public official, voters elected me, and I’ve put myself in that position. That does not give him the right to contact co-defendants or intimidate other witnesses. And quite frankly, it’s really in the defendant’s interest to shut his mouth about this case because it can and will be used against him.”

Read more in The Independent:

A federal appeals court will determine whether to keep a gag order in place in Donald Trump’s federal election interference case.

In court this week, Trump’s attorney John Sauer repeatedly argued his client’s statements are “core political speech” protected under the First Amendment.

But Circuit Judge Patricia Millett cut him off at one point to ask whether those comments are merely protected political speech or “political speech aimed at derailing or corrupting the criminal justice process.”

“You should be executed,” one message reads.

“Trust me when I say this,” reads another. “I will come for you. I don’t care. Ain’t nobody gonna stop me either.”

Those are just a few of the messages collected by a top security official with the New York court system who reviewed hundreds of threatening, antisemitic and homophobic messages targeting the judge overseeing Donald Trump’s fraud trial, as well as members of his staff.

We have the court filing detailing the threats they received: