Trump attends Barron’s graduation after hush money judge allows brief pause in trial: Live updates

Let’s have a quick recap of yesterday’s events in Judge Merchan’s courtroom.

Trump’s defence attorney unleashed a furious line of questions to accuse star witness Michael Cohen of lying about his testimony that he spoke to Trump after finalising a deal to pay Stormy Daniels hush money in 2016.

Todd Blanche, after spending several hours painting the former “fixer” as a serial liar, raised his voice and screamed from inside the courtroom after grilling him about a pivotal phone call that connected the former president to a conspiracy at the centre of the case.

“That’s a lie!” he fumed.

Alex Woodward watched proceedings on Thursday.

When Justice Juan Merchan, the judge presiding over Trump’s historic hush money trial in New York, found him in contempt of court for a tenth violation of the gag order, he warned the former president that he could face jail time if he continues to offend.

The judge acknowledged the momentousness of jailing a presidential candidate in an election year but told Mr Trump: “At the end of the day I have a job to do, and part of that job is to protect the dignity of the justice system.”

Unfortunately for Judge Merchan, “dignity” has been a commodity in short supply so far.

During four weeks of testimony at Manhattan Criminal Court about a conspiracy to buy the silence of an adult film star to cover up an alleged affair, jurors have heard from a cast of decidedly colourful characters and the courtroom has been rife with speculation about flatulence and snoring erupting from the defence bench.

In addition to unexpected references to celebrities – Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tiger Woods, Hulk Hogan and Serena Williams – the trial has served up a wave of astonishingly filfthy phrases.

The terms that follow have now been entered into the court records, where they will live on forever as part of the historic first-ever criminal trial of an American president.

Graig Graziosi has this on the Republican presidential candidate’s evening engagement, a very long way away indeed in far-flung Minnesota.

Jared Kushner has been given approval to build a $500m luxury hotel on a former defence ministry site in Serbia.

The deal, announced by the Serbian government, will see the bombed-out site of the former Yugoslav Ministry of Defence in Belgrade transformed into a hotel complex.

And it might not be popular with the locals.

Here’s Dan Gooding with more.

Here’s a brief introduction to the young man whose high school leavers’ ceremony Trump was so desperate to attend today.

Sadiq Khan has labelled the Republican presidential candidate racist, sexist and homophobic – and warned that the Labour Party, widely expected to win the next UK general election, must do more to “call him out”.

With Trump challenging for the presidency once again, Labour’s shadow foreign secretary David Lammy suggested during a bridge-building trip with Republicans in Washington DC last week that their presidential candidate in the upcoming elections was “often misunderstood” on European policy.

But speaking after being re-elected for a third term as London’s mayor, Khan insisted Trump was far from misunderstood.

Andy Gregory reports on what he had to say.

The late-night host has been mocking Trump’s “army” of Republican “puppets” after they took it upon themselves to act as his mouthpiece while he’s prohibited from speaking publicly about his hush money trial because of the gag order imposed on him.

James Liddell has his one.

Here’s Ariana Baio’s report on this morning’s ceremony at Oxbridge Academy in West Palm Beach.

Here’s the youngest Trump, looking natty in his robes and mortarboard.

Well, I’ll say this for the Colorado congresswoman – this is a new one.

“I think he’s praying, but if he is sleeping, [he] certainly looks pretty as he sleeps,” Boebert said yesterday, utterly incredibly.

“His mouth is kind of tight-lipped, so maybe it’s just a sombre moment of thought.”