Donald Trump trial latest: Trump wants judge criminally charged at New York fraud trial

Reporting for The Independent from New York’s Supreme Court in Lower Manhattan, Alex Woodward filed this report on today’s events:

Former president Donald Trump leaned forward in his chair while staring at the front of a courtroom in downtown Manhattan as a judge slowly and deliberately outlined the stakes of a trial stemming from a multi-million dollar lawsuit against him.

The former president – wearing a dark blue suit and light blue tie – slowly walked towards the defence table when he entered yet another New York courtroom on 2 October.

He sat beside his attorneys to begin the first day of a trial expected to stretch until three days before Christmas, as a team with the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James argued that the former president, his adult sons and chief associates defrauded banks and insurers by overvaluing properties by billions dollars to fraudulently obtain benefits based on his grossly exaggerated net worth and assets.

Last week, New York Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron determined that no trial was necessary to determine that Mr Trump’s financial statements were fraudulent, allowing a bench trial to move forward that will address six other claims in Ms James’s blockbuster lawsuit. None of the parties asked for a jury trial, according to the judge.

Mr Trump has spent decades navigating legal threats that would reveal his alleged reputation as a fraud, but a brutal 35-page decision from Judge Engoron – if allowed to stand – could threaten to dismantle his business interests in the state.

South Carolina Sen Lindsey Graham cautioned that if former President Donald Trump were to stop sending aid to the embattled country of Ukraine if elected president, the end result would be “10 times worse than Afghanistan.”

When asked about how he would advise Mr Trump and other Republicans in Congress who have threatened to stop sending aid to the country, Mr Graham said on Face the Nation on Sunday: “To President Trump and anybody else: if we pull the plug on Ukraine, that’s 10 times worse than Afghanistan.”

“To stop funding Ukraine is a death sentence for Taiwan,” the South Carolina Republican predicted. “Putin will keep going. You missed all of World War II if you missed how this movie ends.”

This time, the trial is set in New York City civil court where Justice Engoron is presiding over the fraud case against Mr Trump, his adult sons and several Trump Organization executives in a lawsuit brought forth by New York attorney general Letitia James.

Already, Justice Engoron has shown to be a no-nonsense judge, having found Mr Trump liable for committing business fraud and stripped away the former president’s control over some of his notable properties.

In a trial that is expected to last three months, Justice Engoron will determine the fate of Mr Trump’s business dealings in the state as the trial to resolve claims in Ms James’ lawsuit and decide damages begins.

So who is the 74-year-old Justice (and former cab driver) presiding over the case?

Donald Trump appeared at a New York City courthouse in downtown Manhattan on 2 October for the first day of a trial stemming from a $250m civil fraud lawsuit brought by the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Just after 9.30am ET, the former president – donning a dark blue suit and blue tie – made his way from his residence at Trump Tower to the state Supreme Court building at 60 Centre Street

Upon arrival, Mr Trump gave a brief statement to new organisations in the narrow hallway outside of the courtroom on the third floor of the building.

He called the trial “a continuation of the single greatest witch hunt of all time” and maintained his innocence in the case.

Joseph Roberts, 42, has been accused of killing his girlfriend Rachel Elizabeth Imani Buckner.

A potentially devastating ruling against Donald Trump has pierced the heart of a decades-old narrative he used to boost his national profile and seduce millions of voters to support his campaigns for the presidency.

That persona was built on a “fantasy” made up of cheating, lying and outright fraud, according to a New York judge presiding over a blockbuster lawsuit from the state’s attorney general, whose investigation revealed the former president, his adult sons, businesses and chief executives “grossly and materially inflated” assets over a decade.

They defrauded banks and insurers by overvaluing properties by billions of dollars, exaggerating the state of his wealth to fraudulently obtain favourable insurance deals, financing and other transactions, according to the lawsuit.

Mr Trump spent those decades navigating threats that would reveal his reputation as a fraud, but a brutal 35-page decision from Judge Arthur F Engoron – if allowed to stand – not only could expose the former president’s alleged history of corruption, it might also take his business empire down with him. Mr Trump himself condemned the decision as a plan to “KILL TRUMP”.

General John Kelly confirmed details of a 2020 article about the former president’s behaviour in an on-the-record statement to CNN.

FTX founder and suspected fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried considered the possibility of paying Donald Trump up to $5bn to stay out of the 2024 presidential race, a new book claims.

In an essay published in the Washington Post — developed from Michael Lewis’ new book Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon — Mr Lewis wrote that Mr Bankman-Fried “was exploring the legality of paying Donald Trump himself not to run for president”.

“His team had somehow created a back channel into the Trump operation and returned with the not terribly Earth-shattering news that Donald Trump might indeed have his price: $5 billion. Or so Sam was told by his team,” he wrote.

Mr Lewis expanded on this claim in an interview on 60 Minutes, saying Mr Bankman-Fried wondered “how much would it take” for the former president to seek re-election in 2024. “There was a number that was kicking around” at the time that Mr Lewis was talking to the FTX founder, he said – $5bn.

“Sam was not sure that number came directly from Trump,” Mr Lewis clarified. “The question Sam had was — not just ‘is $5bn enough to pay Trump not to run’ — but was it legal?”

Read more from Kelly Rissman:

Attorney General Merrick Garland said in an interview that aired Sunday that he would resign if asked by President Joe Biden to take action against Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump. But he doesn’t think he’ll be put in that position.

“I am sure that that will not happen, but I would not do anything in that regard,” he said in an interview on CBS 60 Minutes. “And if necessary, I would resign. But there is no sense that anything like that will happen.”

The Justice Department is at the centre of not only indictments against Trump that include an effort to overturn the 2020 election and wrongly keeping classified documents, but also cases against Biden’s son Hunter, the aftermath of the riot at the U.S. Capitol and investigations into classified documents found in the president’s home and office. Garland has appointed three separate special counsels.

Garland has spoken only sparingly about the cases and reiterated Sunday he would not get into specifics, but dismissed claims by Trump and his supporters that the cases were timed to ruin his chances to be president in 2024.

“Well, that’s absolutely not true. Justice Department prosecutors are nonpartisan. They don’t allow partisan considerations to play any role in their determinations,” Garland said.