Month: March 2024

Former president Donald Trump’s attorneys are seeking to delay his March 25 hush money trial until the Supreme Court rules on the presidential immunity claims he raised in another of his criminal cases. Trump’s lawyers filed a 26-page motion on Monday requesting that asked Manhattan Judge Juan Manuel Merchan to adjourn the New York criminal trial indefinitely until Trump’s immunity claim in his Washington, D.C., election interference case is resolved. Merchan did not immediately rule, and the Manhattan district attorney’s office declined to comment. Prosecutors are expected to respond to Trump’s delay request in court papers later this week.

Trump contends he is immune from prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office, with his attorneys arguing that some of the evidence and alleged acts in the hush-money case overlap with his time in the White House and constitute official acts. Trump first raised the immunity issue in his Washington D.C. criminal case, which involves allegations that he worked to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the run-up to the violent riot by his supporters at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments April 25, a month after the scheduled start of jury selection in Trump’s hush money case. It is the first of his four criminal cases slated to go to trial as he closes in on the Republican presidential nomination in his quest to retake the White House.

Trump pleaded not guilty last year to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records and has denied having a sexual encounter with Daniels, stating that the payments to Cohen were legitimate legal expenses and not part of any cover-up.

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On Monday, New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez and his wife, Nadine again pleaded not guilty to the latest criminal charges against them in their alleged corruption and bribery case. Sen. Menendez told the judge at his arraignment in downtown Manhattan: “Once again, not guilty, your honor,” with the Senator and his wife leaving the courthouse without speaking to reporters or answering any questions.

A copy of the superseding indictment shows that a federal grand jury in New York charged Menendez and his wife last week with two new counts of obstruction of justice, and conspiracy to obstruct justice, bringing the total amount of charges faced by New Jersey’s senior senator to 18.  The FBI alleges that the couple lied about money they received for a new Mercedes convertible and home mortgage payments, with prosecutors said that from June 2022 into 2023, Menendez and his wife Nadine wrote checks that stated they were repaying a loan to businessman Jose Uribe, when in fact no such loan existed. Those checks were presented to the United States Attorney’s Office in an attempt to obstruct justice; Uribe has pleaded guilty in the so-called gold bar corruption case, saying he paid bribes to the senator. He is now cooperating with prosecutors. The new charges allege that the couple was trying to obstruct justice in the weeks before they were charged last September with a variety of crimes.

In a statement, Menendez, 70, maintained his innocence and called last Tuesday’s superseding indictment “a flagrant abuse of power. The government has long known that I learned of and helped repay loans — not bribes — that had been provided to my wife … The government has now falsely alleged a cover-up and obstruction. The latest charge reveals far more about the government than it says about me. It says that the prosecutors are afraid of the facts, scared to subject their charges to the fair-minded scrutiny of a jury, and unconstrained by any sense of justice or fair play. It says, once and for all, that they will stop at nothing in their zeal to get me. These prosecutors are trying to get me to give in simply by making wild allegations again and again, without actually proving anything.”

After his arrest last fall, Menendez was forced to relinquish his chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee but said he would not resign from Congress. Menendez has held public office continuously since 1986, when he was elected mayor of Union City, New Jersey.  Former Gov. Jon Corzine appointed Menendez to the Senate seat he vacated in 2006 when he became governor.

The senator and his wife have pleaded not guilty to all 18 counts; a May trial has been scheduled.

Editorial credit: lev radin / Shutterstock.com

Alabama Republican Sen. Katie Britt is responding to criticism for allegedly misleading comments made during her rebuttal to President Biden’s State of the Union address last week, where Britt appeared to suggest that a horrific sex trafficking story had occurred during President Biden’s time in office. At 42-years-old, Britt is the youngest Republican woman ever elected to the Senate, and the first woman to serve in the Senate from Alabama.

In her rebuttal, Britt shared the story of a woman she spoke with at the southern border who said she was sex-trafficked by the cartels, recalling in graphic detail the story of the abuse of the then-12-year-old.  The senator said at the conclusion: “we wouldn’t be OK with this happening in a third-world country. This is the United States of America and it is past time, in my opinion, that we start acting like it. President Biden’s border policies are a disgrace.”

The criticism of Britt’s remarks began after independent journalist Jonathan M Katz reported in a viral video that the story Britt recalled of the trafficking had actually occurred in Mexico – during George W. Bush’s presidency. Britt seemingly told the story of Karla Jacinto Romero, who has testified before Congress about being the victim of sex trafficking by Mexican cartels when she was 12. Britt and two other senators participated in a roundtable discussion with Jacinto and others during a visit to the southern border last year.

Defending her remarks against the accusations on “Fox News Sunday,” Britt implied that she didn’t mean to suggest that the incident happened under the Biden administration, and said she had been clear during the remarks that the woman in her story was much younger when the incident occurred. Britt added that she was contrasting the first 100 days of her time in the Senate with Mr. Biden’s time in the White House, illustrating how she visited the border and heard victims’ stories and that the story is an example of what’s happening at an “astronomical rate” under the Biden administration.

White House spokesman Andrew Bates in a statement called Britt’s remarks “debunked lies,” saying the senator “should stop choosing human smugglers and fentanyl traffickers over our national security and the Border Patrol Union …like President Biden said in his State of the Union, ‘We have a simple choice: We can fight about fixing the border or we can fix it.”

Editorial credit: Rob Crandall / Shutterstock.com

Nine people were killed and one person was hospitalized following a collision between a passenger van and a semi-trailer truck in rural west-central Wisconsin over the weekend.

The Clark County, Wis., Sheriff’s Department said in a news release that the passenger van was traveling northbound on a county road and carrying nine people when it crossed into the intersection of Wisconsin State Hwy. 95 near Dewhurst Township and collided with the semi, which was eastbound on the state highway, shortly before 8 a.m. on Friday. Dewhurst Township is located about 150 miles southeast of Minneapolis and 200 miles northwest of Milwaukee.

Eight of the van’s passengers, including its driver, and the driver of the semi died. Clark County Coroner Clarissa Rochester pronounced the semi-truck driver and eight of the van’s nine passengers dead at the scene, while one passenger in the van was taken to St. Joseph’s Hospital in nearby Marshfield, Wis.  Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers posted on X: “Our hearts and prayers go out to the families and loved ones of all those involved as well as the first responders who worked quickly to provide support at the scene.” 

Hwy. 95 was closed most of the day and reopened after the initial investigation concluded and the van and semi were removed from the accident site.

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