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This boiled bag of offal is banned in the US. In Scotland it’s a fine-dining treat | CNN

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This boiled bag of offal is banned in the US. In Scotland it’s a fine-dining treat | CNN



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Anthony Bourdain beloved haggis. However even the late, nice American chef, author and tv host acknowledged that Scotland’s nationwide dish, with its “sinister sheep elements” wrapped in a shroud of thriller and half-invented historical past, may very well be a tough promote.

“Don’t allow them to inform you in any other case, that’s actually one in all life’s nice pleasures,” Bourdain stated on one in all his gastro-curious pilgrimages to Glasgow. “There is no such thing as a extra unfairly reviled meals on Earth than the haggis.”

A mash-up of diced lung, liver and coronary heart combined with oatmeal, beef suet, onion and various spices, haggis was historically made by stuffing these uncooked elements into the abdomen of a not too long ago slain sheep and boiling the lot to a state of palatability.

Instagrammable shouldn’t be the phrase that instantly involves thoughts. In our Twenty first-century world, the place “clear” consuming and processed pap overlap, haggis can look like an “Outlander”-style outlier from one other age.

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But, by some alchemy, as soon as cooked to its required “warm-reekin’ (steaming)” state, it provides as much as far more than the sum of its modest elements. It’s offaly attraction has stored nose-to-tail consuming alive amongst a youthful technology of Scots that has largely turned its again on the tripe, liver and kidneys their predecessors loved (or endured).

Rigorously ready, haggis tastes each oaty and meaty; it’s darkish and crumbly, somewhat crispy on the edges however nonetheless moist; earthy but additionally savory and spicy; deep-tasting and profoundly warming, the proper foil for its conventional garnish of floury mashed potatoes and orange bashed turnip.

“It’s like a cuddle for the abdomen,” says Nicola Turner, a 35-year-old workplace administrator from Helensburgh, a city on western Scotland’s Firth of Clyde.

For kids of the Sixties and ’70s, like crime novelist Ian Rankin, haggis meals have been a alternative between the basic meat-and-two-veg plate and the battered and deep-fried, chip-shop iteration beloved by each his good friend Bourdain and his quintessentially Scottish detective character, Inspector John Rebus.

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Now myriad different therapies have blossomed.

“I’m fairly positive the primary time I dined with AB in Edinburgh we had haggis in filo pastry with a jam-style – perhaps blackcurrant – sauce,” Rankin recalled. “He was an enormous fan of haggis and of chip retailers. Rebus can have loved the occasional haggis supper from his native chip store. He was undoubtedly a fan, as am I.”

“It’s all in regards to the spicing and the feel,” says the Scottish meals author, novelist and cook dinner Sue Lawrence, a champion of haggis’ adaptability to be used in different dishes. “In case you didn’t know what was in it, you wouldn’t assume ‘oh that tastes of liver or no matter.’ It’s all properly chopped up and the oatmeal provides it a beautiful texture. It might simply be a pleasant, huge mince dish.”

Lawrence makes use of haggis as a substitute for beef and pork ragù in lasagna and in her pastilla, a model of the North African dish by which a hand-made haggis from the Isle of Mull substitutes for the standard poultry or seafood filling. The filo pastry savory is flavored with the spice mix ras el hanout, apricots, chile, orange zest and almonds earlier than being sprinkled with cinnamon and icing sugar.

Such cultural crossovers function a reminder that haggis might simply be a dish with nothing particularly Scottish about it in any respect. Information of comparable fast and moveable preparations of the fast-perishing innards of sheep and different animals date again to historical Rome and Greece.

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Haggis-like mixtures of offal and grains are a part of the culinary historical past of a number of nations. Spain has chireta, Romania drob and Sweden polsa, whereas chaudin, or ponce, is a rice and meat-stuffed pig abdomen that may be a staple of Cajun cooking.

Deep-fried haggis is often a staple of Scottish fish and chip shops.

In neighboring England, recipes for “hagese,” “hagws of a schepe,” “haggas” or “haggus” pop up in recipe books printed between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, in all probability previous written data north of the border.

Etymological proof factors to the time period “haggis” having its roots in Outdated Norse, suggesting an early model of an oat-and-offal sausage might need arrived in Britain and Eire on a Viking longboat.

However ever because it was first optioned by the poet Robert Burns within the late 1700s, the haggis backstory has been monopolized by Scotland and the Scots, generally mischievously.

It’s, in accordance with the form of lore that Burns engendered, the dish a doughty Highlander would carry with him as he drove cattle by means of the glens to the markets of the central belt or the proper picnic for a whisky smuggler plying his illicit commerce by moonlight.

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Imports of Scottish haggis are banned from the United States.

From such romantic notions it was a brief step to turning the haggis right into a wee wild beastie, one with longer legs on one facet that was thus condemned to run spherical and spherical whichever hill it lived on. In 2003, a ballot of American vacationers in Scotland discovered that one in three of them believed they could encounter such a confused creature on a Caledonian trip.

Bourdain, a local New Yorker, could have certified as haggis’ greatest admirer since Burns, however his compatriots on the US Division of Agriculture stay unconverted to offal-filled paunch. Haggis imports into the USA have been prohibited in 1971 as a part of a ban on the consumption of all livestock lungs. Genuine variations of old style haggis stay culinary contraband within the US, as laborious to put your fingers on as Cuban cigars.

Throughout the remainder of the world, it’s a distinct story. In accordance with main producer Simon Howie, haggis is extra broadly appreciated and consumed now than it has been since Burns improvised his “Handle to a Haggis” for the leisure of well-to-do Edinburgh acquaintances.

The haggis is toasted on Burns Night, held every year in honor of Scottish poet Robert Burns.

Firmly tongue-in-cheek, the poem lauds the “Nice chieftain o’ the pudding race,” as precisely the form of unpretentious, hearty fare required to nourish a nation of braveheart warriors.

Compared to the enfeebling international muck loved by the capital’s claret-quaffing elites of the time – the olio, fricassée or ragoût that will “sicken a sow” – Burns urges his readers to surprise on the magical affect of haggis on his fellow sons of Scotland’s soil.

Because the English translation of the unique Scots language model places it:

However mark the Rustic, haggis-fed/

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The trembling earth resounds his tread/

Clap in his ample fist a blade/

He’ll make it whistle/

And legs and arms and heads will lower/

Off just like the heads of thistles

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Anthony Bourdain and Anderson Cooper speak Scottish meals

Today artificial casings have largely changed abdomen however ovine and porcine innards stay on the core of many of the haggis produced in its homeland, stated Howie, who estimates that his firm Simon Howie Butchers, accounts for round 60% of the roughly two million haggises produced yearly.

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For Howie, versatility, worth for cash and comfort clarify why this staple of the Scottish larder is prospering. Usually haggis retails in Scotland, which accounts for half of worldwide consumption by quantity, for round £6, or $7.70 per kilogram ($3.36/pound). That’s round half the value of inexpensive cuts of beef or a 3rd of the value of Scotch lamb whereas having fun with a reasonably related dietary and calorific profile.

“You may give your children a meal that’s not stuffed with stuff you don’t need to feed them – for a number of kilos you’ll be able to feed three strapping lads,” Howie stated.

“From a kitchen perspective, it is rather easy as a result of when it leaves our manufacturing unit it’s already cooked. So if you or a restaurant proprietor will get it into the kitchen all it’s important to do is warmth it as much as be piping sizzling. It couldn’t be extra fundamental: a scholar with no cooking expertise or a Michelin-starred chef do precisely the identical factor to place it out on the plate.”

Haggis can often be found on fine dining menus.

Its texture means haggis can be usefully deployed in positive eating alongside leaner meat like venison or as a stuffing for poultry and recreation birds. Its spicy depth means additionally it is discovering makes use of in canapés and as a crouton-borne garnish for soups.

Buoyant gross sales are additionally underpinned by the rising consumption of haggis in varieties impressed by Scotland’s ethnic minorities.

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Glasgow’s Sikh group pioneered haggis pakora within the Nineties and samosas, spring rolls and quesadillas have adopted in its wake, typically utilizing a vegetarian model of the protein by which the offal is changed by a mixture of greens, pulses and mushrooms.

Such dishes are greater than culinary twists. They’re badges of belonging, and a sign that, two centuries after Burns grabbed it for the nation, haggis is as intimately entwined with Scots identification as ever.

Simply ask Ross O’Cinneide, a promising 14-year-old fly-half within the junior part of Stirling County rugby membership.

“Most of my associates and I like haggis,” he says. “Mum makes it for us generally after rugby and it’s received a really good warming feeling. And it’s good as a result of it’s purely Scottish.”

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Shocking! Lawyer rams Mercedes car into Kachori shop in Delhi, Six injured

In a shocking incident, six people were injured after a lawyer rammed his speeding Mercedes car into a Kachori shop in the national capital. The incident took place at Fateh Kachori in Civil Lines area. The police have taken the lawyer into custody and seized his car. The lawyer has been identified as Parag Maini who is a resident of Noida’s Sector 79. The police have registered a case against the lawyer under Section 279 (rash driving) and 337 (causing hurt by endangering life).

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The relentless advance of American asset managers in Europe

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The relentless advance of American asset managers in Europe

Britain’s national airline might have been expected to choose a UK-based fund manager to look after £21.5bn of pension assets. But in 2021, British Airways turned to New-York based BlackRock to run the money.

It was not the only one. BAE Systems, a defence contractor, followed suit by giving Goldman Sachs its £23bn mandate. This year, Shell asked BlackRock to manage €26bn of its pension assets.

The recent US domination of so-called outsourced chief investment officer (OCIO) services is a particularly visible sign of a much broader shift in global money management. Very large US groups are building ever larger beachheads in the UK and Europe — gathering assets, squeezing fees and shaking up the market.

The Americans are profiting as European investors shift money into low-cost tracking funds and exchange traded funds and unlisted alternatives, including private equity, private credit and infrastructure.

Buoyed by rising fee income from vibrant US securities markets, the very largest US asset managers and the asset management arms of Wall Street banks such as JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs outcompete their European and British rivals in part because they can spread technology and compliance costs across a larger asset base.

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“Competition for the largest mandates in the UK, Europe and the Middle East is increasingly between American firms,” says Fadi Abuali, co-chief executive of Goldman Sachs Asset Management International (GSAM). “We have scale, capacity to grow and we’re resilient.”

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As the world’s largest pension funds and endowments have started consolidating their business with fewer managers, the US groups’ size and diverse product offerings have given them an edge.

“Running an asset manager is becoming more and more expensive, so you need a big-scale platform that is managed very efficiently,” says Rachel Lord, head of BlackRock’s international business. “If you have a platform that can offer a lot of different things across active, index, technology and private markets, you can win.”

Over the past decade, assets under management by US groups in the UK and Europe more than doubled from $2.1tn in 2014 to $4.5tn as of the end of September, according to ISS Market Intelligence. In addition to substantially outpacing European rivals, the Americans are making further inroads in areas where they are globally dominant. These include UK tracker funds, where they now manage 59 per cent of all assets, and in the fast-growing active ETF sector where they control three-quarters of the market. 

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Many UK asset managers are also on the wrong side of long-term structural trends, says Jon Godsall, co-lead of McKinsey’s global wealth and asset management practice. Actively-managed funds investing in domestic equities — historically their bread and butter — are in decline, and mid-sized money management firms around the world are struggling.

Godsall adds that what appears to be “a reticence to adapt in the face of overwhelming evidence of the need to adapt” has been a far bigger factor in their decline than fears about the City of London’s standing in international capital markets, or the UK’s decision to leave the EU.

“When I talk to American managers, they have no problem with the City of London or Brexit — it’s going very well for them in the UK.”

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The pending return of Donald Trump to the White House, along with Republican control of Congress and a conservative-leaning Supreme Court, is propelling US momentum further.

Shares in US banks, alternative investment groups and some listed asset managers like BlackRock have soared on the prospect of deregulation, tax cuts and a boom in dealmaking. The industry harbours hopes that the Trump administration will make it easier to sell alternative investments including private equity, credit and cryptocurrencies to individual investors — all of which will increase the size, power and confidence of US asset managers.

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“I’ll whisper it because it’s embarrassing, but Trump’s return is actually really good for business,” says a top asset management executive at a US firm. “We’re energised, we’re winning business, we feel good. Clients feel that.” 

By contrast, the UK’s listed asset managers look beleaguered. Schroders and Abrdn have both appointed new bosses to try to boost flagging share prices and cut costs. In continental Europe, asset managers are increasingly trying to pull off big mergers to gain scale in the face of the Americans.

“[Clients] don’t want to talk to losers”, says the US executive “and they certainly don’t want to give their money to someone who may not be here in 10 years.”


The march of US asset managers into the UK and Europe echoes a similar phenomenon that played out decades earlier in stock trading and investment banking.

Margaret Thatcher’s “Big Bang” deregulation of the UK’s financial markets in 1986 stripped away the demarcation between banking, advising corporate clients and share trading. Over the following two decades, venerable City institutions such as Smith New Court, Barclays de Zoete Wedd and Cazenove were swallowed up by bigger US rivals and their European imitators such as Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank and UBS.

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That paved the way for the American full-service investment banking model — where everything from sales and trading to research and mergers and acquisitions advice are brought under one roof — to conquer Europe. US institutions now dominate investment banking and have been stealing market share from European rivals for over a decade.

Money management is much less concentrated than investment banking, and some mid-sized US groups are facing similar structural headwinds to their peers across the Atlantic. But the best positioned US asset managers are now powering past European rivals, fuelled by robust growth at home and a strong dollar, which has supported international expansion.

Total assets under management in North America grew 16 per cent year on year in 2023, versus 8 per cent in Europe and 2 per cent in the UK, according to consultants BCG. 

“This scale advantage allows US firms to invest more substantially in absolute terms in technology and operations, enhancing their competitiveness and allowing them to outcompete local European players,” says Dean Frankle, managing director and partner at BCG in London.

“Slower growth and market fragmentation have presented challenges for European players, who face increased pressure to consolidate and compete.”

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A signature deal of the post-Big Bang era was Schroders’ sale of its investment banking division to Citigroup for £1.35bn in 2000. One of the last great dynastic British finance houses, Schroders was also one of a few homegrown investment banks that could compete for big-ticket M&A deals. But its board opted to double down on asset management, which uses less capital and generates reliable fee income.

That decision coincided with the high-water mark of its clients’ allocations to equities. In 1999, UK pension funds invested three-quarters of their assets in equities, with around half going into UK shares and a quarter into non-UK, according to data compiled by New Financial. 

A series of changes to tax and accounting rules led pension schemes to shift assets out of equities and into government bonds. By 2021, the average UK pension fund had cut its equity allocation to 27 per cent — with just 6 per cent in UK shares, sucking capital out of the domestic markets and depriving asset managers of their core client base.

That long-term trend was followed by the UK’s departure from the EU. “Brexit made the UK asset managers not European,” says a second top US executive. “Therefore they didn’t have a backyard of significance and had no real competitive advantage against the American firms.”

These UK-specific challenges were compounded by global trends, such as the shift from active to passive investing and the associated downward pressure on fees. As the number of quoted companies steadily fell, clients wanted more access to private markets, while large institutional investors tended to want closer relationships with fewer asset managers. 

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“Most UK players were left with neither global scale, captive distribution nor fast-growing product mixes,” says Huw van Steenis, partner and vice-chair at management consultancy Oliver Wyman, adding that merging with each other is unlikely to rescue them.

The second US executive describes the independent UK asset management industry as “largely irrelevant” and “something circling the drain”.

“London will remain the asset management centre for Europe, but the winners will increasingly be global firms, mostly the Americans.” 


Ironically, the current US success was part-made in Britain. In June 2009, Barclays sold its California-based index fund business to BlackRock. The UK bank netted $13.5bn from the disposal — but BlackRock got the ETF and tracker fund platform that would power its global success.

At around the same time, Vanguard arrived in the UK and began shaking up the retail investment market with the lowest-cost tracking funds that Europe had ever seen.

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The march of US managers was also aided by regulatory changes, such as the 2013 UK ban on commissions to advisers for the sales of financial products.

“It set the stage for us to have a low-cost offer in the market,” says Jon Cleborne, Vanguard’s head of Europe, of what was termed the retail distribution review. “Advisers really transitioned from having a commission-based product model to a fee-based planning model,” benefiting low-cost providers such as Vanguard. 

The biggest US managers also benefited from simply being large. “Scale is increasingly important [for] supporting the technology spend, the brand spend, and supporting the regulatory, legal and compliance framework that you need,” says David Hunt, chief executive of New Jersey-based PGIM, which manages $1.3tn. “If you don’t have a lot of assets it gets hard to stay in the competitive war.”

“You need to be able to invest through the cycle, through periods when profits are down and markets are tough,” says Patrick Thomson, chief executive of JPMorgan Asset Management in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. “To be able to do that you need to have a very diversified business.”

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The largest players can also provide more services, from high-fee private markets products to risk management and technology services. BlackRock’s institutional money management software Aladdin, for instance, raked in just shy of $1.5bn in revenues last year.

“The things that make BlackRock and [Goldman Sachs] formidable competitors are the things they offer that are not just asset management,” says Stefan Hoops, chief executive of Germany’s DWS, referring to Aladdin and OCIO.

The big US players also have local sales forces who work with European and UK financial advisers to explain the plethora of new investment products. 

“Go back 10 or 20 years ago, the complexity of the product and the amount of choice was significantly less,” says Caroline Randall, a UK-based member of the management committee at Los Angeles-based Capital Group. “You have to deliver value beyond investment, and we can offer to help our clients with that.”

Brexit also allowed some US groups, most notably BlackRock, to steal a march because they had already started building up domestic sales forces in major continental markets as well as the UK, while their rivals relied on EU passporting rules. 


The momentum of the big US groups is one of the factors forcing European banks, insurers and independent rivals to evaluate their commitment to asset management.

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Like Schroders did in 2000, they are weighing up whether to double down, partner with others in pursuit of scale, focus on a specialism where barriers to entry are higher, or exit the sector.

“You need scale, you can’t get to $1tn [of assets under management] and feel that things are good now,” says a banker who works on deals in the sector.

“The squeeze is no longer just felt by the mid-sized European players,” says Vincent Bounie, senior managing director at Fenchurch Advisory Partners. “Firms need capital . . . to support product development, gain efficiencies and reposition strategically towards areas of growth.” 

Thomas Buberl, chief executive of French insurance group Axa, told the Financial Times after agreeing a deal to combine its asset management business with that of BNP Paribas, that “it is the only way to compete in a heavily consolidated fund management sector that is increasingly dominated by big global firms.”

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Several other insurers are in talks to combine their asset management units with those of others, though such deals are difficult to execute. The FT revealed recently that Germany’s Allianz and French asset manager Amundi had paused long-running talks over a potential transaction because of disagreements over how best to structure it.

In the UK, Legal & General’s new chief executive António Simões has combined its substantial index tracking funds business with its private markets offering to create a single asset management division with £1.2tn in assets. “The barbell is where the asset management industry has gone: passive and private markets,” says Simões, adding that he is “considering bolt-on acquisitions, particularly in private markets and the US”.

The strength of the US groups makes them players in European consolidation as well. Goldman Sachs significantly expanded its European presence with its €1.6bn purchase in 2021 of Dutch insurer NN Group’s investment management arm — and beating Germany’s DWS in the process. 

Even as the European firms bulk up, their US rivals continue to steam ahead. Seven of the 10 fastest-growing fund groups in Europe this year are American, according to Morningstar. In the third quarter alone, BlackRock recorded $221bn of global net inflows — more than the entire European investment funds industry put together.

The US executive warns that scale alone is not a panacea. “The problem with most mergers in our industry is a failure to see that the compelling rationale must be centred around the client,” he says, adding that merging on the grounds that “we need to be big and pan-European to compete with the Americans” is not enough.

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New York judge says Trump is not immune from hush money conviction

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New York judge says Trump is not immune from hush money conviction

Former U.S. President Donald Trump departs the courtroom after being found guilty on all 34 counts in his hush money trial at Manhattan Criminal Court on May 30, 2024 in New York City.

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A New York judge ruled that former President Donald Trump cannot claim presidential immunity to overturn his felony conviction.

The decision from Judge Juan Merchan marks a temporary setback for the president-elect, who is set to return to the White House in January, and has recently secured a few wins including the indefinite delay of his sentencing in the case.

A New York jury earlier this year found Trump guilty of 34 counts of falsifyi business records to conceal a $130,000 hush money payment to adult-film star Stormy Daniels, in order to influence the 2016 presidential contest.

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Merchan, who presided over the trial earlier this year, still has to decide whether the trial should be dismissed due to Trump’s upcoming inauguration, as Trump’s lawyers have requested.

A Trump spokesperson criticized Merchan’s ruling, saying it violated the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on presidential immunity.

Following his conviction in May, the Supreme Court ruled in a separate case that presidents have immunity for official acts they take in office.

“This lawless case should have never been brought, and the Constitution demands that it be immediately dismissed, as President Trump must be allowed to continue the Presidential Transition process, and execute the vital duties of the presidency, unobstructed by the remains of this, or any other, Witch Hunt,” said spokesman Steven Cheung in a statement.

Trump’s legal team had argued that various testimony in the hush-money case – such as that of former White House employees – and evidence – like statements made while Trump was president – violate the Supreme Court ruling that excludes official acts from prosecution.

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But Merchan said the criminal charges stemmed from Trump’s “private acts” prior to him becoming president. And he argued Trump’s communications about the payments while he was in the White House did not touch on any official acts.

The decision that Trump does not have immunity in this New York state case comes after the U.S. Department of Justice signaled it would take steps to wind down two federal prosecutions against Donald Trump, focused on his alleged efforts to cling to power after the 2020 election and accusations he hoarded classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort. The DOJ has a longstanding policy against prosecuting a sitting president.

Trump became the first former or sitting U.S. president to be tried on criminal charges and convicted. Trump’s legal team received several wins this summer and fall when Merchan postponed Trump’s sentencing twice — the second time purposefully until after Election Day to avoid appearing politically motivated. Trump may be the first president to enter the White House as a convicted felon should his efforts to dismiss the case fail.

But prosecutors in the case argued that since Trump’s lawyers are seeking dismissal only due to the election results, invalidating the jury’s verdict could harm public confidence in the justice system. Still, they proposed staying proceedings until after Trump finishes his presidential term.

Merchan has yet to rule on the motion to dismiss.

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Trump’s lawyers are likely to appeal Merchan’s Monday ruling, and have also sought to dismiss the case on other grounds.

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