Connect with us

Politics

NY v. Trump trial resumes with 'star witness' Michael Cohen expected to take the stand

Published

on

NY v. Trump trial resumes with 'star witness' Michael Cohen expected to take the stand

Former Trump attorney Michael Cohen is expected to take the stand Monday morning to testify in the criminal trial of former President Trump. 

Cohen is said to be the star witness for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and his team as they try to prove the former president falsified business records related to a $130,000 payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels.

Bragg charged Trump with 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges and maintains his innocence. 

Cohen, who once famously said he would “take a bullet” for Trump, his former longtime boss and friend, will testify against him about his role in arranging the hush money payment to Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election in an effort to keep her allegations of a sexual encounter with Trump in the early 2000s from becoming public. 

MICHAEL COHEN TO TESTIFY IN TRUMP TRIAL ON MONDAY

Advertisement

Michael Cohen has been mocking former President Trump on TikTok. (Getty Images)

Trump, for years, has denied the encounter with Daniels ever happened.

Trump later made several payments of $35,000 to Cohen, who was serving as his personal attorney at the time. The payments totaled $420,000. 

The payments from Trump to Cohen are the basis for Bragg’s indictment of Trump. Bragg is trying to prove that the payments were reimbursements to Cohen for the hush money payment to Daniels. 

But Trump defense attorneys maintain that the $35,000 payments were “not a payback,” but were, instead, legal payments. 

Advertisement

In an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital, Trump said, “If falsifying a business record is because a bookkeeper wrote down ‘legal expense’ in paying a legal fee, that’s not falsifying.

HOUSE GOP GOES AFTER ‘CONVICTED LIAR’ MICHAEL COHEN, URGES JUSTICE DEPARTMENT TO INVESTIGATE RECENT LIES

“They call it a legal expense, and that’s what it was,” Trump told Fox News Digital. “It was a legal expense. It was legal fees paid to a lawyer. That’s called a legal expense.” 

Judge Juan Merchan imposed a gag order on the former president, preventing him from speaking about any witnesses. Trump’s legal team has argued that is a violation of his First Amendment rights and filed an appeal. 

Trump has already been fined $10,000 for violating the gag order — $1,000 per violation — and has been threatened with jail time should he violate the order again. 

Advertisement

While Cohen is not under any gag order, Merchan on Friday directed prosecutors to tell Cohen not to make statements about Trump or the case. 

In this courtroom sketch from Manhattan state court in New York City May 9, 2024, Stormy Daniels testifies during former President Trump’s criminal trial on charges he falsified business records to conceal money paid to silence Daniels in 2016. (REUTERS/Jane Rosenberg)

Merchan said he would “direct the people to communicate to Mr. Cohen that the judge is asking him to refrain from making any more statements” about the case or Trump.

Merchan told prosecutors to inform Cohen the direction was coming from the bench.

TOP REPUBLICANS DOUBLE DOWN ON CALL FOR DOJ PROBE INTO BRAGG’S ‘STAR WITNESS’ MICHAEL COHEN

Advertisement

Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to campaign finance violations, making false statements to Congress and tax evasion. He was sentenced to three years in prison. 

House Republicans, including House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner and House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, have referred Cohen to the Justice Department for investigation, saying he should be subject to further prosecution for lying to Congress. 

President Trump boards Air Force One before departing Harlingen, Texas, Jan. 12, 2021.  (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

Republicans say that, most recently, Cohen “admitted to lying to Congress” during his testimony in the Letitia James case against Trump. 

CLICK TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Advertisement

When asked if he was being “honest” in front of the House Intelligence Committee in February 2019, Cohen testified, “No.”

“So, you lied under oath in February of 2019? Is that your testimony?” Trump attorney Alina Habba asked him.

“Yes,” Cohen replied.

Politics

Mamdani ripped for claiming victory over capitalism after NYC’s multi-billion dollar taxpayer funded bailout

Published

on

Mamdani ripped for claiming victory over capitalism after NYC’s multi-billion dollar taxpayer funded bailout

NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

New York City’s mayor is again under fire after spewing outlandish claims that his socialist policies are to credit for a balanced budget in the Big Apple, just after the city received a multi-billion dollar bailout from the state.

“In January, our administration inherited a $12 billion budget deficit — a fiscal crisis greater than the Great Recession,” Mayor Zohran Mamdani said in a Tuesday post on X announcing that the debt had been cleared.

“We balanced the budget by taxing the rich and making government more efficient,” Mamdani continued. “We did not balance this budget on the backs of working people, and we never will.”

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks during a primary-night watch party for NYC Congressional candidate Claire Valdez at 99 Scott Studio on June 23, 2026 in the East Williamsburg neighborhood of the Brooklyn borough in New York City. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

Advertisement

MAMDANI ALLOCATES $500K FOR REPARATIONS TALKS AS NYC FACES $5.4B DEFICIT

But the real reason the budget it balanced is because the city was handed $1.5 billion by the state of New York in January — funded by working class taxpayers across the state — as part of a multi-year plan to bail out the fiscally-challenged city. In late May, the city received another $4 billion.

Of the combined $8 billion provided to the city’s bailout fund under former Mayor Eric Adams’ tenure and now Mamdani’s mayorship, $5 billion was directly earmarked for the city to address fiscal measures. This includes allowing city government to defer pension contributions to close the budgetary gap.

Mamdani’s claims about socialist policies producing results — and his failure to mention the massive bailouts provided by taxpayer dollars — did not fly on social media.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul holds media availability press conference and makes an announcement on abortion rights at the office on 633 3rd Avenue. (Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Advertisement

MAMDANI ALLOCATES $500K FOR REPARATIONS TALKS AS NYC FACES $5.4B DEFICIT

“This is a lie,” independent journalist Nick Shirley said in a reply to the mayor.

“You balanced the budget by borrowing billions from the NY state government which pushed back pension payments, so you literally took money from ‘the backs of hardworking people.’ Don’t get it twisted,” he added.

Commentator and journalist Nick Sortor also flamed the mayor over the loan and his classification of the bailout.

“Are you saying New Yorkers can ‘balance their budgets’ by taking out massive credit card loans?” he asked sarcastically.

Advertisement

Independent journalist Nick Shirley sat down for an interview with Riley Gaines as part of the launch of Outkick’s “The Riley Gaines Show.” (OutKick)

BROADCAST NETWORKS TOUT MAMDANI’S VICTORIES, PROCLAIM SOCIALISM IS ‘RESONATING’

“Mamdani balanced the budget by taking money from Albany, who in turn taxed Rochester and Buffalo” another social media user said. “That’s who is paying for all of Mamdani’s free crap.”

In a press conference earlier in the day, Mamdani claimed victory over capitalism.

“Throughout this process I have been reminded of the words of the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek: ‘if socialists understood economics, they wouldn’t be socialists.’”

Advertisement

A man sleeps on the E train, one of the subway lines most utilized by homeless New Yorkers for shelter, in Queens, New York, on Monday, April 7, 2025. (Victor J. Blue for The Washington Post/Getty Images)

After the Republican National Convention (RNC) posted that clip, Mamdani also faced ridicule for that.

“It always looks good at first until the chickens come home to roost,” one person replied.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

“He’ll soon ‘deliver’ bread lines instead,” said another.

Advertisement

Mamdani’s office did not return Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

Continue Reading

Politics

Commentary: The sad inevitability of Justice Alito’s birthright citizenship dissent

Published

on

Commentary: The sad inevitability of Justice Alito’s birthright citizenship dissent

In 1913, Antonino Alati left southern Italy to find a better life in a land where many people regarded him as little better than scum.

He joined millions of his fellow countrymen in the United States, where the press vilified Italians as poor, swarthy, violent Catholics who had too many babies, refused to assimilate and could never possibly be considered “white.”

Politicians were already working to shut the door on them. A congressional report released two years before Alati’s arrival cited southern Italians as evidence that “the new immigration as a class is far less intelligent than the old.” They came to the U.S., the report asserted, “with the intention of profiting, in a pecuniary way, by the superior advantages of the new world and then returning to the old country.”

Alati wouldn’t let bigotry win. He soon sent for his wife and children, including his infant son Salvatore. Alati turned to Alito, Salvatore became Samuel. A generation later, the family had a Supreme Court justice in Samuel A. Alito Jr. — the second Italian American, after Antonin Scalia, to sit on the highest court in the land.

During his 2005 confirmation hearings, Alito praised his father as an “extraordinary man who came to the United States as a young child and overcame many difficulties” to ensure a better life for him and his sister. By then, Italian Americans were established as an essential part of this country’s fabric, from music to politics to food.

Advertisement

It’s the most American of tales — which is why it’s so surprising, yet not, to read Alito’s blistering dissent in the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision rejecting President Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship.

If there’s one constant in this country besides death and taxes, it’s how quickly descendants of immigrants, and sometimes immigrants themselves, forget how loathed their ethnic group was and how they proved the haters wrong. Too many become uncharitable to the policies that helped them and the immigrants who followed.

But Alito’s stance against birthright citizenship goes beyond just forgetting his roots. His 39-page opinion describes the supposed impact of undocumented migrants on the U.S., using words — “overran,” “soared,” “exploded,” “massive,” “a stream,” “huge” — that read like the same invective used against Italians in his grandfather and father’s time.

The justice channels anti-Italian conspiracies of the past by casting doubt on the national allegiances of the U.S.-born children of Mexican, Guatemalan and Salvadoran immigrants — the same patriotism test that Italian Americans faced generations ago when xenophobes questioned their Catholicism. Alito claims without evidence that millions of agricultural workers were able to apply for American citizenship after President Reagan’s 1986 amnesty “at least in part because of fraud” — a charge also leveled against Italians who sought to naturalize back in the day.

And so it goes, each passage a jumbled argument dressed up in judicial interpretations largely rejected by his fellow Catholic Supreme Court justices John Roberts, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh. Coney Barrett signed on to the majority opinion that Roberts wrote, and Kavanaugh concurred.

Advertisement

Rev. William Barber II speaks during a rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court on April 1 while justices heard oral arguments on birthright citizenship.

(Al Drago / Getty Images)

I know how quickly families forget their own immigrant histories. Yet I look at people like Alito and wonder how they ended up thinking the way they do, because I could never imagine doing the same.

My maternal grandmother was born in Arizona to parents who fled their home country during the Mexican Revolution, becoming an American citizen by birthright. My father, who crossed the border in the trunk of a Chevy, legalized his status in an era when it was far easier to do so.

Advertisement

Like Alito’s paisanes, my Mexican family was also demonized for supposedly being insufficiently American and posing a threat to national unity. They also sacrificed their own dreams so their children and grandchildren could achieve theirs.

And just like Alito, some members of my family have forgotten our history and support Trump or favor some of his immigration policies, dismissing new arrivals as criminals or lazy. That’s why I will always side with undocumented people and welcome anyone who gives birth in this country with the hope that their newborn finds a better life.

It seems from his dissent that Alito somewhat agrees with me. He posits that millions of Americans who were born in this country to parents without papers “have a strong moral claim to be able to remain in the land where they grew up.” Congress “can and should address their situation,” he writes.

The justice blasts birth tourism, where women from China and other countries travel to the U.S. to have a baby, then return home, benefiting from our generosity and offering nothing in return.

I agree that’s a mockery of what being an American should be and ruins it for people who want to contribute to building a better nation. But Alito throws out the baby with the bathwater by failing to recognize that Trump’s attempt to erase birthright citizenship via executive order is presidential overreach based on bigotry, not rule of law. He’d rather cut up the Constitution to spite something he doesn’t like. Thank God his side lost, yet it’s sad that Trump’s pathetic attempt to define who can be an American went as far as it did.

Advertisement

Alito concludes by stating that the court’s decision to uphold the 14th Amendment is “a mistake that will seriously affect the country’s future.”

What new immigrants might inflict on this country is the perpetual worry of immigration restrictionists — and yet history keeps proving them wrong. Alito’s family did; so did mine. Only in these United States can the progeny of people once portrayed as parasites and invaders side with those making the same argument about the latest batch of newcomers.

History will see Alito’s vote for what it is: a forsaking of the promise his family once fulfilled, to support the people who never wanted them here in the first place.

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Politics

Socialism goes west as DSA-backed challenger ousts longtime Democrat

Published

on

Socialism goes west as DSA-backed challenger ousts longtime Democrat

NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., a 30-year incumbent, lost to a Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)-backed challenger in a high-profile primary on Tuesday evening.

Melat Kiros, a 29-year-old socialist, defeated DeGette in a Democratic primary for a deep-blue House seat anchored in Denver, according to The Associated Press, scoring a major victory for the socialist left on Tuesday evening.

The DSA had been aiming to cast DeGette’s loss as evidence of its growing momentum after a slate of socialist candidates won Democratic primaries in New York City last week.

“Today, the East Coast, next week the Mountain West,” the DSA wrote in a social media post last week.

Advertisement

Rep. Diana DeGette speaks during a press conference outside the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 10, 2024. (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

SOCIALISTS CHEER ‘SHOCKWAVE’ PRIMARY NIGHT AS DSA-BACKED CANDIDATES WIN, ADVANCE ACROSS THE MAP

If elected in November, Kiros, who was born in Ethiopia, will likely join the ranks of the far-left group known as the Squad and become one of a handful of the House chamber’s outspoken socialists. 

The millennial challenger was endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and the anti-incumbent leftist organization Justice Democrats. Controversial socialist streamer Hasan Piker, who has said Hamas is “a thousand times better” than Israel and praised the Chinese Communist Party, also backed Kiros’ insurgent primary run.

DeGette, a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus who supports abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), sought to win a 16th House term by flexing her leftist bona fides. She argued her seniority on an influential House committee would allow her to push for Medicare-for-All legislation — a longtime priority of the party’s far-left flank.

Advertisement

DeGette, who was endorsed by former CPC Chairwoman Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., also spotlighted her experience as an impeachment manager during Trump’s second impeachment trial in 2021.

Though DeGette and Kiros shared few policy disagreements, they diverged sharply over Israel and antisemitism. Kiros also sharply criticized DeGette for accepting corporate PAC contributions.

Kiros, a PhD student and lawyer, was fired from a New York firm in 2023 after publishing an open letter, arguing that pro-Palestinian student protesters calling for the elimination of Israel were not antisemitic and appearing to defend Hamas.

Melat Kiros participated in a League of Women Voters Congressional District 1 candidate forum at Montview Presbyterian Church in Denver on May 28, 2026. (RJ Sangosti/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post)

WATCH: HOUSE DEMS UNLOAD ON TEXAS DEMOCRAT OVER ‘DEMENTED’ ANTISEMITIC COMMENTS

Advertisement

She has also described the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks against the Jewish state as the “inevitable consequence of apartheid” and declined to characterize the deadly firebombing of protesters in Boulder last year who were urging the release of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza as antisemitic. 

“I don’t know what was in the heart of the perpetrator,” Kiros told Colorado’s 9News in a recent television interview. “All I know is that he went and attacked innocent people because of what they might have believed.”

A June 2025 bipartisan resolution condemning the attack as part of a “rise in ideologically motivated attacks on Jewish individuals” won every present lawmaker’s support, except for Reps. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and Thomas Massie, R-Ky., who voted present.

Kiros has also suggested the United States deserved 9/11.

“Inevitable in the sense that we destabilized a lot of the Middle East that forced people to believe that another act of violence was the only response,” Kiros told 9News when asked if she thought the terror attack was “the inevitable consequence of American foreign policy.”

Advertisement

“And again, just like I said before, our responsibility is to get rid of those conditions that lead to violence in the first place,” Kiros continued.

DeGette argued that Kiros’ embrace of Piker and her comments about antisemitism and 9/11 were disqualifying. 

“I’m shocked and disgusted that Kiros is doubling down on excusing terrorism and the murder of innocent people,” the 30-year incumbent wrote on Facebook earlier this month.

Streamer and creator Hasan Piker speaks at a press conference during day two of Web Summit Vancouver at the Vancouver Convention Centre in Vancouver, Canada, on May 13, 2026. (Sam Barnes/Web Summit via Sportsfile via Getty Images)

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

Advertisement

Colorado’s 1st Congressional District is the most liberal seat in the state and voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris by 56 points in 2024.

The primary fight was further scrambled by University of Colorado Regent Wanda James, also running for DeGette’s seat. Though James did not pose the same threat as Kiros, her vote share could ultimately have swayed the contest. 

Continue Reading
Advertisement

Trending