Politics
Opinion: That scowl. The gag order. Frightened jurors. Who's on trial, a former president or a mob boss?
Donald Trump has fussed about many things during his criminal trial in Manhattan: the judge, prosecutors, their relatives, witnesses, jurors and of course the media, for reporting on the sparse crowds outside.
Yet Trump of all people knows that his fellow New Yorkers are proudly blasé about celebrity goings-on. It shouldn’t be surprising that not much of a crowd forms at the courthouse where the Don has been in the dock. After all, if you’ve seen one trial of a mob boss in Gotham, you’ve seen ‘em all.
Opinion Columnist
Jackie Calmes
Jackie Calmes brings a critical eye to the national political scene. She has decades of experience covering the White House and Congress.
And Trump’s trial — where he’s charged with fraudulently covering up pre-election hush money payments to Stormy Daniels in 2016, to keep voters in the dark about their alleged tryst — resembles nothing so much as a prosecution of yet another organized crime figure, even if it is, in fact, unprecedented: The first criminal case against a former U.S. president in history.
Lest anyone think the quick-to-complain Trump might grouse about being likened to gangsters, he draws the parallel himself, repeatedly.
“I’ve been indicted more than Alphonse Capone,” Trump boasted at a conservative conference in February. (Fact check: False, but he’s close.) He regularly, and admiringly, compares himself to ol’ “Scarface” at MAGA rallies. “He was seriously tough, right?” tough-guy Trump said to Iowa rally-goers in October. Last year on social media, he called Capone “the late great gangster.” Great?
The shtick might be funny if what underlies it weren’t so serious. As we head into the third week of the People of New York State vs. Donald J. Trump in that dingy courthouse so far removed from the Don’s usual gilt opulence, it’s downright disturbing to contemplate the similarities between his trial and that of a mob boss.
How can it be that this man is tied or ahead of President Biden in the polls? I remain confident Trump will pay a political price in time, as the sordidness of all this sinks in.
Perhaps the most distressing of the mob comparisons is this: The safety of jurors is a real concern. Their identities are secret to protect against intimidation or harm, and one juror was dismissed after confessing her fear. Former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance posted on X that she’s seen such trepidation for jurors only “in a case involving violent organized crime.”
And it’s not the first time for Trump. The jurors who in January found that he defamed writer E. Jean Carroll after she successfully sued him for sexual assault, also had their identities withheld. After that civil trial, federal Judge Lewis A. Kaplan warned them, “My advice to you is that you never disclose that you were on this jury.” Chilling.
Former prosecutor and FBI general counsel Andrew Weissmann noted on MSNBC that he’d last heard a judge similarly caution some jurors decades ago, after they convicted Genovese crime family boss Vincent Gigante. “It is remarkable,” he added, “ that that same admonition was said with respect to somebody who was the president of the United States.”
It’s tragic, actually. Trump once swore to uphold the rule of law; now he’s making a mockery of it and putting innocents and civil servants at risk.
There’s also worry for witnesses. Prosecutors won’t share their witness list with Trump’s defense team, an act that’s typically routine.
“Mr. Trump has been tweeting about the witnesses. We’re not telling them who the witnesses are,” prosecutor Joshua Steinglass said. “I can’t fault them for that,” Judge Juan M. Merchan said, dismissing the appeals of Trump lawyer Todd Blanche.
Trump’s tweets earned him a gag order from Merchan against attacking witnesses as well as prosecutors, court staff and the judge’s and Dist. Atty. Alvin Bragg’s families. Such gags are rare, except of course in trials of boorish mobsters.
The judge and prosecutors fear Trump will intimidate those he’s targeted, and perhaps spur some unhinged supporter to violence. (It’s not as if there is no precedent for that!) The threats Trump stokes also explain much of the heavy security around the courthouse.
A final mob connection: Trump’s demeanor in court — the practiced scowls captured in photos and courtroom sketches, and his wise-guy mutterings reported by journalists in the room. His model, Trump told biographer-turned-critic Tim O’Brien, is none other than the murderous mafioso John Gotti. “The thing he respected about Gotti,” O’Brien told MSNBC, “was that he … sat there in court and he looked at the jurors and he looked at the judge with a big F-U on his face.”
Trump’s mob modeling goes way back. His former lawyer Michael Cohen, a key witness against him, said Trump for decades ran his family company “much like a mobster would do.” Cohen, a self-described consigliere, admits to intimidating people and lying on Trump’s behalf. “He doesn’t give you orders,” Cohen told Congress in 2019. “He speaks in a code, and I understand the code.” Trump responded to Cohen’s testimony in mob-speak, natch, tweeting that his former lawyer was “a rat.”
The trial’s first witness, former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker, testified last week about his cooperation with Trump in 2016 to “catch and kill” prurient Trump stories before that year’s election. He repeatedly described Cohen warning him that “the boss” would be angry if Pecker didn’t hold up his end of the bargain.
The mob mentality gives a particularly clear perspective on Trump’s claim earlier in 2016: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters.” Eight years later, he’s on trial for something less than murder, yet the upshot is the same: He’s banking that his voters don’t care.
He’s almost certainly right about most if not all of them. But Trump needs more than just his MAGA loyalists to win. Let’s hope this trial, whatever the outcome, leaves everyone else determined not to see a godfather in the White House again.
The military judge in the U.S.S. Cole bombing case on Monday reset the start of jury selection to Oct. 19, more than 26 years after the suicide bombing in a port in the Middle East killed 17 U.S. sailors and wounded dozens of others.
Col. Matthew Fitzgerald, an Army judge, said that government agencies were unlikely to process classified evidence in time for what was to be a June 1 start date for the national security trial at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
A Saudi citizen, Abd-al Rahim al-Nashiri is accused of orchestrating the attack on the U.S. Navy destroyer off Aden, Yemen, on Oct. 12, 2000 as an acolyte of Osama bin Laden. The death penalty case has been shadowed by the Central Intelligence Agency’s use of torture on the defendant.
Judges at the U.S. naval station in Cuba have set and then abandoned about 10 earlier trial start dates. Pretrial litigation has gone on so long, since Mr. Nashiri was charged in 2011, that three previous judges and all of the initial defense and prosecution lawyers retired from the case or left it for personal or professional reasons.
Mr. Nashiri was captured in Dubai in October 2002. First, he spent about 1,390 days in the custody of the C.I.A., which subjected him to waterboarding, forced nudity, extreme isolation, rectal and other forms of abuse, primarily in secret prisons in Afghanistan and Thailand, according to agency and Senate reports.
The Secretive World of Guantánamo Bay
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U.S.S. Cole: The Army judge in the bombing case ordered the prosecution to do its “due diligence” in providing defense lawyers with any evidence the U.S. government might have “regarding Iran’s role” in the attack off Yemen 25 years ago. President Trump has said Iran was “probably involved.”
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Torture Ruling: A government lawyer appealed to a Pentagon review court to overturn a torture ruling in the Sept. 11 case that disqualified the use of the confessions of a man accused of conspiring in the hijacking plot that killed nearly 3,000 people.
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Cuban Deportees: The long, circuitous journey of dozens of Cuban men who were designated for deportation from the United States last year but instead taken to a prison at the U.S. base at Guantánamo Bay ended when they were repatriated to Cuba.
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Guantánamo Prison Enters 25th Year: The prison has outlasted the war in Afghanistan, has employed tens of thousands of temporary troops and holds six men charged but not yet tried in death penalty cases.
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A Curious Collaboration: An unlikely collection of portraits has given the public its only glimpse inside the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay.
The Cole bombing, by two Al Qaeda recruits who blew themselves up on a small, explosives- laden skiff, was a precursor of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and Mr. Nashiri’s case is on track to become the first capital trial at Guantánamo Bay.
A judge in each case has ruled against the use of a defendant’s confessions because they were contaminated by their years in the C.I.A.’s brutal detention and interrogation program — out of reach of the courts, defense lawyers and International Red Cross.
The defendants were moved to Guantánamo in September 2006 and interrogated by federal agents to build cases against them without warnings against self-incrimination and the right to consult a lawyer.
The Cole trial is expected to last at least six months, and would start on Oct. 19 with the military shuttling 50 U.S. officers at a time there from a pool of 350 men and women to establish a jury of 12 with six alternate members. Guantánamo is so small, a 45-square-mile base with about 4,500 residents and limited guest quarters, that it would be logistically difficult to bring the entire pool down.
Last week, prosecutors in the Sept. 11 case asked a military judge to set deadlines for starting the four-man conspiracy trial in May 2027. Prosecutors had earlier proposed Jan. 11, 2027, but concluded it was not practical even before arguing for it to Lt. Col. Michael Schrama, their presiding judge.
Colonel Schrama said Monday that he would look at setting a trial schedule after he rules on some key pretrial evidentiary motions, probably over the summer, involving Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who is accused of being the mastermind of the plot, and two other defendants.
Both cases have dragged on so long in part because no court case in U.S. history has dealt with the volume of classified information involved in this case, which is guarding secret government activities and surveillance that started with the war against terrorism.
Some Navy shipmates who survived the Cole attack and the relatives of victims of both the Cole and Sept. 11 attacks have died waiting for the trials to begin. Family members have been traveling to the base since the arraignment in 2011 to watch pretrial proceedings.
Politics
Stacey Abrams hit with subpoena in alleged campaign finance violations saga: ‘No one is above the law’
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FIRST ON FOX: The Georgia Senate is ramping up its investigation into alleged campaign finance violations tied to Stacey Abrams’ voter outreach group, with a top lawmaker vowing to “follow the facts wherever they lead” as subpoenas have been issued to Abrams and other key figures.
The Senate Special Committee on Investigations announced Monday that Abrams, along with New Georgia Project leaders Lauren Groh-Wargo and Nsé Ufot, must appear before lawmakers at the State Capitol at 10 a.m. on Friday.
“This committee has a responsibility to follow the facts wherever they lead,” said Republican state Sen. Greg Dolezal, the committee’s vice chairman. “Georgia law requires transparency and accountability in our elections.”
The subpoenas stem from findings by the Georgia State Ethics Commission that the New Georgia Project and its affiliated Action Fund violated campaign finance laws during the 2018 election cycle.
STACEY ABRAMS-FOUNDED VOTER ACTIVIST GROUP HIT WITH MASS LAYOFFS AFTER RECORD-BREAKING ETHICS FINE
Stacey Abrams, Democratic candidate for governor of Georgia, speaks to reporters at Georgia State University in Atlanta on Nov. 7, 2022. (Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images)
The groups admitted to 16 violations earlier this year and agreed to pay a $300,000 fine, the largest campaign finance penalty in Georgia history.
New Georgia Project shut down and dissolved in 2025 following mounting financial and legal troubles.
The Republican lawmakers explain in the press release that the goal of the probe is to figure out who was involved in the decision-making behind the violations, along with specifics on how the funds were managed and who was aware of the activity.
WHITE HOUSE UNLEASHES ON STACEY ABRAMS IN LATEST CLASH OVER TRUMP’S ELECTION ORDER
“The people of Georgia deserve to know who was involved, what decisions were made and how millions of dollars flowed through organizations that admitted to violating our campaign finance laws,” Dolezal said.
Georgia’s Republican Lt. Gov. Burt Jones said in the release, “No one is above the law in Georgia.”
He added: “When organizations secretly spend millions to influence elections while evading disclosure requirements, it undermines confidence in our democratic process. The Senate will continue pursuing the truth and ensuring accountability, regardless of political party or influence.”
Former Georgia House Rep. Stacey Abrams attends the Fort Valley GOTV Community Fish Fry at the Agricultural Technology Conference Center in Fort Valley, Georgia, on Oct. 13, 2024. (Julia Beverly/Getty Images)
The lawmakers say that additional hearings and witness testimony are expected in the coming weeks.
“Today, the Georgia State Senate delivered a subpoena for me to testify in a partisan, performative hearing designed to intimidate and disarm voting rights advocates across Georgia and the nation,” Abrams wrote in a response to the subpoena posted on X. “Despite the hollow, cynical intent, I will indeed do so on a mutually agreeable date.”
“It is not lost on me that I am being summoned days after the U.S. Supreme Court gutted protections for minority voting power and after I testified against the unconscionable voter suppression process unfolding across several Southern states.”
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Abrams, the two-time Democratic gubernatorial nominee in battleground Georgia, ruled out another run for governor earlier this year, saying that instead she’ll focus on her work fighting what she warns is the nation’s move toward authoritarianism under President Trump.
Abrams, a former Democratic Party leader in the Georgia state legislature and a nationally known voting-rights advocate, narrowly lost to Republican Gov. Brian Kemp in the 2018 gubernatorial election. She lost her 2022 rematch with Kemp by nearly eight points.
Fox News Digital’s Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report
Politics
Oversight chair seeks information from OpenAI’s Sam Altman about potential financial conflicts
WASHINGTON — The chair of the House Oversight Committee has sent a letter to OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman requesting information about potential conflicts of interest between Altman’s personal investments and his operation of the company.
The letter, sent Friday, comes amid a high-stakes legal battle currently playing out in an Oakland federal courtroom between onetime partners Altman and Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who in 2015 co-founded the AI company best known for creating ChatGPT.
The company was first established solely as a nonprofit corporation and the letter sent to Altman by Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the chair of the Oversight committee, indicates that the committee is “investigating potential conflicts of interest involving capital from nonprofit corporations invested in startups and other for-profit companies.”
Comer has requested by May 22 a briefing from the company official responsible for oversight of potential conflicts involving company officers and directors, including Altman, as well as all documents related to conflict of interest policies and guidance for those executives.
While OpenAI was created as a nonprofit designed to responsibly harness the power of the emerging artificial intelligence technology, the company created a for-profit subsidiary in 2019 and three years later released ChatGPT, which jumpstarted widespread adoption of the technology.
Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, left OpenAI’s board in 2018, one year before the creation of the for-profit arm. He is arguing that Altman and another co-founder, Greg Brockman, betrayed the original mission of the nonprofit organization, driven by their desire to “cash in” on the technology.
Musk added Microsoft, a significant investor in OpenAI, to the lawsuit in 2024. OpenAI is rumored to be gearing up to go public later this year or early next, and was recently valued at $852 billion.
Musk has said that he invested $38 million in the OpenAI nonprofit, but he does not stand to benefit from a potential OpenAI public offering.
He created a rival company, xAI, in 2023 that was later folded into his company SpaceX.
In the lawsuit, Musk is seeking $150 billion in damages, for Altman to be removed from the company and for the company to be fully returned to its nonprofit status.
Musk’s complaint also alleges that Altman engaged in self-dealing by directing OpenAI to pursue deals with companies in which he also held a personal stake, including nuclear fusion power company Helion.
Comer’s letter cites reporting that Altman’s pursuit of a Helion deal, which is still ongoing, would come at a lofty valuation of the power-company, boosting the company’s worth and the value of Altman’s investment.
Altman was briefly forced to step down from leadership of OpenAI in 2023 in part due to concerns about potential conflicts between his personal investments and his operation of the company, but was soon reinstated.
While the company’s board created an audit committee to investigate the potential conflicts of Altman and other officers, the findings were never disclosed.
Comer has requested that Altman turn over all documents and communication related to that audit committee.
Representatives for OpenAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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