Politics
Should Trump have confidence in his lawyers? Legal experts weigh in
As attorneys for former President Donald Trump work behind the scenes on an appeal following his conviction in the New York v. Trump trial, legal observers speculated to Fox News Digital about whether the presumptive Republican nominee is confident in his legal team ahead of his sentencing hearing – scheduled just four days before the Republican National Convention.
While under normal circumstances, defense attorneys usually wait until after sentencing to file an appeal, legal analyst Phil Holloway questioned the lack of urgency from Trump’s lawyers in seeking federal intervention.
“I’m curious to know why we have not seen any effort by Trump’s legal team to stay the looming sentencing,” Holloway told Fox News Digital. “I think there’s a reasonable argument to be made to a NY Appeals court, or even a federal court, that under the extraordinary circumstances present in this case, a stay of the NY proceedings is necessary to prevent a serious disruption of the federal electoral process.”
“Every American citizen, at any rate, has an interest in being able to vote for the candidate of their choice in a presidential election. So we’re not talking about a normal and customary kind of an appeal,” Holloway said. “It’s unheard of in American jurisprudence. And so I think you can take the traditional rule book and throw it out. I think they need to pursue every conceivable avenue to get relief from another court.”
LEGAL ANALYSTS, PUNDITS SOUND ALARM ON TRUMP VERDICT, SUGGEST THERE’S ROOM FOR APPEAL: ‘CONTORTED THE LAW’
Former President Donald Trump speaks to the media alongside his attorney, Todd Blanche, after his New York conviction, Thursday, May 30, 2024. (Michael M. Santiago/Pool Photo via AP)
Holloway and David Gelman, another legal analyst who spoke with Fox News Digital, both separately referenced the Bush v. Gore case, when the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately ruled that Florida did not need to complete a recount in the 2000 presidential election, because it could not be accomplished in a constitutionally valid way within the time limit set by federal law.
Gelman said that usually the Supreme Court or lower federal courts will not intervene in state decisions unless it’s a matter of “national importance,” as it was in 2000 and is again with the Trump case.
“Look, it’s a Hail Mary. I’m not going to say it isn’t. However, you have nothing to lose. And, I think that this may, you know, get their attention a little more than a normal Hail Mary, if you will,” Gelman told Fox News Digital. “And also the Supreme Court is also hearing President Trump’s immunity claims right now. . . . So they’re very familiar with the arguments that are set forth with President Trump, even though this is not an immunity issue. So I think that it would be very prudent on the defense attorneys to throw that too, put up a motion before the Supreme Court to ask them to intervene and to file an emergency application to do so.”
“We don’t know what they’re doing behind the scenes to prepare for the sentencing and obviously to prepare for the appeal. But I do wish we would see them acting with more of a sense of urgency regarding the appeal,” Holloway said. “If it were me, I might consider going to federal court now ahead of sentencing, seeking some kind of injunction to pause or to stop the sentencing from going forward, considering that you have the federal interest regarding the upcoming election at stake, and I think there’s enough federal issue involved to get a federal court involved in this.”
The appeal must not go to the intermediate Appellate Division, which is Manhattan-based, and at a minimum go before the state Appellate Division of New York, if not the Supreme Court, Gelman said.
Holloway said that if Trump’s legal team could “could somehow put a stop to the sentencing or pause it, they could perhaps begin the process of giving something up to the U.S. Supreme Court before the election.”
“If they have a client who gets sentenced to jail or even who is put on probation, that’s a significant restriction on the former president’s personal liberty,” Holloway said. “Either way, and it has an impact on the election. And I think there’s a significant federal issue there that would give the federal courts the jurisdiction they need to weigh in on, even before an appeal runs its traditional course.”
Former President Donald Trump, sitting with attorneys Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, awaits the start of proceedings in his criminal trial at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York City, on May 29, 2024. (JABIN BOTSFORD/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
He also noted how the timing of the Republican convention could play into Trump’s attorneys’ strategy. “I think that it makes a big difference to a federal court potentially if you’re talking about someone who is the actual nominee of the party versus someone who is a presumptive nominee,” Holloway said. “I think that if you have the actual nominee facing the significant restrictions on his personal liberty, whether he’s in jail or whether he’s on probation or house arrest or some combination of all of that. I think that it’s a very real issue that the federal courts ought to get involved in, because there’s a strong argument to be made that they ought to sort of hit the pause button to stay any further proceedings until the election plays out.”
NEW YORK APPEALS COURT JUDGES IN TRUMP CASE ROUTINELY DONATED TO DEMOCRATS, RECORDS SHOW
Another case to consider is in Georgia, where the state’s court of appeals halted any proceedings in the 2020 election interference case until it hears Trump’s appeal to disqualify Fulton County District Attorney Fanis Willis. The hearing date is tentatively scheduled for Oct. 4. While Holloway and Gelman agreed that both Manhattan and Fulton County, Georgia, are heavily blue jurisdictions, Holloway noted that a small portion of northern Fulton County is traditionally more red, so because the jury pool comes from the county as a whole, Trump has a slightly better chance of getting a more friendly jury, compared to Manhattan.
“I think there’s a very good possibility that the DA, Fani Willis, will have to be recused and no longer be able to be on that case. And then once that happens, if another fresh set of eyes looks at it, meaning like the attorney general’s office or an independent authority of Georgia, I think that it’ll be thrown away,” Gelman said, comparing the cases. “I think they’re kind of apples and oranges.”
As for Trump’s attorneys’ performance throughout the Manhattan trial, both Holloway and Gelman both said they were at a disadvantage from the start, due to the trial venue in New York City and Judge Juan Merchan, who refused to recuse himself from the case despite Trump’s team citing how the judge had donated to President Biden’s campaign.
Stormy Daniels is questioned by defense attorney Susan Necheles during former President Donald Trump’s criminal trial on charges that he falsified business records to conceal money paid to silence porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016, in Manhattan state court in New York City, May 9, 2024, in this courtroom sketch. (Reuters/Jane Rosenberg)
“If he wasn’t confident in his attorneys, you would probably hear by now that he has other attorneys on it,” Gelman told Fox News Digital. “We all know President Trump. He’s not really shy about letting his feelings known, and he’s not shy about firing people and hiring people. . . . He only wants the best people to work for him, and that includes attorneys. So by him not doing anything drastic, meaning by not firing Todd Blanche and the other people on the legal team and replacing them, you know, it shows me that he was happy with them. I know he’s not happy with the result and nobody is. But at the same time, you know, he’s a realist.”
Gelman said that Trump’s attorneys in the Manhattan trial, Blanche, Emil Bove and Susan Necheles, “did an outstanding job with the facts that were given.”
“I’ll be honest, I thought that there was no crime that was alleged, number one,” Gelman told Fox News Digital.
“You cannot tell me with a straight face that there was not reasonable doubt,” Gelman said. I mean, you have two witnesses, specifically Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels, who literally said on the stand they would like to see President Trump in jail. They had a bone to pick with him. They were out for blood. And then with Cohen, you had him, who pretty much is the walking, talking epitome of reasonable doubt.”
Gelman said he thought Trump’s attorneys “kept their cool” while cross-examining Daniels and Cohen.
“Trump’s legal team, they objected as much as they could. A lot of the objections that they put out were overruled,” Gelman told Fox News Digital. “Again, I think that the judge did a terrible job with that, because a lot of the objections should not have been overruled. And then you look on the other side where the prosecution, they objected to the same things – very, very similar – and their objections were sustained. So, the double standard was very noticeable.”
While neither legal expert faulted Trump’s attorneys for calling former Michael Cohen legal adviser Robert Costello, Holloway admitted that the move “did backfire, because the judge handcuffed them.”
“It’s very easy to Monday-morning-quarterback these things,” Holloway said. “They had a very tough jurisdiction. They had a very tough judge. They had a tough jury, and they were obviously in enemy territory. They did a very good job, considering where they were and what they had to work with.”
Politics
Mike Kennedy advances past crowded GOP primary to secure nomination for open Utah House seat
Mike Kennedy on Tuesday won the Republican nomination for Utah’s 3rd Congressional District to replace outgoing Rep. John Curtis, R-Utah, becoming the immediate favorite to win the seat in November.
Kennedy beat fellow Republicans JR Bird, John Dougall, Case Lawrence and Stewart Peay in a packed primary pool for the district. Curtis is vacating his seat to run for U.S. Senate to replace outgoing Sen. Mitt Romney.
Kennedy, a state senator, had won the party’s nomination for the seat in April but faced challenges from other candidates who gathered signatures to be on the ballot. Peay had won the endorsement of Romney, who is also Peay’s wife’s uncle. Kennedy had won the endorsement of Sen. Mike Lee, who said he was needed to “fight against the Uniparty and help get this country back on track.”
‘SQUAD’ MEMBER FACES OUSTER FROM CONGRESS AS NEW YORK, COLORADO AND UTAH HOLD PRIMARIES ON TUESDAY
From left, JR Bird, John Dougall, Mike Kennedy, Case Lawrence and Stewart Peay, candidates in the Republican primary for Utah’s 3rd Congressional District, take part in a debate at the Eccles Broadcast Center in Salt Lake City on June 12, 2024. (Spenser Heaps/Deseret News via AP/Pool)
Bird, a mayor, emphasized his experience of running a small town as well as the importance of the energy sector and agriculture, according to the Deseret News.
Dougall, the state auditor, had run as an anti-MAGA candidate and had slammed some GOP legislation, including what he saw as an overly aggressive bill that tasks him with enforcing a ban on transgender-identifying individuals using restrooms that are inconsistent with their sex.
WATCH: THIS HOUSE PRIMARY IS MOST EXPENSIVE IN CONGRESSIONAL HISTORY
He has also been deeply critical of former President Trump. On Tuesday on X, he also questioned the “cavalier manner” of any official who swears to uphold the Constitution “then endorses Trump following January 6th.” He has advertised himself as “mainstream, not MAGA.”
At a debate this month, candidates split on the question of military funding to Ukraine as well as whether the federal government should explicitly ban abortion. Peay, Dougall and Case Lawrence – a trampoline park entrepreneur – had called on Congress to keep sending weapons to Ukraine to help it fend off the ongoing Russian invasion.
Bird and Kennedy disagreed, arguing that it was not beneficial to the U.S. to keep funding the Ukrainians, with the two calling for stronger sanctions and the seizure of Russian assets.
HEAD HERE FOR LATEST FOX NEWS REPORTING FROM THE PRIMARY CAMPAIGN TRAIL
Sen. Mitt Romney (Ting Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Kennedy will go on to face Democrat Glenn Wright in the November election, but the Republican is favored to win comfortably in a district that has voted Republican since 1997.
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Elsewhere in the state, Republican Gov. Spencer Cox, a major GOP Trump critic, held off a primary challenge from Phil Lyman, another 2020 election denier who easily won the state party convention.
The Associated Press and Fox News’ Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report.
California news publishers and Big Tech companies appear to be inching toward compromise on a controversial bill that would require Google and huge social media platforms to pay news outlets for the articles they distribute.
After stalling last year, Assembly Bill 886 cleared a critical hurdle Tuesday when it passed the state Senate Judiciary Committee. Several lawmakers described the legislation as a work in progress aimed at solving a critical problem: The news business is shrinking as technology changes the way people consume information.
“I do believe the marketplace is the best mechanism to regulate industry,” Sen. Tom Umberg (D-Orange), the committee chairman, said during a hearing on the bill.
However, he said, the demise of journalism harms democracy: “Thus, we have an obligation to find a way to support reasonable, credible journalism.”
The legislation, known as the “California Journalism Preservation Act,” would require digital platforms to pay news outlets a fee when they sell advertising alongside news content. It calls for creating a fund that the tech firms pay into, with the money being distributed to news outlets based on the number of journalists they employ. Publishers would have to use 70% of the money they receive to pay journalists in California.
Umberg noted that the bill does not specify an amount for the fund. He said it would be “a very elegant solution” for the parties involved to agree on what amount that should be.
Sen. Henry Stern (D-Calabasas) described talks as being “closer and closer to the place where we could actually land some kind of deal.”
In Canada, Google is paying $74 million annually into a fund for the news industry under a law similar to the one proposed in California.
Jaffer Zaidi, Google’s vice president of global news partnerships, testified against the California proposal during a hearing in which news executives from across the state lined up to express support for the bill, while tech industry lobbyists lined up in opposition. The bill is sponsored by the California News Publishers Assn., of which the Los Angeles Times is a member.
“The bill would … break the fundamental and foundational principles of the open internet, forcing platforms to pay publishers for sending valuable free traffic to them,” Zaidi said.
“It puts the full burden of support on one or two companies, while shielding many other large platforms who also link to news from California publishers.”
He said Google had shared a proposal for a different way to support journalism “through targeted programs” that would be funded by more companies than just the very largest platforms. The current version of the bill would apply only to Google and Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook.
“We hope this can serve as a basis for a workable path forward together,” Zaidi said. “We remain committed to being here and constructively working towards an outcome.”
The bill’s author, Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland), said she is “aggressively trying to engage” with companies that oppose the bill in the hopes that the sparring sides can reach an agreement that will allow the news industry to thrive.
“At the end of the day, I want the best solution to the problem,” Wicks said.
She closed the hearing by talking about the role journalism has played in exposing problems that lawmakers wind up addressing in the Capitol, such as crafting new laws to extend the statute of limitations for sexual abuse lawsuits after The Times’ investigation revealed a pattern of allegations against former USC gynecologist George Tyndall.
The bill now advances to the Senate Appropriations Committee. It will go to Gov. Gavin Newsom if it clears both houses of the Legislature by Aug. 31.
Welcome to Fox News’ Politics newsletter with the latest political news from Washington D.C. and updates from the 2024 campaign trail.
FACE OFF: Don’t miss the Fox News Simulcast of the CNN Presidential Debate on Thursday at 9 p.m. ET. Stay in the know for more updates here.
What’s happening…
-Calls for Biden to fire official for past anti-Israel tweets
-Trump urges drug test for Biden
-Whistleblower who exposed NPR bias finds new job
What can he say?
Judge Juan Merchan has partially lifted the gag order he imposed against former President Trump – weeks after the jury found him guilty on all counts.
Trump and his legal team have been fighting the gag order since it was imposed upon him at the start of the trial, but had ramped up their efforts when it concluded last month. The former president and presumptive Republican nominee’s legal team had argued the gag order should be lifted before the June 27 presidential debate.
Merchan’s gag order barred Trump from making or directing others to make public statements about witnesses with regard to their potential participation or about counsel in the case – other than Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg – or about court staff, DA staff or family members of staff.
Merchan on Tuesday partially lifted the gag order because the trial has concluded.
Trump is now able to speak about protected witnesses and jurors.
Trump is still blocked from commenting about individual prosecutors, court staff and their family members. That portion of the gag order will remain in effect until Trump’s sentencing on July 11.
Judge Juan Merchan imposed over Donald Trump (AP)
White House
‘JUST HORRIFYING’: Watchdog group calls for Biden to fire WH official for past anti-Israel tweets …Read more
Capitol Hill
‘OBSCENE’: House GOP lawmaker rips State Dept ahead of vote on U.S. dollars going to Taliban …Read more
U.S. Representative Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) speaks to the crowd while he campaigns in the Bronx borough of New York City, U.S., June 22, 2024. REUTERS/Joy Malone (REUTERS/Joy Malone)
Tales from the Campaign Trail
‘THEATER OF CONFLICT’: Democrat challenger slams Bowman tirade, says profanity-laced rally jeopardizes party ‘unity’ …Read more
JUST SAY ‘NO’: Trump urges drug test for Biden, says he’ll do same screening …Read more
EPIC CLASH: How to watch the CNN Presidential Debate Simulcast on the Fox News Channel …Read more
‘SUGARCOATING’ CONTROVERSY: California city keeps charged ballot language for non-citizen voting measure …Read more
CALL TO THE BULLPEN: Obama again serving as Joe’s closer ahead of 2024 Trump rematch …Read more
Trials and Tribulations
DAY 3: US v Trump: The afternoon public hearing ended with no decision from Judge Cannon Read more
Across America
NO ABORTIONS FOR MINORS: Tennessee sued over law banning adults from helping minors get abortions without parental consent …Read more
MOVING ON: Whistleblower finds new gig after exposing alleged liberal bias at NPR …Read more
NEW YORK PAYS PRICE FOR NAIVETY: Cuomo scorches Dems for migrant crisis: ‘We’re finding out, 200,000 people later, you needed a plan’ …Read more
GETTING AWAY WITH MURDER: This blue city that ‘Defund Police’ supporters call home has over 1,000 unsolved homicides …Read more
KENYAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCE: Kenyan police depart for Haiti to tackle rampant gang violence …Read more
ALL MUST SERVE: Israel’s Supreme Court rules ultra-Orthodox men must serve in military in unanimous decision …Read more
HUGE POPULATION: Houston area, an immigration hot spot, reeling from murder of Jocelyn Nungaray …Read more
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