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When Judge Aileen M. Cannon presides over a hearing on Friday in former President Donald J. Trump’s classified documents case, she will spend the day considering well-trod arguments about an arcane legal issue in an unorthodox manner. It will be the latest example of how her unusual handling of the case has now become business as usual. Over the past several months, Judge Cannon, who was appointed by Mr. Trump in his final days in office, has made a number of decisions that have prompted second-guessing and criticism among legal scholars following the case. Many of her rulings, on a wide array of topics, have been confounding to them, often evincing her willingness to grant a serious hearing to far-fetched issues that Mr. Trump’s lawyers have raised in his defense. The issue that will be discussed on Friday in Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, Fla., is a motion by the defense to dismiss the charges in the case on the grounds that Jack Smith, the special counsel who filed them last spring, was improperly funded and appointed.
Persons: Aileen M, Cannon, Donald J, Trump’s, Judge Cannon, Trump, Jack Smith Organizations: Mr, Court Locations: Fort Pierce, Fla
Shortly after Judge Aileen M. Cannon drew the assignment in June 2023 to oversee former President Donald J. Trump’s classified documents case, two more experienced colleagues on the federal bench in Florida urged her to pass it up and hand it off to another jurist, according to two people briefed on the conversations. The judges who approached Judge Cannon — including the chief judge in the Southern District of Florida, Cecilia M. Altonaga — each asked her to consider whether it would be better if she were to decline the high-profile case, allowing it to go to another judge, the two people said. But Judge Cannon, who was appointed by Mr. Trump, wanted to keep the case and refused the judges’ entreaties. Her assignment drew attention because she has scant trial experience and had previously shown unusual favor to Mr. Trump by intervening in a way that helped him in the criminal investigation that led to his indictment, only to be reversed in a sharply critical rebuke by a conservative appeals court panel. The extraordinary and previously undisclosed effort by Judge Cannon’s colleagues to persuade her to step aside adds another dimension to the increasing criticism of how she has gone on to handle the case.
Persons: Aileen M, Cannon, Donald J, Trump’s, Judge Cannon —, Cecilia M, Altonaga —, Judge Cannon, Trump, Judge Cannon’s Organizations: Southern District of, Mr Locations: Florida, Southern District, Southern District of Florida
Boris Epshteyn, who is scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday on election interference charges in Arizona, has played many roles for former President Donald J. Trump. A college friend of Mr. Trump’s son Eric at Georgetown University, he would become a swaggering TV surrogate for the 2016 Trump campaign before eventually serving as Mr. Trump’s unofficial chief fixer and legal strategist. When Mr. Trump was convicted in New York last month on 34 felony counts, Mr. Epshteyn (pronounced EP-stine) was at his side, huddling with the former president and other aides after the verdict. His indictment there stems from work he did behind the scenes to try to keep Mr. Trump in power after his 2020 election loss. Shepherding a small group of advisers, he helped oversee a plan to deploy fake electors in seven battleground states lost by Mr. Trump, documents show.
Persons: Boris Epshteyn, Donald J, Trump, Mr, Trump’s, Eric, Epshteyn, stine Organizations: Georgetown University, Trump, Mr, Locations: Arizona, New York, Trump, Georgia, Wisconsin
Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump pushed back on Friday night in an aggressive — and at times misleading — way against an effort to curb his public attacks on the F.B.I. In a 20-page court filing, the lawyers assailed prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, for seeking to limit Mr. Trump’s remarks about the F.B.I. on the eve of two consequential political events: the first presidential debate, scheduled for June 27, and the Republican National Convention, set to start on July 15. “The motion is a naked effort to impose totalitarian censorship of core political speech, under threat of incarceration, in a clear attempt to silence President Trump’s arguments to the American people about the outrageous nature of this investigation and prosecution,” the lawyers wrote. The dispute began last month when Mr. Smith’s team asked Judge Aileen M. Cannon, who is overseeing the case, to revise Mr. Trump’s conditions of release to bar him from making any public remarks that might endanger agents involved in the proceeding.
Persons: Donald J, Trump, Jack Smith, Trump’s, Smith’s, Judge Aileen M, Cannon Organizations: Republican National Convention Locations: Florida
A federal judge on Thursday told Stephen K. Bannon, a longtime adviser to former President Donald J. Trump, to surrender by July 1 to start serving a four-month prison term imposed on him for disobeying a subpoena to give testimony to the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. After Mr. Bannon was sentenced in October 2022 on contempt of Congress charges, Judge Carl J. Nichols, who has overseen the case, allowed him to remain free while he appealed. Lawyers for Mr. Bannon have promised to ask the full appeals court to reconsider the panel’s ruling. Judge Nichols said that Mr. Bannon would have to start serving his sentence in less than four weeks unless the full appeals court takes the case and issues its own ruling to pause the sentence from being enforced. Another former aide to Mr. Trump is already serving a prison term for refusing to take part in the House committee’s wide-ranging investigation into Mr. Trump’s efforts to remain in power after losing the 2020 election.
Persons: Stephen K, Bannon, Donald J, Trump, Carl J, Nichols, Judge Nichols Organizations: Capitol, Lawyers Locations: Washington
On the day before the F.B.I. obtained a search warrant almost two years ago to look for classified materials at former President Donald J. Trump’s private club and residence in Florida, one of the agents on the case sent a reassuring email to his bosses. “The F.B.I. Over the next 10 hours, according to court papers, there was little drama as they hauled away a trove of boxes containing highly sensitive state secrets in three vans and a rented Ryder box truck. Two years later, Mr. Trump has tried to flip the facts about that search entirely on their head, in particular by twisting the meaning of boilerplate instructions to the agents about limits on their use of lethal force.
Persons: Donald J, , Ryder, Trump Organizations: Mr Locations: Florida, Mar, Trump’s, Beach
Judge Reshuffles Hearings in Trump Documents Case
  + stars: | 2024-06-05 | by ( Alan Feuer | ) www.nytimes.com   time to read: +1 min
The federal judge overseeing former President Donald J. Trump’s classified documents case abruptly changed the proceeding’s schedule on Wednesday, reshuffling the timing for hearings on an array of important legal issues. The move by the judge, Aileen M. Cannon, was unlikely to have much impact on the overall trajectory of the case, but it reflected the substantial number of unresolved legal motions she is juggling. Last month, Judge Cannon scrapped the case’s trial date, saying she could not yet pick a new one because of what she described at the time as “the myriad and interconnected” questions she had still not managed to consider. Judge Cannon kept in place a hearing she had set for June 21 to discuss a motion by Mr. Trump’s lawyers to dismiss the indictment on the grounds that Jack Smith, the special counsel named to oversee the prosecutions of Mr. Trump, was illegally appointed to his job. Similar motions have been rejected in cases involving other special counsels, including Robert S. Mueller III, who investigated connections between Russia and Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign, and David C. Weiss, who has brought two criminal cases against Hunter Biden, President Biden’s son.
Persons: Donald J, Trump’s, Aileen M, Cannon, Judge Cannon, Jack Smith, Trump, Robert S, Mueller III, David C, Weiss, Hunter Biden, Biden’s Locations: Russia
Here’s Where Trump’s Other Cases Stand
  + stars: | 2024-06-02 | by ( Alan Feuer | Danny Hakim | ) www.nytimes.com   time to read: 1 min
Former President Donald J. Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan came to an end this week when a jury found him guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records in an effort to cover up a sex scandal that threatened to upset his 2016 presidential campaign. But Mr. Trump is still facing federal charges, brought by a special counsel, in two cases: one in Florida, where he is accused of illegally holding on to classified documents after leaving office and obstructing government efforts to retrieve them, and one in Washington, D.C., where he’s accused of plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 election. He faces similar election-tampering charges in a third case brought by a local prosecutor in Georgia. The proceedings — all of which are bogged down in delays — can be confusing to keep track of. Here are updates on where each of them stands.
Persons: Donald J, Trump Organizations: Washington , D.C Locations: Manhattan, Florida, Washington ,, Georgia
Extraordinary Circumstances, Ordinary Due Process
  + stars: | 2024-05-31 | by ( Alan Feuer | ) www.nytimes.com   time to read: +1 min
When former President Donald J. Trump was convicted on all charges at his criminal trial in Manhattan this week, it unleashed a torrent of outrage from the right savaging New York’s legal system as better befitting a banana republic. The jury, it was argued, was full of liberals. And the entire endeavor of bringing nearly three dozen felony counts against Mr. Trump as he was campaigning for the White House, it was said, was little more than an exercise in raw political power ginned up by President Biden. At each turn in the proceeding, Mr. Trump had the chance, like any other criminal defendant, to represent his interests — and his lawyers often availed themselves of the opportunity to the fullest extent of the law. And the process is far from over: The former president has vowed to file an appeal, meaning he will have another chance or two to vindicate himself.
Persons: Donald J, Trump, Biden, Organizations: White, Mr Locations: Manhattan
A few months ago, a top prosecutor on former President Donald J. Trump’s classified documents case stood up in court and told Judge Aileen M. Cannon that he was concerned about the pace of the proceeding, gingerly expressing his desire to keep the matter “moving along.”Almost instantly, Judge Cannon got defensive. “I can assure you that in the background there is a great deal of judicial work going on,” she snapped. “So while it may not appear on the surface that anything is happening, there is a ton of work being done.”In some sense, Judge Cannon had a point. Much of what judges do unfolds out of sight in the sanctity of their chambers. But at seven public hearings over more than 10 months, Judge Cannon has left an increasingly detailed record of her decision-making skills and judicial temperament.
Persons: Donald J, Trump’s, Aileen M, Cannon, Judge Cannon
The decision by the judge, Aileen M. Cannon, was made solely on the procedural grounds that prosecutors working for the special counsel, Jack Smith, had failed to properly inform Mr. Trump’s lawyers before making their request. It left open the possibility that the prosecution could try again to restrict Mr. Trump’s remarks about the agents if it follows the procedural rules. As part of her decision, Judge Cannon also temporarily denied an attempt by Mr. Trump’s legal team to push back against the government. Mr. Trump’s lawyers had filed a counter-motion seeking to have the prosecutors’ request stricken from the record and to have sanctions imposed on Mr. Smith and his deputies for failing to follow the proper procedure. Those remain largely where they stood when the dispute between the defense and prosecution began on Friday evening.
Persons: Donald J, Trump, Aileen M, Cannon, Jack Smith, Trump’s, Judge Cannon, Smith, Cannon’s, Mr Organizations: Mr
Former President Donald J. Trump’s lawyers on Monday assailed a request by federal prosecutors to limit what he could say about a new flare-up in a case accusing him of illegally retaining classified documents after leaving office. In an angry court filing, the lawyers pushed back hard against the request by the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, to revise Mr. Trump’s conditions of release by forbidding him to make any public comments that might endanger federal agents working on the prosecution. On Friday evening, Mr. Smith’s team requested what amounted to a limited gag order on Mr. Trump, prompted by what it called “grossly misleading” social media posts the former president made last week falsely claiming that the F.B.I. had been authorized to kill him when agents searched Mar-a-Lago, his Florida club and residence, in August 2022. The former president’s statements were based on a recently unsealed operational order for the search that contained boilerplate language spelling out that the use of deadly force could be used only in case of emergency, a standard provision applied to all searches conducted by the bureau.
Persons: Donald J, Jack Smith, Smith’s, Trump Locations: Florida
Prosecutors said Mr. Trump had recently made “grossly misleading” assertions about the F.B.I.’s search of Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida, two years ago. In a social media post on Tuesday, Mr. Trump falsely claimed that President Biden “authorized the FBI to use deadly (lethal) force” during the search. Mr. Trump’s post was a reaction to an F.B.I. operational plan for the Mar-a-Lago search that was unsealed on Tuesday as part of a legal motion filed by Mr. Trump’s lawyers. The plan contained a boilerplate reference to lethal force being authorized as part of the search, which prosecutors said Mr. Trump had distorted.
Persons: Donald J, Trump’s, Prosecutors, Trump, Biden “, Organizations: FBI, Mar Locations: Florida, Lago
In this case, the topic was an unproven accusation by Mr. Trump’s legal team that at an early stage of the inquiry prosecutors sought to get one of his co-defendants to cooperate against him by threatening his lawyer. The exchange occurred at a hearing where the prosecutor, David Harbach, angrily denied the accusation and the judge, Aileen M. Cannon, pressed him for details. The dispute concerned a meeting nearly two years ago at the Justice Department. A lawyer for the co-defendant, Walt Nauta, claims that prosecutors hinted that they could derail a judgeship he was seeking if he did not prevail on Mr. Nauta to turn on Mr. Trump. “The story about what happened at that meeting is a fantasy,” Mr. Harbach told Judge Cannon at one point.
Persons: Donald J, Trump’s, David Harbach, Aileen M, Cannon, Walt Nauta, Nauta, Trump, Mr, Harbach, Judge Cannon Organizations: Justice Department Locations: Florida
For the past few months, federal prosecutors and lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump have been battling in secret over allegations of misconduct and politicization in how the government handled the investigation that led to an indictment accusing Mr. Trump of illegally holding on to classified documents after he left office. The fight spilled into the public eye on Tuesday as the judge overseeing the case unsealed a pair of motions by Mr. Trump attacking the integrity of the inquiry and claiming that the special counsel, Jack Smith, had timed his charges to create maximum political damage. The aggressive and often baseless filings by Mr. Trump’s lawyers amounted to a multipronged assault on the underpinnings of the classified documents case and were the sharpest articulation yet of an argument the former president has often raised on the campaign trail: that law enforcement has been weaponized against him in a series of overreaching and politically driven witch hunts. The two filings, which were released with hundreds of pages of supporting documents, homed in on an array of investigative steps taken by the government that the defense has claimed were improper.
Persons: Donald J, Trump, Mr, Jack Smith
The Justice Department described the organization as a criminal enterprise and linked the New York chapter to the Gambino crime family. Mr. Zito later left the biker group to try to become a movie star in Hollywood. Mr. Trump has long shown an affection for macho bikers, and addressed a rally of them in Washington in 2016 before the election. A group called Bikers for Trump took part in several so-called Stop the Steal rallies after Mr. Trump lost the 2020 election. Mr. Zito was joined in the courtroom on Monday by several Trump allies who have been charged with crimes.
Persons: Donald J, Trump, Chuck Zito, Gambino, Zito, , Mr Organizations: New York Nomads, Hells Angels, The Justice Department, Trump Locations: Manhattan, New York City, California, York, Hollywood, Washington
A New York State appeals court on Tuesday upheld a gag order imposed on former President Donald J. Trump in his criminal trial in Manhattan, rejecting arguments that the measure had violated Mr. Trump’s First Amendment rights. The judge overseeing the trial, Juan M. Merchan, initially issued the order in March, barring Mr. Trump from threatening many participants in the proceeding, including jurors, witnesses, line prosecutors and staff members of the court. The order does not cover the judge himself or Alvin K. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, who brought the case against the former president. Since then, Justice Merchan has twice held Mr. Trump in contempt for violating the order, imposing $10,000 in fines. The judge has also warned Mr. Trump that if he continues to break the rules, he could face time in jail.
Persons: Donald J, Trump, Trump’s, Juan M, Merchan, Alvin K, Bragg, Locations: York State, Manhattan
A federal appeals court on Friday upheld the contempt conviction of Stephen K. Bannon, a longtime adviser to former President Donald J. Trump, for having defied a subpoena from the Jan. 6 House select committee, a ruling that could lead to Mr. Bannon serving a four-month term in prison. The decision by the court means that Mr. Bannon could soon become the second former Trump aide to be jailed for ignoring a subpoena from the committee. The House panel sought his testimony as part of its wide-ranging investigation into Mr. Trump’s efforts to remain in power after losing the 2020 election, and its explosive hearings two years ago previewed much of the evidence used against Mr. Trump in a federal indictment filed last summer accusing him of plotting to overturn his defeat. In March, Peter Navarro, who once worked as a trade adviser to Mr. Trump, reported to federal prison in Miami to begin serving his own four-month prison stint after a jury found him guilty of contempt of Congress for ignoring one of the committee’s subpoenas. The judge who oversaw Mr. Bannon’s trial had allowed him to remain at home during the appeal of his conviction and is now in a position to force him to surrender.
Persons: Stephen K, Bannon, Donald J, Trump, Peter Navarro, Bannon’s Organizations: Trump, Mr Locations: Miami
The decision by Judge Aileen M. Cannon to avoid picking a date yet for former President Donald J. Trump’s classified documents trial is the latest indication of how her handling of the case has played into Mr. Trump’s own strategy of delaying the proceeding. It is not impossible that the trial could still take place before Election Day, but the path is exceedingly narrow. And the question of when — or even whether — the charges against Mr. Trump will go before a jury will now largely hinge on how Judge Cannon handles an array of pretrial matters in the next few months, issues that many legal experts have said she could dispense with much more quickly. Judge Cannon, who was appointed by Mr. Trump in his final days in office, has been on the bench for only four years. For months now, she has stood in the glare of the spotlight with each of her most minute decisions scrutinized by an often critical gallery of legal scholars and reporters.
Persons: Aileen M, Cannon, Donald J, Trump’s, Trump, Judge Cannon Organizations: Mr, White
Stormy Daniels’s testimony on Tuesday against Donald J. Trump at his criminal trial in Manhattan was not the first time that the porn star and the former president have clashed in court. Six years ago, Ms. Daniels — then known by her off-camera name, Stephanie Clifford — filed a defamation lawsuit against Mr. Trump that ultimately failed, leading to damaging consequences for both her and her lawyer. The lawsuit, first filed in Manhattan federal court in April 2018 and then transferred to California, accused Mr. Trump of posting a social media message that called into question Ms. Daniels’s credibility. It came in response to one of her own posts, in which she included a sketch of a man who, she said, had threatened her in a Las Vegas parking lot in 2011, telling her to keep silent when she was first considering revealing her account of having had sex with Mr. Trump.
Persons: Donald J, Trump, Daniels —, Stephanie Clifford —, Mr Organizations: Mr Locations: Manhattan, California, Las Vegas
The federal judge overseeing former President Donald J. Trump’s classified documents case formally scrapped her own May 20 start date for the trial on Tuesday but declined to set a new one, saying there was much more work to be done before a jury could hear the charges. The decision by Judge Aileen M. Cannon to delay the start of the trial was more or less a foregone conclusion given the number of legal issues that remain unresolved less than two weeks from the date she had originally set. In a brief order, Judge Cannon wrote that picking a new date at this point would be “imprudent and inconsistent with the court’s duty to fully and fairly consider” what she described as “the myriad and interconnected” pretrial issues that she had not yet gotten to. Those included several of Mr. Trump’s pending motions to dismiss the case and a host of thorny questions surrounding how to decide what sorts of sensitive information can be revealed at the trial under a law known as the Classified Information Procedures Act.
Persons: Donald J, Trump’s, Aileen M, Cannon, Judge Cannon
The judge overseeing Donald J. Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan rebuked the former president on Monday for mounting “a direct attack on the rule of law,” holding him in contempt of court for a second time and threatening to jail him if he continued to break a gag order that bars him from attacking jurors. In a moment of remarkable courtroom drama, the judge, Juan M. Merchan, addressed Mr. Trump personally from the bench, saying that if there were further violations, he might bypass financial penalties and place the former president behind bars. Justice Merchan acknowledged that jailing Mr. Trump was “the last thing” he wanted to do, but explained that it was his responsibility to “protect the dignity of the justice system.”The judge said that he understood “the magnitude of such a decision” and that jailing Mr. Trump would be a last resort. He noted: “You are the former president of the United States, and possibly the next president as well.”
Persons: Donald J, , Juan M, Merchan, Trump, Justice Merchan Locations: Manhattan, United States
After the judge rebuked Mr. Trump for violating a gag order and mounting “a direct attack on the rule of law,” the prosecutors provided jurors with their first look at the 34 records they say he falsified to cover up an infamous payment. Mr. Trump made the payment to his longtime fixer, Michael D. Cohen, reimbursing him for a $130,000 hush-money payoff to a porn star, Stormy Daniels, prosecutors say. Before Mr. Trump repaid Mr. Cohen, prosecutors say, he orchestrated a scheme to falsify the records. Mr. Trump, the first American president to face prosecution, is on trial for 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, one for each document: 11 checks to Mr. Cohen, 11 invoices from Mr. Cohen and 12 entries in Mr. Trump’s general ledger. The invoices and ledger entries claimed that Mr. Cohen had been repaid for “legal expenses” that arose from a “retainer agreement.”
Persons: Donald J, Trump, Mr, Michael D, Cohen, reimbursing, Stormy Daniels,
Reversing one of her own decisions, the federal judge overseeing former President Donald J. Trump’s classified documents case granted his request on Monday to postpone the deadline for a crucial court filing in the criminal proceeding, increasing the chance that any trial would be pushed past the November election. The ruling by the judge, Aileen M. Cannon, was made in a bare-bones order that contained no factual or legal reasoning. It did not schedule a new deadline but erased the one she had set almost a month ago ordering Mr. Trump’s lawyers to file by Thursday a detailed list of the classified materials that they intend to introduce at the trial, which is set to take place at some point in Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, Fla.That list is enormously consequential because, when filed, it will mark the first step in what will ultimately be a pitched battle between the defense and prosecution over what sorts of classified materials the jury will get to hear about at trial — a contested process, balancing issues of public access and national security, that could take months to complete. Mr. Trump has relentlessly pursued a strategy of delaying all four of the criminal cases he is facing, and if he succeeds in delaying his trial on charges of mishandling classified documents until after the election, he could order his Justice Department to drop the matter altogether if he wins.
Persons: Donald J, Trump’s, Aileen M, Cannon, Trump Organizations: Court, Department Locations: Fort Pierce, Fla
Rumors that the Hollywood star Lindsay Lohan was in rehab. A lawsuit by Hulk Hogan, the former pro wrestler, against the gossip website Gawker for publishing a tape of him having sex. Testimony on Thursday at former President Donald J. Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan dove deeply into the celebrity-obsessed digital media environment of the past fifteen years or so that helped fuel Mr. Trump’s rise to political prominence. In his testimony, particularly as he was cross-examined, Mr. Davidson and a defense lawyer, Emil Bove, together led the jurors on a whirlwind tour of several gossipy and tawdry deals he had a hand in. Prosecutors say that the former president’s efforts to continue to keep the story hidden were criminal.
Persons: Charlie Sheen, Lindsay Lohan, Hulk Hogan, Donald J, Keith Davidson, Davidson, Emil Bove, Karen McDougal, Stormy Daniels, Trump, Michael D, Cohen Organizations: Hollywood, Prosecutors Locations: Manhattan, Los Angeles
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