not a good day for trump in downtown NYC…no pro-trump protesters…no trump family members by his side…( Lawrence O’Donnell pointed out “even Jeffrey Dahmer’s parents were in court supporting their son”…no one shown up for “the family man”…maybe it’s because trump is reported not only to be falling asleep in court but also farting in court…from Jimmy Kimmel: “MANY People Say Trump FARTS in Court and Privately Stews Over Jimmy & Guillermo Meets Madonna!: Apr 22, 2024 #Kimmel Opening arguments began this morning in the People of the State of New York vs Donald Jeraldine Trump, he posted little bursts of lunacy on Truth Social in protest, his lawyers made it clear that they are going to continue to deny Trump had sex with Stormy Daniels, Trump is rumored to be farting in the courtroom but there’s no way to prove it so please don’t repost this video out of context with dumb captions like “The Shart of the Deal” or “Gassolini”, Donny has reportedly been stewing in private over everything from the look of his courtroom sketches to Jimmy making fun of him, New York Times reporter Susanne Craig wrote that Trump is STILL having trouble staying awake during the trial, we will hear testimony from his old friend David Pecker tomorrow, Taylor Swift’s album dropped over the weekend and Jimmy was confused about a bumper sticker he saw, and Guillermo went to Mexico City over the weekend as a special guest of Madonna who pulled him up on stage at her concert!”…from CNN Politics by Jeremy Herb, Lauren del Valle and Kara Scannell: “Takeaways from Day 6 of the Donald Trump criminal hush money trial: New York (CNN) – Judge Juan Merchan appeared poised on Tuesday to sanction Donald Trump for violating the gag order in his criminal hush money case after peppering the former president’s lawyers with questions about why Trump’s social media posts were acceptable.
Tuesday began with a hearing on Trump’s 10 alleged violations of the gag order, and it ended with former American Media Inc. chief David Pecker talking about how he vetted allegations of an alleged affair between Trump and Playboy playmate Karen McDougal in 2016 while in constant communication with Trump’s then-fixer, Michael Cohen. (Trump has denied the affair.)
Even with an abbreviated day for the Passover holiday, the one-two punch of the gag order violations and the testimony about the “catch-and-kill” deals to bury negative stories about Trump during the 2016 election added up to a frustrating day in court for Trump, who fumed about the news coverage of the trial and the limitations of the judge’s gag order.
Pecker will return to the stand on Thursday after court is dark on Wednesday. He has spoken now about two of the three catch-and-kill deals – but not adult film star Stormy Daniels, which is likely coming on Thursday.
Here are takeaways from Tuesday’s day in court:
Gag order hearing goes badly for Trump
Merchan issued the gag order before the trial began, limiting Trump from publicly discussing witnesses, the jury or the district attorney’s staff. Merchan expanded the order, which Trump has appealed, to cover his own family after Trump attacked his daughter.
He has not yet ruled on the district attorney’s motion to sanction Trump for allegedly violating the gag order, but it wasn’t hard to tell the judge’s sentiments.
Merchan rejected the explanations that Trump attorney Todd Blanche offered for the offending posts, after Trump’s attorney tried to argue that posts about Stormy Daniels and Michael Cohen were political and not about the case.
When Blanche tried to argue that Trump’s response to a Cohen post about Michael Avenatti, Daniels’ former lawyer, was political because it discussed pardons, the judge grew frustrated.
“So the pardon is what makes it political?” Merchan asked Blanche.
“Of course,” Blanche responded.
“When your client is violating a gag order, I expect more than one word,” Merchan said after Blanche argued that pardons were political in nature.
Merchan also pressed Blanche on Trump’s intentions, after Trump’s attorney argued that reposts of others on Truth Social were not necessarily subject to the gag order.
“It’s your client’s position that when he reposts he did not believe he was violating the gag order. I’d like to hear that. Or you just want me to accept it because you’re saying it?” Merchan asked Blanche shortly before the hearing ended.
Merchan did not say when he would rule. The district attorney is asking the judge to fine Trump $1,000 for each violation, and to remind him additional violations could result in imprisonment.
In an interview taped Tuesday morning before the hearing, Trump blasted Cohen as a “liar” with “no credibility” despite the gag order barring him from publicly discussing witnesses.
“Michael Cohen is a convicted liar and he’s got no credibility whatsoever. He was a lawyer and you rely on your lawyers … Then he got in trouble because of things outside of what he did for me, largely, it was essentially all because what he did in terms of campaign, I don’t think there was anything wrong with that with the charges that they made,” Trump said in the interview with WPVI Philadelphia, which aired Tuesday evening.
Judge says Trump lawyers are ‘losing all credibility’
Tensions continued to grow between Trump’s legal team and the trial judge during the gag order hearing.
Merchan repeatedly asked Blanche to clarify examples of when Trump was specifically responding to attacks from Cohen and Daniels on social media and grew visibly frustrated when Blanche failed to comply.
“You’ve presented nothing,” Merchan said to Blanche. “I’ve asked you eight or nine times [to] show me the exact post he was responding to. You’ve been unable to do that even once.”
“President Trump is being very careful to comply with your order,” Blanche said at one point.
“You’re losing all credibility with the court,” Merchan responded.
Last week, Merchan supported prosecutors when they refused to give Trump’s legal team notice of their witness list, saying he understood the sentiment given Trump’s social media attacks.
Last Thursday, assistant district attorney Josh Steinglass said he wouldn’t take the risk of subjecting trial witnesses to Trump’s social media wrath.
When Blanche claimed he could promise that Trump wouldn’t reveal or discuss the witnesses on deck to testify, Merchan shot back, “I don’t think you can make that representation.”
Pecker puts jury inside how AMI helped Trump in 2016 campaign
Pecker, who ran American Media Inc. during the 2016 election, testified for around two-and-a-half hours on Tuesday, walking jurors through how he worked with Michael Cohen on Trump’s behalf to squash unflattering stories during the 2016 election.
On Tuesday, Pecker testified about the “catch and kill” deals involving McDougal and Trump’s doorman. He said that he met with Trump and Cohen in 2015 where he agreed to be the “eyes and ears” of the campaign and look out for negative stories.
“At the meeting, Donald Trump and Michael, they asked me, what can I do, and what my magazines could do, to help the campaign,” Pecker testified. “I would run or publish positive stories about Mr. Trump and I would publish negative stories about his opponents.”
While ultimately Pecker wasn’t directly involved with the $130,000 payment to Daniels, his role is important to prosecutors’ case because he establishes there were a pattern of payments made to hide unflattering stories about Trump during the 2016 election.
“I think it was a mutual benefit. It would help his campaign and it would also help me,” Pecker said of the agreement.
Pecker places Michael Cohen deep in the conspiracy
Pecker placed Cohen in the heart of the alleged “catch and kill conspiracy” Tuesday. He testified that Cohen was the go-between for Trump fielding media stories from Pecker since 2007.
At the August 2015 Trump Tower meeting, Pecker said he would notify Cohen about negative stories.
“Anything that I hear in the marketplace – if I hear anything negative about yourself or if I hear anything about women selling stories, I would notify Michael Cohen as I did over the last several years,” Pecker said. “Then he would be able to have them killed in another magazine or have them not be published, or somebody would have to purchase them.”
During Trump’s campaign in 2015 and 2016, Pecker said Cohen would also pitch stories about Trump’s political opponents and offer feedback on behalf of “the boss,” as Cohen referred to Trump.
“Michael Cohen would call me and say, ‘We would like you to run negative article on a certain – let’s say for argument sake – on Ted Cruz,’” Pecker said. “Then he, Michael Cohen, would send me information about Ted Cruz or Ben Carson or Marco Rubio and that was the basis of our story and then we would embellish it from there.” This story has been updated with additional developments. CNN’s Kate Sullivan contributed to this report.“…
David Pecker ripped into trump’s “family man” defense, he says it was all about the campaign…from The New York Times by Jonah E. Bromwich, Ben Protess and Maggie Haberman: “Trump Endures a Rugged Day in Court as Witness Details ‘Catch and Kill’: The judge questioned the credibility of Donald J. Trump’s defense lawyer, and a key witness told of a plan to buy and bury stories that might have harmed the candidate.:
Donald J. Trump had a dismal day in court on Tuesday as the judge presiding over his criminal trial said Mr. Trump’s lawyer was “losing all credibility” and a key witness pulled back the curtain to expose what prosecutors called a conspiracy to influence the 2016 election.
The witness was David Pecker, longtime publisher of The National Enquirer, and he transported jurors back to a crucial 2015 meeting with Mr. Trump and his fixer at Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan.
Prosecutors called it the “Trump Tower conspiracy,” arguing that Mr. Pecker, Mr. Trump and Michael D. Cohen, who was then Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer and fixer, hatched a plot at the meeting to conceal sex scandals looming over Mr. Trump’s campaign.
Their effort led Mr. Pecker’s tabloids to buy and bury two damaging stories about Mr. Trump. Mr. Cohen also purchased the silence of a porn star, a deal at the heart of the case against the former president.
In gripping testimony Tuesday, Mr. Pecker took the jurors inside the meeting, recalling how Mr. Cohen and Mr. Trump asked what he and his magazines — fixtures of American supermarket checkout lanes — could do “to help the campaign.” The account bolstered the prosecution’s argument that the men were protecting not just Mr. Trump’s personal reputation, but his political fortunes.
“I would be your eyes and ears,” Mr. Pecker recalled telling them, as he explained the tabloid practice of “catch and kill,” in which an outlet bought the rights to a story, only to never publish it.
Mr. Pecker’s testimony came after a bruising hearing for Mr. Trump and his legal team, as prosecutors argued that the trial is threatened by Mr. Trump’s repeated attacks on witnesses and jurors, mostly launched on social media and his campaign website. They urged the judge, Juan M. Merchan, to hold Mr. Trump in contempt over what they said were 11 violations of a gag order that bars the former president from attacking witnesses, prosecutors, jurors and court staff, as well as their relatives.
When Mr. Trump’s lead lawyer, Todd Blanche, claimed that the former president was trying to comply with the order, Justice Merchan signaled that he found that preposterous, replying with words that no lawyer wants to hear: “You’re losing all credibility with the court.
The case against Mr. Trump, the first American president to face a criminal trial, centers on Mr. Cohen’s $130,000 hush-money payment to the porn star, Stormy Daniels. Prosecutors say he paid Ms. Daniels at Mr. Trump’s direction during the 2016 campaign to keep her quiet about a sexual tryst she said she had with Mr. Trump.
Mr. Trump’s lawyer in his opening statement denied that his client had slept with Ms. Daniels, echoing what Mr. Trump has consistently said.
Mr. Trump who faces up to four years behind bars if convicted, is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records for the way in which he accounted for the $130,000 repayment to Mr. Cohen. Each count reflects a different false check, ledger and invoice that, according to prosecutors, Mr. Trump used to disguise the reimbursement’s true purpose.
Mr. Trump, 77, who is once again the presumptive Republican nominee, faces three other criminal cases in three different cities on charges that he plotted to overturn his 2020 election loss and mishandled classified records once he was no longer president. But with those cases delayed, the Manhattan case may be the only one that makes it to trial before Election Day.
The Manhattan case, in just its sixth day, has become a media and political spectacle as Mr. Trump’s campaign-style attacks on Mr. Cohen and the jury test the limits of the legal system and the judge’s patience.
The gag-order hearing, held with the jury out of the courtroom, demonstrated a jarring reality for Mr. Trump as he seeks to reclaim the White House while under indictment: His political reflexes, and the norm-busting ethos that has defined the Trump era, often clash with the letter of the law.
Witnesses in the case “rightly fear” being subjected to the former president’s “vitriol,” a prosecutor, Christopher Conroy, told the judge. He rattled off statements that Manhattan prosecutors believe crossed the line, including calling Mr. Cohen and Ms. Daniels “sleaze bags” and reposting an attack on the jury pool. That happened the night before a juror who had already been seated asked to be excused.
“What happened here was exactly what this order was meant to prevent, and the defendant doesn’t care,” Mr. Conroy said.
Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Todd Blanche, argued that Mr. Trump’s posts were not personal and did not violate the order, because he was simply responding to “a barrage of political attacks.”
But Justice Merchan bridled, imploring Mr. Blanche to stick to the facts and the law.
“I need to know what is true,” Justice Merchan said, underscoring Mr. Trump’s penchant for using social media to spread lies.
It then got worse for Mr. Blanche, who appeared flummoxed by the judge. At one point, Justice Merchan called one of his arguments “silly.”
Prosecutors have asked Justice Merchan to fine Mr. Trump $1,000 for each statement, although Mr. Conroy wondered aloud if Mr. Trump, who has sold campaign merchandise with his mug shot, was actually angling for jail time. The judge, whose daughter has been among Mr. Trump’s targets, did not immediately rule.
The case against Mr. Trump commenced Monday, when both sides delivered opening statements that offered dueling visions of Mr. Trump and the evidence. A prosecutor accused the former president of orchestrating a “criminal conspiracy and a coverup.” Mr. Trump’s lawyer proclaimed, “President Trump is innocent.”
The prosecution then called its first witness, Mr. Pecker, who returned to the stand on Tuesday for a second day of testimony.
In about two and a half hours of examining Mr. Pecker on Tuesday, the prosecution placed him firmly in Mr. Trump’s orbit, as a longtime fan and friend who became an extension of the 2016 Trump campaign. His closeness to Mr. Trump — and his gentle, almost grandfatherly affect — appeared to bolster his credibility.
“I would call him Donald,” Mr. Pecker recalled, adding that he had “a great relationship with Mr. Trump over the years,” and that he had launched a magazine with him called “Trump Style.”
Mr. Pecker described a symbiotic relationship between Mr. Trump and The National Enquirer during the former president’s turn as a reality television host on “The Apprentice.” Mr. Trump would leak details of the show to the magazine, which in turn would run stories on the contestants.
The relationship took on national significance after the crucial 2015 meeting at Trump Tower.
“I received a call from Michael Cohen telling me that the boss wanted to see me,” Mr. Pecker recounted for the jury.
Afterward, Mr. Cohen routinely contacted Mr. Pecker, checking in weekly, or even daily. The purpose of their conversations was often was to protect Mr. Trump from negative stories, including a doorman’s apparently false claim that Mr. Trump had fathered a child out of wedlock. Mr. Pecker, who purchased the story, testified that Mr. Cohen had told him “the boss would be very pleased” to have that story suppressed.
Mr. Pecker, who later also bought a story from a former Playboy model who said she had had an affair with Mr. Trump, explained that Mr. Cohen was “physically in every aspect of whatever the campaign was working on.” But, in a detail that the defense may seize on, he testified that Mr. Cohen, who was not a campaign employee but Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, may have “injected himself” into the campaign at times.
Mr. Trump’s lawyers have not yet cross-examined Mr. Pecker, but when they do, they are likely to seize on that description of Mr. Cohen. A central theme of Mr. Trump’s defense is to portray Mr. Cohen as a renegade and a liar, and to distance the former president from the most problematic evidence.
Yet Mr. Pecker’s testimony placed Mr. Trump directly in the middle of their conspiracy. And in a sign that at least Mr. Pecker knew that their arrangement was problematic, he noted that he wanted to keep it “confidential.” When a prosecutor, Joshua Steinglass, asked why, Mr. Pecker explained that he did not want it to “leak” that he helped the campaign.
Under questioning, Mr. Pecker acknowledged that he did not merely spike detrimental stories but promoted helpful ones. Mr. Cohen, he explained, would feed him information about Mr. Trump’s Republican primary opponents, and The National Enquirer would sometimes “embellish” them.
The tabloid, for example, ran stories about Mr. Trump’s primary opponents, including Ben Carson, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. The prosecutors illustrated the point for jurors, posting several lurid headlines on screens: “Donald Trump Blasts Ted Cruz’s Dad for Photo with J.F.K. Assassin,” “Bungling Surgeon Ben Carson left Sponge in Patient’s Brain!” and, in a moment of ironic foreshadowing, “Ted Cruz Shamed by Porn Star.”
At the Trump Tower meeting, Mr. Pecker said, he had indicated that he expected many women “would come out to try to sell their stories” about Mr. Trump, because he was known as “the most eligible bachelor and dated the most beautiful women.”
Mr. Trump was not, in fact, a bachelor. He had married his third and current wife, Melania Trump, in 2005.”… David Pecker corroborated what Michael Cohen has been saying for years…and for which he went to jail…all at the direction of trump “the family man”…trump fuming with a figurative knife in his back put there by David Pecker…
went to the Woodmere for their Tuesday night movie…tonight was Brick…from Wikipedia: “Brick is a 2005 American neo-noir mystery thriller film written and directed by Rian Johnson in his directorial debut, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Brick was distributed by Focus Features, and opened in New York and Los Angeles on April 7, 2006. The film’s narrative centers on a hardboiled detective story set in a California suburb. Most of the main characters are high school students. The film draws heavily in plot, characterization, and dialogue from hardboiled classics, especially those by Dashiell Hammett. The title refers to a block of heroin, compressed roughly to the size and shape of a brick.
The film won the Special Jury Prize for Originality of Vision at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, and received positive reviews from critics. It has come to be regarded as a cult classic.”…this was Rian Johnson’s directorial debut, he started writing the screenplay after graduating from USC School of Cinematic Arts…from Wikpedia: “Development: The origins of Brick were Rian Johnson‘s obsessions with Dashiell Hammett‘s novels. Hammett was known for hardboiled detective novels, and Johnson wanted to make a straightforward American detective story. He had discovered Hammett’s work through an interview of the Coen brothers about their 1990 gangster film, Miller’s Crossing. He read Red Harvest (1929) and then moved on to The Maltese Falcon (1930) and The Glass Key (1931), the latter of which had been the main influence for the Coens’ film. Johnson had grown up watching detective films and film noir. Reading Hammett’s novels inspired him to make his own contribution. He realized that this would result in a mere imitation and set his piece in high school to keep things fresh. Of the initial writing process he remarked “it was really amazing how all the archetypes from that detective world slid perfectly over the high school types”. He also wanted to disrupt the visual traditions that came from the genre. Once he started making Brick, he found it “very much about the experience of being a teenager to me”.[4] Johnson maintained that the film was not autobiographical.
Johnson wrote the first draft in 1997 after graduating from USC School of Cinematic Arts a year earlier. He spent the next seven years pitching his script, but no one was interested, because the material was too unusual to make with a first-time director. Johnson estimated the minimal amount of money for which he could make the film, and asked friends and family for backing. His family were in the construction industry, and contributed enough to encourage others to contribute. After Johnson had acquired about $450,000 for the film’s budget, Brick began production in 2003.”…it was pretty interesting having a “film noir” set in High School…good film on a tight budget…worth going to see this film having never heard of it…Roger Ebert gave it 3 stars out of 4…his only criticism was “The film’s only serious flaw, thought Ebert, was that the characters were not entirely believable and thus it was difficult to care about the outcome of events for the characters.”…
Art Salazar 