Trump

Newsweek -  Donald Trump might not be permitted to sell his business properties to pay the $548.3 million he owes from recent lawsuits, a legal expert has said. Barbara Jones, who is now monitoring Donald Trump's property empire, is to appoint a compliance officer to oversee the former president's companies. That compliance manager will have the ultimate say on any property transactions. Jones was appointed by Arthur Engoron, the judge in Trump's New York fraud trial, after he found the former president had grossly inflated the asset value of his companies and could not be trusted to run the property empire. When he delivered his final ruling against Trump on February 16, Engoron gave Jones 30 days to appoint a compliance director. Greg Germain, a law professor at Syracuse University in New York, told Newsweek that this compliance director "has the ultimate decision-making authority on operating or selling property. Trump could ask for sale, but he wouldn't control the decision."

Guardian - New York judge Juan Merchan officially set a 25 March start date for Trump’s Stormy Daniels hush money trial last Thursday, positioning it to become Trump’s first criminal case – just weeks after his team expects him to lock up the GOP nomination for president. The trial is expected to last around six weeks, meaning the verdict could arrive sometime in mid-May. The timing of Trump’s three other pending criminal trials are all uncertain, but major developments are expected soon that will give us a much better sense of which, if any, will come to fruition before the election. In Georgia, the election interference criminal trial is in limbo until Judge Scott McAfee rules on whether a potential conflict of interest exists that justifies removing Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis from the case because of her romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, a special prosecutor she hired for the case...In Washington DC, the criminal trial relating to Trump’s conduct on and before January 6 hinges on the US supreme court’s pending decision on whether to take up his claim of presidential criminal immunity...And in Florida, where Trump is facing criminal charges for mishandling national security documents, Judge Aileen Cannon has scheduled a conference on 1 March to determine whether Trump’s defense motions will push back her originally scheduled 20 May trial start date. (It seems likely it will.)