Trump

Newsweek - Donald Trump's lawyers admitted in court that the former president reimbursed his former attorney for payments to Stormy Daniels, according to a legal analyst.  Harry Litman, an attorney and law professor at University of California, Los Angeles, wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on Thursday that the apparent admission had slipped by largely unnoticed but could have huge consequences in the trial.  "While it slipped by almost without notice, the admission of Trump's admission in the civil suit with stormy that he reimbursed Michael Cohen for the money Cohen paid," Litman wrote in a post, adding in another post it could be "Huge in the overall scheme of the case

Independent, UK -  Jim Mattis, onetime secretary of defense for the Trump administration, described the former president as “a madman in a circular room screaming,” a new book reveals. The revelation was made by Tom Bossert, Donald Trump’s homeland security adviser from 2017 to 2018, and published in The Situation Room: The Inside Story of Presidents in Crisis.

Axios -  Shrewd legal maneuvering — along with some luck and prosecutors' self-inflicted errors — have made November's election as much about former President Trump's freedom as it is about the country's direction:

• If he's a private citizen, he faces years of expensive trials and could spend the rest of his life in prison if found guilty.
• If he wins, the three felony cases that haven't gone to trial could be pushed off indefinitely.

Even if Trump is convicted in the Manhattan hush-money case, voters may be the only jury that matters... Trump's team seems to have succeeded in pushing his most serious trials until after the election. So the race is also a referendum on Trump's freedom. "It really is an all-or-nothing strategy," said Robert Mintz, a former federal prosecutor. "The delaying tactic could be a complete victory if he were to be elected president."

Scenarios: If Trump wins, he could appoint Justice Department officials to make the two federal cases against him go away.

• Legal experts say those cases — one in D.C. involving his alleged Jan. 6 conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election, the other in Florida accusing him of mishandling classified documents — pose the most serious legal threats to him.
• As president, Trump also could try to pardon himself, a legally untested move.

A Trump Justice Department wouldn't be able to dismiss state charges in Georgia, where he's accused of leading a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election.

• Trump's lawyers have argued that he couldn't be tried in Georgia until 2029 if he's elected.
• But there's a more pressing barrier to a timely trial there: Prosecutor Fani Willis could be removed from the case, leaving its future murky.
  

Trump on his court case: He’s a corrupt judge. This judge, what he did and what his ruling was is a disgrace... I’m not supposed to be here.We are so innocent. There’s never been anything like it. Read every single analyst, legal analyst, I’m innocent and I’m being held in this court with a corrupt judge who’s totally conflicted. Take a look at his conflict. It’s a disgrace to the city of New York, to the state of New York and to the country.

Daily Kos -  Donald Trump has pledged to scrap President Biden’s policies on electric vehicles and wind energy, as well as other initiatives opposed by the fossil fuel industry. 
Trump’s response stunned several of the executives in the room overlooking the ocean: You all are wealthy enough, he said, that you should raise $1 billion to return me to the White House. At the dinner, he vowed to immediately reverse dozens of President Biden’s environmental rules and policies and stop new ones from being enacted, according to people with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation.
Giving $1 billion would be a “deal,” Trump said, because of the taxation and regulation they would avoid thanks to him, according to the people.