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Donald Trump’s presidential election victory ended the federal prosecutions against him for allegedly hiding classified documents and trying to overturn the 2020 election. But it hasn’t got him out of his conviction on 34 felony business fraud charges, at least not yet. Here’s the latest on that case:
A judge on Monday ruled that Donald Trump’s conviction for falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal should stand, rejecting the president-elect’s argument that it should be dismissed because of the US supreme court’s recent ruling on presidential immunity, a court filing showed.
Manhattan judge Juan Merchan’s decision eliminates one potential off-ramp from the case ahead of Trump’s return to office next month. His lawyers have raised other arguments for dismissal, however.
In a 41-page decision Merchan said Trump’s “decidedly personal acts of falsifying business records poses no danger of intrusion on the authority and function of the executive branch”.
Trump’s lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Prosecutors have said there should be some accommodation for his upcoming presidency, but they insist the conviction should stand.
Trump accolytes float possibility of unconstitutional third term
At a gala dinner in New York last night, Donald Trump ally Steve Bannon publicly mulled the idea of the president-elect serving a third term in office.
Trump cannot seek re-election in 2028 since he already served one term as president, from 2017 to 2021. But that didn’t stop Bannon and Maga hardliners from opining about the 78-year-old running again, the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports:
Donald Trump’s allies have become increasingly emboldened to float their most audacious ideas as Trump prepares to return to office, suggesting he run for an unconstitutional third term in 2028 and accusing the news media of having engaged in a criminal conspiracy with prosecutors against him.
Those suggestions, by Trump’s former strategist Steve Bannon, came at a self-congratulatory gala dinner for conservatives in New York on Sunday. At times the remarks seemed like the product of the euphoria that permeated the audience.
The underlying message was clear: with Trump back in the White House and with Bannon renewing his influence with the president-elect, the most extreme and polarizing proposals at the very least were up for consideration.
“The viceroy Mike Davis tells me, since it doesn’t actually say consecutive, that maybe we do it again in 28?” Bannon said of Trump possibly running again, in his remarks at the New York Young Republican Club gala dinner, which also saw a Trump adviser keel over the lectern and fall off the stage.
Riding the wave of self-congratulatory sentiment in the room, Bannon, who ignored the black-tie dress code with a wax jacket and black – collared shirt, doubled down on pursuing a campaign of retribution against Trump’s perceived enemies in the news media and at the justice department.
It’s worth noting that at a meeting with Republican lawmakers shortly after he won re-election, Trump joked about perhaps seeking a third term in the White House. Here’s more about what his allies talked about at last night’s dinner:
Trump again calls Canadian prime minister Trudeau 'governor' and pledges to make good on tariff promise
Good morning, US politics blog readers. Since winning re-election last month, Donald Trump has, for reasons that are not clear, taken to calling Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau “governor”. He’s done it in two instances that we can think of, the most recent coming last night, in a post on Truth Social where the president-elect weighed in on the departure from Trudeau’s government of deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland, who had disagreed with Trudeau over how to handle Trump’s threatened economic policies. Without giving examples, the president-elect said “her behavior was totally toxic”, and accused her of standing in the way of a trade deal between the two countries.
The “governor” moniker is a strange one to bestow on Trudeau, considering it is both inaccurate, and because the prime minister has made efforts to reach out to Trump, including by dining with him at Mar-a-Lago. Hanging over the two men’s relationship is Trump’s threat to impose steep tariffs on Canada, which Trudeau is trying to convince him not to follow through with. But at a press conference at Mar-a-Lago yesterday, Trump made clear he’s not changing course. “We lose a lot of money to Canada, tremendous amount,” the president-elect said, later adding: “Tariffs will make our country rich.”
Here’s what else is going on today:
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Kamala Harris will give a speech billed as encouraging young people to be active in their communities in the Washington DC suburbs at 11.35am ET.
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Congress is scrambling to pass a year-end spending bill to ward off a government shutdown that will otherwise occur on 20 December. Neither party wants that to happen, but, as usual, their negotiations may go down to the wire.
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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is making one last push to become the top Democrat on the high-profile House oversight committee. Yesterday, a Democratic committee that recommends candidates for ranking members passed the New York progressive over in favor of longtime congressman Gerry Connolly.
