The justices acknowledged the need to reach a decision quickly, as voters will soon begin casting presidential primary ballots across the country. The court agreed to take up a case from Colorado stemming from Trump’s role in the events that culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Underscoring the urgency, arguments will be held on Feb. 8, during what is normally a nearly monthlong winter break for the justices. The compressed timeframe could allow the court to produce a decision before Super Tuesday on March 5, when the largest number of delegates are up for grabs in a single day, including in Colorado.

The court will be considering for the first time the meaning and reach of a provision of the 14th Amendment barring some people who “engaged in insurrection” from holding public office. The amendment was adopted in 1868, following the Civil War. It has been so rarely used that the nation’s highest court had no previous occasion to interpret it.

Colorado’s Supreme Court, by a 4-3 vote, ruled last month that Trump should not be on the Republican primary ballot. The decision was the first time the 14th Amendment was used to bar a presidential contender from the ballot.

Trump is separately appealing to state court a ruling by Maine’s Democratic secretary of state, Shenna Bellows, that he was ineligible to appear on that state’s ballot over his role in the Capitol attack. Both the Colorado Supreme Court and the Maine secretary of state’s rulings are on hold until the appeals play out.

The high court’s decision to intervene, which both sides called for, is the most direct involvement in a presidential election since Bush v. Gore in 2000, when a conservative majority effectively decided the election for Republican George W. Bush. Only Justice Clarence Thomas remains from that court.

Three of the nine Supreme Court justices were appointed by Trump, though they have repeatedly ruled against him in 2020 election-related lawsuits, as well as his efforts to keep documents related to Jan. 6 and his tax returns from being turned over to congressional committees.

At the same time, Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh have been in the majority of conservative-driven decisions that overturned the five-decade-old constitutional right to abortion, expanded gun rights and struck down affirmative action in college admissions.

Some Democratic lawmakers have called on Thomas to step aside from the case because of his wife’s support for Trump’s effort to overturn the results of the election, which he lost to Democrat Joe Biden. Thomas is unlikely to agree, and there was every indication Friday that all the justices are participating. Thomas has recused himself from only one other case related to the 2020 election, involving former law clerk John Eastman, and so far the people trying to disqualify Trump haven’t asked him to recuse.

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The 4-3 Colorado decision cites a ruling by Gorsuch when he was a federal judge in that state. That Gorsuch decision upheld Colorado’s move to strike a naturalized citizen from the state’s presidential ballot because he was born in Guyana and didn’t meet the constitutional requirements to run for office. The court found that Trump likewise doesn’t meet the qualifications due to his role in the U.S. Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021. That day, the Republican president held a rally outside the White House and exhorted his supporters to “fight like hell” before they walked to the Capitol.

The two-sentence provision in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment states that anyone who swore an oath to uphold the constitution and then “engaged in insurrection” against it is no longer eligible for state or federal office. After Congress passed an amnesty for most of the former confederates the measure targeted in 1872, the provision fell into disuse until dozens of suits were filed to keep Trump off the ballot this year. Only the one in Colorado was successful.

Trump had asked the court to overturn the Colorado ruling without even hearing arguments. “The Colorado Supreme Court decision would unconstitutionally disenfranchise millions of voters in Colorado and likely be used as a template to disenfranchise tens of millions of voters nationwide,” Trump’s lawyers wrote.

They argue that Trump should win on many grounds, including that the events of Jan. 6 did not constitute an insurrection. Even if it did, they wrote, Trump himself had not engaged in insurrection. They also contend that the insurrection clause does not apply to the president and that Congress must act, not individual states.

Critics of the former president who sued in Colorado agreed that the justices should step in now and resolve the issue, as do many election law experts.

“This case is of utmost national importance. And given the upcoming presidential primary schedule, there is no time to wait for the issues to percolate further. The Court should resolve this case on an expedited timetable, so that voters in Colorado and elsewhere will know whether Trump is indeed constitutionally ineligible when they cast their primary ballots,” lawyers for the Colorado plaintiffs told the Supreme Court.

The issue of whether Trump can be on the ballot is not the only matter related to the former president or Jan. 6 that has reached the high court. The justices last month declined a request from special counsel Jack Smith to swiftly take up and rule on Trump’s claims that he is immune from prosecution in a case charging him with plotting to overturn the 2020 presidential election, though the issue could be back before the court soon depending on the ruling of a Washington-based appeals court.

And the court has said that it intends to hear an appeal that could upend hundreds of charges stemming from the Capitol riot, including against Trump.

Trump on Wednesday appealed a ruling from the Colorado Supreme Court that he’s ineligible for the presidency because he violated a rarely used constitutional prohibition on those who hold office having “engaged in insurrection.” On Tuesday, he appealed a similar ruling from Maine’s Democratic secretary of state, but it’s the Colorado appeal that’s most significant.

That’s because the nation’s highest court has never before ruled on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, adopted in 1868 to prevent Confederates from regaining their former government posts. Whatever the Supreme Court decides applies to Colorado will apply to all other 49 states, including Maine.

Trump remains on the ballot in both states until the appeals are done.

What is Section 3?

The provision is only two sentences and seems relatively straightforward.

Section 3 reads: “No Person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”

Nice and simple, right?

Not so fast, Trump’s attorneys say.

What does Trump’s legal team contend?

Trump’s lawyers say this part of the Constitution wasn’t meant to apply to the president. Notice how it specifically mentions electors, senators and representatives, but not the presidency, they say.

Also, it says those who take an oath to “support” the United States, but the presidential oath doesn’t use that word — instead, the Constitution requires presidents to say they will “preserve, protect and defend” the document. And, finally, Section 3 talks about any other “officer” of the United States, but Trump’s lawyers argue that language is meant to apply to presidential appointees, not the actual president.

That was enough to convince the initial Denver judge who heard the case, who agreed it wasn’t clear that Section 3 applied to the president. But that judge’s decision was reversed by the Colorado Supreme Court.

The majority of the state’s highest court wrote: “President Trump asks us to hold that Section 3 disqualifies every oathbreaking insurrectionist except the most powerful one and that it bars oath-breakers from virtually every office, both state and federal, except the highest one in the land.”

What are the Trump team’s other arguments?

His lawyers contend that the question of who is covered by a rarely used, once obscure clause is political and cannot be decided by unelected judges. They contend that Jan. 6 wasn’t an insurrection — it wasn’t widespread, they say, and didn’t involve large amounts of firearms or other markers of sedition. They say Trump didn’t “engage” in anything that day other than in exercising his protected free speech rights.

Their final argument is the one that convinced the dissenting three of Colorado’s seven high court justices — the ad hoc way the court went about finding that Trump violated Section 3, in turn, violated the former president’s due process rights. They contend he was entitled to some structured, adversarial legal process rather than a court in Colorado trying to figure out if the Constitution applied to him.

That gets at the unprecedented nature of the cases. Section 3 has rarely been used after an 1872 congressional amnesty excluded most former Confederates from it. The U.S. Supreme Court has never heard such a case. Arguments about legal precedents go back to a sole 1869 opinion from Chief Justice Salmon Chase, who was hearing an appeal as a circuit judge rather than for the high court.

Trump’s critics have filed dozens of lawsuits seeking to disqualify him, and all failed until Colorado. But they usually failed because the judges dodged the constitutional issues or declared themselves unqualified to rule on them. Presuming it takes the case — and every observer expects it will — the Supreme Court doesn’t have much room left to dodge.

What will the Supreme Court do and when?

Colorado’s Republican Party has already appealed the Colorado ruling, so the justices have had time to think about what they’ll do.

The high court has dozens of different ways it can rule.

It could uphold the Colorado ruling and say Trump is no longer qualified to be president.

The court could say Trump is qualified to be president. That would end all Section 3 challenges, including in Maine.

It could dodge by overruling Colorado on a technicality about the procedures used to get the case there and set itself up for another case in the fall.

It could say Congress makes the final decision.

When the court might rule is another mystery. In Bush v. Gore, the 2000 case that ended the Florida recount and made George W. Bush president, the court ruled in three days. The court could also go slowly and wait until the end of its term on June 30 to rule.

Obviously, that could open the door to more chaos and leave it uncertain during the primaries whether Republicans are voting for someone qualified to be president. That’s why all the parties have sought an expedited appeal and a ruling as quickly as possible.

Aren’t Republicans just going to rule for Trump?

The Colorado high court’s seven justices were all appointed by Democrats. Six of the nine U.S. Supreme Court Justices were appointed by Republicans, three by Trump.

But the Colorado court split 4-3 on the ruling. The majority quoted a ruling from Neil Gorsuch, one of Trump’s conservative Supreme Court appointees, when he was a federal judge in Colorado. He ruled then that the state properly kept a naturalized citizen born in Guyana off the presidential ballot because he didn’t meet the constitutional qualifications.

Democrats have already begun to suggest that Justice Clarence Thomas should recuse himself because his wife, a Republican activist, supported Trump’s effort to overturn his 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden. Thomas has only recused himself from one other case related to the 2020 election and so far the people trying to disqualify Trump haven’t asked him to do so here.

Some of the strongest advocates of using Section 3 against Trump have been prominent conservative legal theorists and lawyers who argue that courts have to follow the actual words of the Constitution. They argue there’s no wiggle room here — Trump is clearly disqualified.

The question of whether Trump is qualified hasn’t broken on traditional partisan lines in the legal world, partly because this is completely new legal ground, it’s hard to predict how individual justices will rule based on their ideology.

But the reason most legal observers expect Trump to win at the high court is because courts are very hesitant to limit voters’ choices. There’s even a term for that — the “political question,” whether a legal dispute is better settled by the people the voters have selected to make the laws than by unelected judges.

If that doesn’t happen, some critics warn, and Trump’s campaign is ended by Section 3, expect it to become weaponized in political races. Imagine a world where any politician’s career can end in a moment when a court or an election official decides that person “engaged in insurrection,” they caution.

Unless the high court shuts this down, they warn, Trump might only be the start.

The Republican candidate appealed the Maine decision by Shenna Bellows, who became the first secretary of state in history to bar someone from running for the presidency under the rarely used Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. That provision prohibits those who “engaged in insurrection” from holding office.

The appeal now goes to Maine’s Superior Court.

Trump was also expected to appeal a similar ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court directly to the U.S. Supreme Court. The nation’s highest court has never issued a decision on Section 3, and the Colorado court’s 4-3 ruling that it applied to Trump was the first time in history the provision was used to bar a presidential contender from the ballot.

Trump’s critics have filed dozens of lawsuits seeking to disqualify him from the ballot in multiple states.

None succeeded until a slim majority of Colorado’s seven justices — all of whom were appointed by Democratic governors — ruled against Trump. Critics warned that it was an overreach and that the court could not simply declare that the Jan. 6 attack was an “insurrection” without a more established judicial process.

A week after Colorado’s ruling, Bellows issued her own. Critics warned it was even more perilous because it could pave the way for partisan election officials to simply disqualify candidates they oppose. Bellows, a former head of Maine’s branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, has previously criticized Trump and his behavior on Jan. 6.

Bellows said her own views had nothing to do with her ruling, which sought to apply the law. She acknowledged the Supreme Court would probably have the final say after the Colorado case but said she still had a responsibility to act. She was the first top election official to do so. Many others, Democrats and Republicans had told activists urging them to strike Trump from the ballot that they did not have that power.

Section 3 is novel legal territory in the past century, barely used since the years after the Civil War, when it kept defeated Confederates from returning to their former government positions. The two-sentence clause says that anyone who swore an oath to “support” the Constitution and then engaged in insurrection cannot hold office unless a two-thirds vote of Congress allows it.

Congress granted amnesty to most former Confederates in 1872, and Section 3 fell into disuse. Legal scholars believe its only application in the 20th century was being cited by Congress in 1919 to block the seating of a socialist who opposed U.S. involvement in World War I and was elected to the House of Representatives.

But it returned to use after Jan. 6, 2021. In 2022, a judge used it to remove a rural New Mexico county commissioner from office after he was convicted of a misdemeanor for entering the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Liberal groups sued to block Republican Reps. Madison Cawthorn and Marjorie Taylor Greene from running for reelection because of their roles on that day. Cawthorn’s case became moot when he lost his primary in 2022, and a judge ruled to keep Greene on the ballot.

Some conservatives warn that, if Trump is removed, political groups will routinely use Section 3 against opponents in unexpected ways. They have suggested it could be used to remove Vice President Kamala Harris, for example, because she raised bail money for people arrested after George Floyd’s murder at the hands of Minneapolis police in 2020.

Trump and his allies have attacked the cases against him as “anti-democratic” and sought to tie them to President Joe Biden because the Colorado case and some others are funded by liberal groups who share prominent donors with the Democratic president. But Biden’s administration has noted that the president has no role in the litigation.

Those who support using the provision against Trump counter that the Jan. 6 attack was unprecedented in American history and that there will be few cases so ripe for Section 3. If the high court lets Trump stay on the ballot, they’ve contended, it will be another example of the former president bending the legal system to excuse his extreme behavior.

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The former president’s campaign plans to immediately appeal Thursday’s decision by Maine’s top election official, as they did the one last week from the Colorado Supreme Court. Both deemed Trump disqualified from the presidency under the 14th Amendment because of his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Trump remains on the ballot in both states for next year’s GOP presidential primary, since both paused implementation of their decision to allow time for higher courts to intervene.

In Maine, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, said in an interview with NBC News that she would have preferred to wait for the U.S. Supreme Court to issue guidance on the novel legal question — no presidential candidate has ever been disqualified under the 14th Amendment — but she said Maine law required her act now. “The country would be well served if the United States Supreme Court issues clear guidance on this unprecedented constitutional question for all to follow,” Bellows said.

Maine election law, an outlier nationally, allows any registered voter to challenge the eligibility of any candidate. It requires the secretary of state to hold a public hearing on the challenge and then issue a decision on a tight timeline. 

Three voters challenged Trump’s eligibility, two on 14th Amendment grounds.

For more on this story go to NBCNews.com.

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The court said Wednesday it will not hear an appeal of a lower court’s ruling from groups seeking to keep Trump from appearing on the ballot.

The state’s high court said in an order that the application by parties to appeal a Dec. 14 Michigan appeals court judgment was considered, but denied “because we are not persuaded that the questions presented should be reviewed by this court.”

The ruling followed a Dec. 19 decision by a divided Colorado Supreme Court which found Trump ineligible to be president because of his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. That ruling was the first time in history that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment has been used to disqualify a presidential candidate.

The Michigan and Colorado cases are among dozens hoping to keep Trump’s name off state ballots. They all point to the so-called insurrection clause that prevents anyone from holding office who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the Constitution.

Trump pressed two election officials in Michigan’s Wayne County not to certify 2020 vote totals, according to a recording of a post-election phone call disclosed in a Dec. 22 report by The Detroit News. The former president ’s 2024 campaign has neither confirmed nor denied the recording’s legitimacy.

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Attorneys for Free Speech for People, a liberal nonprofit group also involved in efforts to keep Trump’s name off the primary ballot in Minnesota, had asked Michigan’s Supreme Court to render its decision by Christmas Day.

The group argued that time was “of the essence” due to “the pressing need to finalize and print the ballots for the presidential primary election.”

Earlier this month, Michigan’s high court refused to immediately hear an appeal, saying the case should remain before the appeals court.

Free Speech for People had sued to force Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson to bar Trump from Michigan’s ballot. But a Michigan Court of Claims judge rejected their arguments, saying in November that it was the proper role of Congress to decide the question.

The attorneys also asserted in a filing late Saturday night that the “historical fallout is tremendous” from the four-count indictment charging Trump with plotting to overturn the election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

No other former president has ever been indicted; Trump has been indicted four times, in both state and federal court, as he campaigns to reclaim the White House.

“The indictment of President Trump threatens to launch cycles of recrimination and politically motivated prosecution that will plague our Nation for many decades to come and stands likely to shatter the very bedrock of our Republic — the confidence of American citizens in an independent judicial system,” the attorneys wrote in a brief filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

At issue before the court, which has set arguments for Jan. 9, is whether Trump is immune from prosecution for what defense lawyers say are official acts that fell within the outer perimeter of a president’s duties and responsibilities.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan earlier this month rejected that argument, siding with prosecutors from special counsel Jack Smith’s team and declaring that the office of the presidency “does not confer a lifelong ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ pass.”

The appeals court’s role in the dispute is center stage after the Supreme Court on Friday rejected a request from Smith to fast-track a decision on the immunity question. After Trump appealed Chutkan’s order, Smith urged swift intervention from the high court in an effort to get a speedy decision that could keep the case on track for a trial scheduled to start on March 4.

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But with that request denied, the two sides are advancing their arguments before the appeals court, where a three-judge panel will decide as early as next month whether to affirm or overrule Chutkan’s decision.

In their latest filing, Trump’s lawyers say that all of the acts Trump is accused of — including urging the Justice Department to investigate claims of voter fraud and telling state election officials that he believed the contests had been tainted by irregularities — are “quintessential” presidential acts that protect him from prosecution.

“They all reflect President Trump’s efforts and duties, squarely as Chief Executive of the United States, to advocate for and defend the integrity of the federal election, in accord with his view that it was tainted by fraud and irregularity,” they said.

They also contend that, under the Constitution, he cannot be criminally prosecuted for conduct for which he was already impeached, but then acquitted, by Congress.

Federal prosecutors, by contrast, say Trump broke the law after the election by scheming to disrupt the Jan. 6, 2021, counting of electoral votes, including by pressing then-Vice President Mike Pence to not certify the results and by participating in a plot to organize slates of fake electors in battleground states won by Biden who would falsely attest that Trump had actually won those states.

Though Trump’s lawyers have suggested that he had a good faith basis to be concerned that fraud had affected the election, courts around the country and Trump’s own attorney general and other government officials have found no evidence that that was the case.

The issue will now be decided by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which has signaled it will act quickly to decide the case. Smith had cautioned that even a rapid appellate decision might not get to the Supreme Court in time for review and final word before the court’s traditional summer break.

Smith had pressed the Supreme Court to intervene over concerns that the legal fight over the issue could delay the start of Trump’s trial, now scheduled for March 4, beyond next year’s presidential election.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan has put the case on hold while Trump pursues his claim in higher courts that he is immune from prosecution. Chutkan raised the possibility of keeping the March date if the case promptly returns to her court.

She already has rejected the Trump team’s arguments that an ex-president could not be prosecuted over acts that fall within the official duties of the job.

“Former presidents enjoy no special conditions on their federal criminal liability,” Chutkan wrote in her Dec. 1 ruling. “Defendant may be subject to federal investigation, indictment, prosecution, conviction, and punishment for any criminal acts undertaken while in office.”

The Supreme Court separately has agreed to hear a case over the charge of obstruction of an official proceeding that has been brought against Trump as well as more than 300 of his supporters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

In the immunity case, Smith had tried to persuade the justices to take up the matter directly, bypassing the appeals court.

“This case presents a fundamental question at the heart of our democracy: whether a former president is absolutely immune from federal prosecution for crimes committed while in office or is constitutionally protected from federal prosecution when he has been impeached but not convicted before the criminal proceedings begin,” prosecutors wrote.

Underscoring the urgency for prosecutors in securing a quick resolution that can push the case forward, Smith and his team wrote: “It is of imperative public importance that respondent’s claims of immunity be resolved by this Court and that respondent’s trial proceed as promptly as possible if his claim of immunity is rejected.”

Justice Department policy prohibits the indictment of a sitting president. Though there’s no such bar against prosecution for a former commander in chief, lawyers for Trump say that he cannot be charged for actions that fell within his official duties as president — a claim that prosecutors have vigorously rejected.

Trump faces charges accusing him of working to overturn the results of the 2020 election he lost to Joe Biden before the violent riot by his supporters at the U.S. Capitol. He has denied any wrongdoing.

The high court still could act quickly once the appeals court issues its decision. A Supreme Court case usually lasts several months, but on rare occasions, the justices shift into high gear.

Nearly 50 years ago, the justices acted within two months of being asked to force President Richard Nixon to turn over Oval Office recordings in the Watergate scandal. The tapes were then used later in 1974 in the corruption prosecutions of Nixon’s former aides.

It took the high court just a few days to effectively decide the 2000 presidential election for Republican George W. Bush over Democrat Al Gore.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing the case, agreed in a three-page order to pause any “further proceedings that would move this case towards trial or impose additional burdens of litigation on Defendant” as an appeals court considers Trump’s immunity arguments.

But she left open the possibility of keeping the current trial date of March 4, 2024, if the case returns to her court, saying that date and other deadlines were being put on pause rather than canceled. She also said her order had no bearing on the enforcement of a gag order placing restrictions on Trump’s speech outside of court.

Special counsel Jack Smith’s team this week asked the U.S. Supreme Court to take up and rule quickly on whether Trump can be prosecuted on charges accusing him of illegally scheming to overturn his election loss to Joe Biden.

Later Monday, the justices indicated they would decide quickly whether to hear the case, ordering Trump’s lawyers to respond by Dec. 20. The court’s brief order did not signal what it ultimately would do.

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Trump appealed to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit after Chutkan turned aside his argument that he is shielded from prosecution for actions he took while fulfilling his duties as president. In her order, Chutkan, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, wrote that the office of the president “does not confer a lifelong ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ pass.”

Smith is attempting to bypass the appeals court, the usual next step in the process, and have the Supreme Court take up the matter directly in the hopes of keeping the March 4 trial date in place.

Smith’s team had told Chutkan not to pause the case, saying the judge could continue to resolve issues unrelated to the appeal while the immunity claim is pending in appeals courts. Prosecutors said they would “continue to meet every pretrial deadline the court has set for it,” so that the case could swiftly move to trial if the higher courts reject Trump’s immunity argument.

A Supreme Court case usually lasts several months, from the time the justices agree to hear it until a final decision. Smith is asking the court to move with unusual, but not unprecedented, speed.

Nearly 50 years ago, the justices acted within two months of being asked to force President Richard Nixon to turn over Oval Office recordings in the Watergate scandal. The tapes were then used later in 1974 in the corruption prosecutions of Nixon’s former aides.

It took the high court just a few days to effectively decide the 2000 presidential election for Republican George W. Bush over Democrat Al Gore.

If the justices decline to step in at this point, Trump’s appeal would continue at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Smith said even a rapid appellate decision might not get to the Supreme Court in time for review and final word before the court’s traditional summer break.

Trump faces four criminal prosecutions in four different cities. He is charged in Florida with illegally retaining classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate and faces a state prosecution in Georgia that accuse him of trying to subvert that state’s 2020 presidential election and a New York case that accuses him of falsifying business records in connection with a hush money payment to a porn actress.

Trump had been expected to return to the witness stand Monday as the last big defense witness in the trial in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit. The case threatens Trump’s real estate empire and cuts to the heart of his image as a successful businessman.

Trump announced he was canceling his testimony in an all-capital letters, multipart statement on his Truth Social platform, writing: “I WILL NOT BE TESTIFYING ON MONDAY.”

“I HAVE ALREADY TESTIFIED TO EVERYTHING & HAVE NOTHING MORE TO SAY,” Trump wrote, adding his oft-repeated claim that James and other Democrats have weaponized the legal system to hinder his chances at retaking the White House.

Trump was often defiant and combative when he testified on Nov. 6. Along with defending his wealth and denying wrongdoing, he repeatedly sparred with the judge, whom he criticized as an “extremely hostile judge,” and slammed James as “a political hack.”

Trump answered questions from state lawyers for about 3½ hours, often responding with lengthy diatribes. His verbose answers irked the judge, Arthur Engoron, who admonished: “This is not a political rally.”

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Had Trump returned to the stand Monday, it would’ve been his defense lawyers leading the questioning, but state lawyers could have cross-examined him.

James sued Trump last year over what she claimed was his pattern of duping banks, insurers and others by inflating his wealth on financial statements.

Engoron ruled before the trial that Trump and other defendants engaged in fraud. He ordered that a receiver take control of some Trump properties, but an appeals court has paused that.

The judge is now considering six other claims, including allegations of conspiracy and insurance fraud. James seeks penalties of more than $300 million and wants Trump banned from doing business in New York.

In recent days, Trump had been insistent on testifying again, one of his lawyers said, even though some of his previous visits to the courthouse as a spectator have resulted in him getting fined for disparaging the judge’s law clerk.

The lawyer, Alina Habba, said she had discouraged Trump from taking the stand because of the gag order that is in place. The same gag order was also in effect when he testified in November.

“He still wants to take the stand, even though my advice is, at this point, you should never take the stand with a gag order,” Habba, told reporters last week. “But he is so firmly against what is happening in this court and so firmly for the old America that we know, not this America, that he will take that stand on Monday.”

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan’s decision amounts to a sharp rejection to challenges the Trump defense team had raised to the four-count indictment in advance of a trial expected to center on the Republican’s multi-pronged efforts to undo the election won by Democrat Joe Biden.

Though the judge turned aside Trump’s expansive view of presidential power, the order might not be the final say in the legal fight. Lawyers for Trump, who has denied any wrongdoing, are expected to quickly appeal to fight what they say an unsettled legal question.

In her ruling, Chutkan said the office of the president “does not confer a lifelong ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ pass.”

“Former Presidents enjoy no special conditions on their federal criminal liability,” Chutkan wrote. “Defendant may be subject to federal investigation, indictment, prosecution, conviction, and punishment for any criminal acts undertaken while in office.”

Chutkan also rejected Trump’s claims that the indictment violates the former president’s free speech rights. Lawyers for Trump had argued that he was within his First Amendment rights to challenge the outcome of the election and to allege that it had been tainted by fraud, and they accused prosecutors of attempting to criminalize political speech and political advocacy.

But Chutkan said “it is well established that the First Amendment does not protect speech that is used as an instrument of a crime.”

“Defendant is not being prosecuted simply for making false statements … but rather for knowingly making false statements in furtherance of a criminal conspiracy and obstructing the electoral process,” she wrote.

An attorney for Trump declined to comment Friday evening.

Her ruling comes the same day the federal appeals court in Washington ruled that lawsuits brought by Democratic lawmakers and police officers who have accused Trump of inciting the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, can move forward.

The appeals court in that case rejected Trump’s sweeping claims that presidential immunity shields him from liability, but left the door open for him to continue to fight, as the cases proceed, to try to prove that his actions were taken his official capacity as president.

Trump’s legal team had argued the criminal case, which is scheduled to go to trial in March, should be dismissed because the 2024 Republican presidential primary front-runner is shielded from prosecution for actions he took while fulfilling his duties as president. They assert that the actions detailed in the indictment — including pressing state officials on the administration of elections — cut to the core of Trump’s responsibilities as commander in chief.

The Supreme Court has held that presidents are immune from civil liability for actions related to their official duties, but the justices have never grappled with the question of whether that immunity extends to criminal prosecution.

The Justice Department has also held that sitting presidents cannot be prosecuted. Trump’s lawyers are trying to ensure that same protection to a former president for actions taken while in office, asserting that no prosecutor since the beginning of American democracy has had the authority to bring such charges.

“Against the weight of that history, Defendant argues in essence that because no other former Presidents have been criminally prosecuted, it would be unconstitutional to start now,” Chutkan wrote. “But while a former President’s prosecution is unprecedented, so too are the allegations that a President committed the crimes with which Defendant is charged.”

Special counsel Jack Smith’s team has said there is nothing in the Constitution, or in court precedent, to support the idea that a former president cannot be prosecuted for criminal conduct committed while in the White House.

“The defendant is not above the law. He is subject to the federal criminal laws like more than 330 million other Americans, including Members of Congress, federal judges, and everyday citizens,” prosecutors wrote in court papers.

It’s one of four criminal cases Trump is facing while he seeks to reclaim the White House in 2024.

Smith has separately charged Trump in Florida with illegally hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate after he left the White House. Trump is also charged in Georgia with conspiring to overturn his election loss to Biden. And he faces charges in New York related to hush-money payments made during the 2016 campaign.

Calling New York City and Chicago “crime dens,” the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination told his audience, “The next time, I’m not waiting. One of the things I did was let them run it and we’re going to show how bad a job they do,” he said. “Well, we did that. We don’t have to wait any longer.”

Trump has not spelled out precisely how he might use the military during a second term, although he and his advisers have suggested they would have wide latitude to call up units. While deploying the military regularly within the country’s borders would be a departure from tradition, the former president already has signaled an aggressive agenda if he wins, from mass deportations to travel bans imposed on certain Muslim-majority countries.

A law first crafted in the nation’s infancy would give Trump as commander in chief almost unfettered power to do so, military and legal experts said in a series of interviews.

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The Insurrection Act allows presidents to call on reserve or active-duty military units to respond to unrest in the states, an authority that is not reviewable by the courts. One of its few guardrails merely requires the president to request that the participants disperse.

“The principal constraint on the president’s use of the Insurrection Act is basically political, that presidents don’t want to be the guy who sent tanks rolling down Main Street,” said Joseph Nunn, a national security expert with the Brennan Center for Justice. “There’s not much really in the law to stay the president’s hand.”

A spokesman for Trump’s campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment about what authority Trump might use to pursue his plans.

Congress passed the act in 1792, just four years after the Constitution was ratified. Nunn said it’s an amalgamation of different statutes enacted between then and the 1870s, a time when there was little in the way of local law enforcement.

“It is a law that in many ways was created for a country that doesn’t exist anymore,” he said.

It also is one of the most substantial exceptions to the Posse Comitatus Act, which generally prohibits using the military for law enforcement purposes.

Trump has spoken openly about his plans should he win the presidency, including using the military at the border and in cities struggling with violent crime. His plans also have included using the military against foreign drug cartels, a view echoed by other Republican primary candidates such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, the former U.N. ambassador and South Carolina governor.

The threats have raised questions about the meaning of military oaths, presidential power and who Trump could appoint to support his approach.

Trump already has suggested he might bring back retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who served briefly as Trump’s national security adviser and twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI during its Russian influence probe before being pardoned by Trump. Flynn suggested in the aftermath of the 2020 election that Trump could seize voting machines and order the military in some states to help rerun the election.

Attempts to invoke the Insurrection Act and use the military for domestic policing would likely elicit pushback from the Pentagon, where the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is Gen. Charles Q. Brown. He was one of the eight members of the Joint Chiefs who signed a memo to military personnel in the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The memo emphasized the oaths they took and called the events of that day, which were intended to stop certification of Democrat Joe Biden‘s victory over Trump, “sedition and insurrection.”

Trump and his party nevertheless retain wide support among those who have served in the military. AP VoteCast, an in-depth survey of more than 94,000 voters nationwide, showed that 59% of U.S. military veterans voted for Trump in the 2020 presidential election. In the 2022 midterms, 57% of military veterans supported Republican candidates.

Presidents have issued a total of 40 proclamations invoking the law, some of those done multiple times for the same crisis, Nunn said. Lyndon Johnson invoked it three times — in Baltimore, Chicago and Washington — in response to the unrest in cities after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968.

During the Civil Rights era, Presidents Johnson, John F. Kennedy and Dwight Eisenhower used the law to protect activists and students desegregating schools. Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne to Little Rock, Arkansas, to protect Black students integrating Central High School after that state’s governor activated the National Guard to keep the students out.

George H.W. Bush was the last president to use the Insurrection Act, a response to riots in Los Angeles in 1992 after the acquittal of the white police officers who beat Black motorist Rodney King in an incident that was videotaped.

Repeated attempts to invoke the act in a new Trump presidency could put pressure on military leaders, who could face consequences for their actions even if done at the direction of the president.

Michael O’Hanlon, director of research in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution think tank, said the question is whether the military is being imaginative enough with the scenarios it has been presenting to future officers. Ambiguity, especially when force is involved, is not something military personnel are comfortable with, he said.

“There are a lot of institutional checks and balances in our country that are pretty well-developed legally, and it’ll make it hard for a president to just do something randomly out of the blue,” said O’Hanlon, who specializes in U.S. defense strategy and the use of military force. “But Trump is good at developing a semi-logical train of thought that might lead to a place where there’s enough mayhem, there’s enough violence and legal murkiness” to call in the military.

Democratic Rep. Pat Ryan of New York, the first graduate of the U.S. Military Academy to represent the congressional district that includes West Point, said he took the oath three times while he was at the school and additional times during his military career. He said there was extensive classroom focus on an officer’s responsibilities to the Constitution and the people under his or her command.

“They really hammer into us the seriousness of the oath and who it was to, and who it wasn’t to,” he said.

Ryan said he thought it was universally understood, but Jan. 6 “was deeply disturbing and a wakeup call for me.” Several veterans and active-duty military personnel were charged with crimes in connection with the assault.

While those connections were troubling, he said he thinks those who harbor similar sentiments make up a very small percentage of the military.

William Banks, a Syracuse University law professor and expert in national security law, said a military officer is not forced to follow “unlawful orders.” That could create a difficult situation for leaders whose units are called on for domestic policing, since they can face charges for taking unlawful actions.

“But there is a big thumb on the scale in favor of the president’s interpretation of whether the order is lawful,” Banks said. “You’d have a really big row to hoe and you would have a big fuss inside the military if you chose not to follow a presidential order.”

Nunn, who has suggested steps to restrict the invocation of the law, said military personnel cannot be ordered to break the law.

“Members of the military are legally obliged to disobey an unlawful order. At the same time, that is a lot to ask of the military because they are also obliged to obey orders,” he said. “And the punishment for disobeying an order that turns out to be lawful is your career is over, and you may well be going to jail for a very long time. The stakes for them are extraordinarily high.”

___

Associated Press writers Jill Colvin and Michelle L. Price in New York, and Linley Sanders in Washington contributed to this report.

The three judges on the panel asked skeptical and at times aggressive questions of attorneys on both sides while weighing whether to put back in place an order from a trial judge that barred Trump from inflammatory comments against prosecutors, potential witnesses and court staff.

The judges raised a litany of hypothetical scenarios that could arise in the months ahead as they considered how to fashion a balance between an order that protects Trump’s First Amendment rights and the need to protect “the criminal trial process and its integrity and its truth finding function.”

“There’s a balance that has to be undertaken here, and it’s a very difficult balance in this context,” Judge Patricia Millett told Cecil VanDevender, a lawyer with special counsel Jack Smith’s office. “But we have to use a careful scalpel here and not step into really sort of skewing the political arena, don’t we?”

VanDevender replied that he agreed but said he believed that the gag order imposed last month does strike the appropriate balance

The court did not immediately rule but its questions left open the possibility that it might narrow the gag order, setting parameters on what Trump, as both a criminal defendant and the leading candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, can and cannot say as the trial date nears. Trump’s team has signaled that it will fight any restrictions to the Supreme Court.

No matter the outcome, the stakes are high given the volume and intensity of Trump’s public comments about the case, the massive public platform he holds on social media and the campaign trail, and the limited legal precedent for restricting speech of political candidates — let alone for the White House — who are criminal defendants.

In a sign of the argument’s import, special counsel Smith himself attended, sitting in the front row of the courtroom in a building just blocks from the U.S. Capitol stormed on Jan. 6, 2021, by rioters motivated by Trump’s false claims about the election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

Monday’s arguments spanned nearly two-and-a-half hours, with Trump lawyer D. John Sauer fielding the majority of questions as he pressed his case that the gag order was overly vague and an unconstitutional muzzling.

“The order is unprecedented, and it sets a terrible precedent for future restrictions on core political speech,” Sauer said. He described it as a “heckler’s veto,” unfairly relying on the theory that Trump’s speech might someday inspire other people to harass or intimidate his targets.

“They can’t draw a causal line from any social media post to threat or harassment when we have wall to wall media coverage of this case,” Sauer told the court.

But those points were greeted coolly by the court.

Judge Brad Garcia pressed Sauer to explain why the court shouldn’t take preventive steps before violence materializes against potential witnesses or others. Another judge noted that a Texas woman who has since been arrested was accused of making a death threat against the judge in the Trump case, Tanya Chutkan, just one day after Trump posted on social: “If you go after me, I’m coming after you!”

“This is predictably going to intensify as well as the threats, so why isn’t the district court justified in taking a more proactive measure and not waiting for more and more threats to occur and stepping in to protect the integrity of the trial?” Garcia said.

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Another judge in the case, Cornelia Pillard, sharply questioned Sauer over whether he believed any restrictions on Trump’s speech were allowed, telling him: “I don’t hear you giving any weight at all to the interest in a fair trial.”

Judge Millett recoiled at Sauer’s argument that Trump was merely engaged in core political speech.

“Labeling it core political speech begs the question if it’s political speech or speech aimed at derailing the criminal process,” she said.

But the judges also repeatedly wondered where to strike a balance, raising the prospect that the order could be narrow. Millett at one point expressed incredulity at the idea that Trump would not be able to respond to criticism by rival candidates in a debate.

“He has to speak Miss Manners while everyone else is throwing targets at him?”

The order has had a whirlwind trajectory through the courts since Chutkan imposed it in response to a request from prosecutors, who cited among other comments Trump’s repeated disparagement of Smith as “deranged.”

The judge lifted it days after entering it, giving Trump’s lawyers time to prove why his words should not be restricted. But after Trump took advantage of that pause with comments that prosecutors said were meant to sway his former chief of staff against giving unfavorable testimony, Chutkan put it back in place.

The appeals court later lifted it as it considered Trump’s appeal.

Pillard and Millett are appointees of former President Barack Obama. Garcia joined the bench earlier this year after being nominated by President Joe Biden. Obama and Biden are Democrats.

The four-count indictment against Trump in Washington is one of four criminal cases he faces as he seeks to reclaim the White House in 2024. The case is set for trial next March 4.

He’s been charged in Florida, also by Smith’s team, with illegally hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. He’s also been charged in state court in New York in connection with hush money payments to porn actor Stormy Daniels, who alleged an extramarital affair with him, and in Georgia with working to subvert the 2020 presidential election in that state.

He has denied any wrongdoing.

“You’ll be able to focus on other things in Texas,” Trump told Abbott as they each appeared before a crowd of about 150 at an airport hangar in Edinburg.

Abbott, a longtime ally and fellow border hawk, said he was proud to endorse the former president, who is the Republican Party’s front-runner for the 2024 nomination.

“We need a president who’s going to secure the border,” Abbott said, speaking in a town that is about 30 miles from the Hidalgo Port of Entry crossing with Mexico. “We need Donald J. Trump back as our president of the United States of America.”

Earlier, Trump served meals to Texas National Guard soldiers, troopers and others who will be stationed at the border over Thanksgiving. Trump and Abbott handed out tacos, and the former president shook hands and posed for pictures.

“What you do is incredible, and you want it to be done right,” Trump told them.

Abbott said about the Guard members and Texas troopers who are stationed at the border: “They should not be here at this time. They should be at home.” He said that ”the only reason why they are here is because we have a president of the United States of America who is not securing our border.”

Trump has been laying out immigration proposals that would mark a dramatic escalation of the approach he used in office and that drew alarms from civil rights activists and numerous court challenges.

“On my first day back in the White House, I will terminate every open-borders policy of the Biden administration. I will stop the invasion on our southern border and begin largest domestic deportation operation in American history,” he said in Iowa Saturday.

He also wants to:

— revive and expand his controversial travel ban, which initially targeted seven Muslim-majority countries. Trump’s initial executive order was fought all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld what Trump complained was a “watered down” version that included travelers from North Korea and some Venezuelan officials.

— begin new “ideological screening” for all immigrants, aiming to bar “Christian-hating communists and Marxists” and “dangerous lunatics, haters, bigots and maniacs” from entering the United States. “Those who come to and join our country must love our country,” he has said.

— bar those who support Hamas. “If you empathize with radical Islamic terrorists and extremists, you’re disqualified,” Trump says. “If you want to abolish the state of Israel, you’re disqualified. If you support Hamas or any ideology that’s having to do with that or any of the other really sick thoughts that go through people’s minds — very dangerous thoughts — you’re disqualified.”

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— deport immigrants living in the country who harbor “jihadist sympathies” and send immigration agents to “pro-jihadist demonstrations” to identify violators. He would target foreign nationals on college campuses and revoke the student visas of those who express anti-American or antisemitic views.

— invoke the Alien Enemies Act to to remove from the United States all known or suspected gang members and drug dealers. That law was used to justify internment camps in World War II. It allows the president to unilaterally detain and deport people who are not U.S. citizens.

— end the constitutional right to birthright citizenship by signing an executive order his first day in office that would codify a legally untested reinterpretation of the 14th Amendment. Under his order, only children with at least one U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident parent would be eligible for a passport, Social Security number and other benefits.

— terminate all work permits and cut off funding for shelter and transportation for people who are in the country illegally.

— build more of the wall along the border, crack down on legal asylum-seekers and reimplement measures such as Title 42, which allowed Trump to turn away immigrants at the U.S.-Mexico border on the grounds of preventing the spread of COVID-19.

— press Congress to pass a law so anyone caught trafficking women or children would receive the death penalty.

— shift federal law enforcement agents, including FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration personnel, to immigration enforcement, and reposition at the southern border thousands of troops currently stationed overseas. “Before we defend the borders of foreign countries we must secure the border of our country,” he said said.

Trump has made frequent trips to the border as a candidate and president. During his 2016 campaign, he traveled to Laredo, Texas in July 2015 for a visit that highlighted how his views on immigration helped him win media attention and support from the GOP base.

The border has also become a centerpiece of Abbott’s agenda and the subject of an escalating fight with the Biden administration over immigration. The three-term governor has approved billions of dollars in new border wall construction, authorized razor wire on the banks of the Rio Grande and bused thousands of migrants to Democrat-led cities across the United States.

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Abbott is expected to soon sign what would be one of Texas’ most aggressive measures to date: a law that allows police officers to arrest migrants suspected of entering the country illegally and empowers judges to effectively deport them. The measure is a dramatic challenge to the U.S. government’s authority over immigration. It already has already drawn rebuke from Mexico.

Still, the Texas GOP’s hard right has not always embraced Abbott. Trump posted on his social media platform earlier this year that the governor was “MISSING IN ACTION!” after Republicans voted to impeach Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Trump ally. Abbott was also booed at a 2022 Trump rally.

But Abbott’s navigation within the GOP has built him broad support in Texas, where he has outperformed more strident Republicans down-ballot and helped the GOP make crucial inroads with Hispanic voters.

Democrats tried to use the trip to portray Trump’s plans as extreme.

“Donald Trump is going after immigrants, our rights our safety and our democracy. And that is what really is on the ballot last year,” Biden reelection campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said on a conference call with reporters.

Pollings show many voters aren’t satisfied with the Biden administration’s handling of the border.

A Marquette Law School poll of registered voters conducted in late September gave Trump a 24-point advantage over Biden on handling immigration and border security issues — 52% to 28%.

Colvin reported from New York. Associated Press writer Will Weissert in Wilmington, Delaware, contributed to this report.

The lawsuit, brought by a left-leaning group on behalf of a group of Republican and independent Colorado voters, contended that Trump’s actions related to the attack ran afoul of a clause in the 14th Amendment that prevents anyone from holding office who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the Constitution.

The decision by District Judge Sarah B. Wallace is the third ruling in a little over a week against lawsuits seeking to knock Trump off the ballot by citing Section 3 of the amendment. The Minnesota Supreme Court last week said Trump could remain on the primary ballot because political parties have sole choice over who appears, while a Michigan judge ruled that Congress is the proper forum for deciding whether Section 3 applies to Trump.

In her decision, Wallace said she found that Trump did in fact “engage in insurrection” on Jan. 6 and rejected his attorneys’ arguments that he was simply engaging in free speech. Normally, that would be enough to disqualify him under Section 3, but she said she couldn’t do so for a presidential candidate.

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Section 3 does not specifically refer to the presidency, as it does members of the U.S. Senate or House of Representatives. Instead, the clause refers to “elector of President and Vice President,” along with civil and military offices.

“Part of the Court’s decision is its reluctance to embrace an interpretation which would disqualify a presidential candidate without a clear, unmistakable indication that such is the intent of Section Three,” the judge wrote in the 102-page ruling.

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung called the ruling “another nail in the coffin of the un-American ballot challenges.”

“These cases represent the most cynical and blatant political attempts to interfere with the upcoming presidential election by desperate Democrats,” Cheung said in a statement.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the group that filed the case, said they would appeal to the Colorado Supreme Court.

“The Court found that Donald Trump engaged in insurrection after a careful and thorough review of the evidence,” said attorney Mario Nicolais, who was representing the voters who brought the lawsuit. “We are very pleased with the opinion and look forward to addressing the sole legal issue on appeal, namely whether Section 3 of the 14th Amendment applies to insurrectionist presidents.”

Whether it’s the Colorado case or one filed in another state, the question ultimately is likely to reach the U.S. Supreme Court, which has never ruled on Section 3. The group suing in the Michigan case, Free Speech for People, filed an appeal Thursday in state court.

Legal experts said it was significant that Wallace found Trump had engaged in insurrection. She wrote that she agreed with the petitioners’ claim that he “incited” the attack.

“It’s a stunning holding for a court to conclude that a former president engaged in insurrection against the United States,” said Derek Muller, a Notre Dame law professor who has followed the case closely. “And there’s a good chance that, on appeal, a court bars him from the ballot.”

Trump has called the attempt to remove “election interference” funded by “dark money” Democratic groups. His attorneys argued in court that Trump was simply engaging in his First Amendment rights on Jan. 6, that he did not incite an insurrection and that Section 3 was never meant to apply to presidential candidates.

They also contended that no single judge should end a candidacy based on an interpretation of a clause that has been used only a handful of times in 150 years.

“The petitioners are asking this court to do something that’s never been done in the history of the United States,” Trump attorney Scott Gessler said during closing arguments. “The evidence doesn’t come close to allowing the court to do it.”

The petitioners argued that there is little ambiguity in Section 3, which was mainly used before Jan. 6 to prevent former Confederates from taking control of the government after the Civil War. It prohibits those who swore an oath to uphold the Constitution and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same” from holding state or federal office, unless granted amnesty by a two-thirds vote of Congress.

During a weeklong hearing earlier this month, they called a law professor who testified that the clause was widely understood to bar former Confederates from becoming president. He also showed post-Civil War documents indicating that even an act such as buying Confederate war bonds could make someone ineligible for office.

The attorneys seeking to knock Trump off the ballot contended he was simply disqualified, as plainly as if he failed to meet the 35-year age limit for the office. That this had never happened before was a reflection, they said, on Trump and his actions.

Legal historians say Section 3 fell into disuse after Congress granted an amnesty from its provisions to most former Confederates in 1872. It was revived after the attack on the Capitol, which was intended to stop Congress’ certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s win.

The case turned on 150-year-old records from the debate over the 14th Amendment. Wallace said there is “scant direct evidence” that the measure was intended to apply to the presidency. She noted that Trump attorneys flagged a finding by one law professor that an early draft specified the presidency and vice presidency, but the final version did not. The provision also refers to “officers of the United States,” a phrase that elsewhere in the Constitution does not include the top two offices.

But the petitioners’ legal historian testified that in the years after the Civil War it was widely understood that Section 3 would prevent Jefferson Davis, the former president of the Confederacy, from being elected president of the United States. He also unearthed records from the debate in which one senator asked if the measure applied to the presidency and an author read back the “officers of the United States” language. The senator who asked the question was then convinced that it did, indeed, include the president, according to the testimony.

“The record demonstrates an appreciable amount of tension between the competing interpretations, and a lack of definitive guidance in the text or historical sources,” Wallace wrote.

The recent cases against Trump mark a new flurry of interest in the long-ignored provision that only started to gain attention after Jan. 6.

The group that filed the Minnesota and Michigan challenges, Free Speech For People, also tried to remove Republican Reps. Madison Cawthorn and Marjorie Taylor Greene from the ballot in 2022 by citing Section 3. Cawthorn’s case became moot when he lost his primary, and a judge ruled against the lawsuit seeking to oust Greene.

CREW successfully used Section 3 to remove a rural New Mexico County Commissioner who entered the Capitol on Jan. 6 and was later convicted of a misdemeanor.

Much of the 2024 presidential campaign has been dominated by the myriad investigations into former President Donald Trump and the subsequent charges against him. But with less than a year until Election Day, Trump is dominating the race for the Republican nomination and has already laid out a sweeping set of policy goals should he win a second term.

His ideas, and even the issues he focuses on most, are wildly different from President Joe Biden’s proposals. If implemented, Trump’s plans would represent a dramatic government overhaul arguably more consequential than that of his first term. His presidency, especially the early days, was marked by chaos, infighting and a wave of hastily written executive orders that were quickly overturned by the courts.

Some of his current ideas would probably end up in court or impeded by Congress. But Trump’s campaign and allied groups are assembling policy books with detailed plans.

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A look at his agenda:

Trump would try to strip tens of thousands of career employees of their civil service protections. That way, they could be fired as he seeks to “totally obliterate the deep state.”

He would try to accomplish that by reissuing a 2020 executive order known as “Schedule F.” That would allow him to reclassify masses of employees, with a particular focus, he has said, on “corrupt bureaucrats who have weaponized our justice system” and “corrupt actors in our national security and intelligence apparatus.” Given his anger at the FBI and federal prosecutors pursuing criminal cases against him, Trump probably would target people linked to those prosecutions for retribution.

Beyond the firings, he wants to crack down on government officials who leak to reporters. He also wants to require that federal employees pass a new civil service test.

Trump has pledged to “immediately stop the invasion of our southern border” and end illegal immigration.

As part of that plan, he says he would immediately direct U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to undertake the largest domestic deportation operation in American history. He would target people who are legally living in the United States but harbor “jihadist sympathies” and revoke the student visas of those who espouse anti-American and antisemitic views.

In a bid to secure the U.S.-Mexico border, Trump says he will move thousands of troops currently stationed overseas and shift federal agents, including those at the Drug Enforcement Administration and FBI, to immigration enforcement. He also wants to build more of the border wall.

Trump wants to reimpose his travel ban that originally targeted seven Muslim-majority countries and expand it to “keep radical Islamic terrorists out of the country.” In the wake of the Hamas attack on Israel, he has pledged to put in place “ideological screening” for immigrants. His aim: bar “dangerous lunatics, haters, bigots, and maniacs,” as well as those who “empathize with radical Islamic terrorists and extremists.”

To deter migrants, he has said he would end birthright citizenship, using an an executive order that would introduce a legally untested interpretation of the 14th Amendment. The order would prevent federal agencies from granting automatic citizenship to the children of people who are in the U.S. illegally. It would require that at least one parent be a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident for their children to be eligible for passports, Social Security numbers and other benefits.

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Trump says he will institute a system of tariffs of perhaps 10% on most foreign goods. Penalties would increase if trade partners manipulate their currencies or engage in other unfair trading practices.

He will urge that Congress pass a “Trump Reciprocal Trade Act,” giving the president authority to impose a reciprocal tariff on any country that imposes one on the U.S.

Much of the agenda focuses on China. Trump has proposed a four-year plan to phase out Chinese imports of essential goods, including electronics, steel and pharmaceuticals. He wants to ban Chinese companies from owning vital U.S. infrastructure in sectors such as energy, technology and agriculture, and says he will force Chinese owners to sell any holdings “that jeopardize America’s national security.”

Trump claims that even before he is inaugurated, he will have settled the war between Russia and Ukraine. That includes, he says, ending the “endless flow of American treasure to Ukraine” and asking European allies to reimburse the U.S. for the cost of rebuilding stockpiles.

It is unclear whether he would insist that Russia withdraw from territory in Ukraine it seized in the war that it launched in February 2022.

Trump has said he will stand with Israel in its war with Hamas and support Israel’s efforts to “destroy” the militant group. He says he will continue to “fundamentally reevaluate” NATO’s purpose and mission.

Trump says he will ask Congress to pass a bill establishing that “only two genders,” as determined at birth, are recognized by the United States.

As part of his crackdown on gender-affirming care, he will declare that hospitals and health care providers that offer transitional hormones or surgery no longer meet federal health and safety standards and will be blocked from receiving federal funds, including Medicaid and Medicare dollars.

He would push Congress to prohibit hormonal or surgical intervention for transgender minors in all 50 states.

Doctors typically guide kids toward therapy before medical intervention. At that point, hormone treatments such as puberty blockers are far more common than surgery. They have been available in the U.S. for more than a decade and are standard treatments backed by major doctors’ organizations, including the American Medical Association.

Trump’s goal, he says, is for the U.S. to have the lowest-cost energy and electricity of any nation in the world, including China.

Under the mantra “DRILL, BABY, DRILL,” he says he would ramp up oil drilling on public lands and offer tax breaks to oil, gas, and coal producers. He would roll back Biden administration efforts to encourage the adoption of electric cars and reverse proposed new pollution limits that would require at least 54% of new vehicles sold in the U.S. to be electric by 2030.

And again, he says, he will exit the Paris Climate Accords, end wind subsidies and eliminate regulations imposed and proposed by the Biden admiration targeting incandescent lightbulbs, gas stoves, dishwashers and shower heads.

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Trump has pledged to terminate the Department of Education, but he also wants to exert enormous influence over local school districts and colleges.

He would push the federal government to give funding preference to states and school districts that abolish teacher tenure, adopt merit pay to reward good teachers and allow the direct election of school principals by parents.

He has said he would cut funding for any school that has a vaccine or mask mandate and will promote prayer in public schools.

Trump also wants a say in school curricula, vowing to fight for “patriotic education.” He says that under his administration, schools will “teach students to love their country, not to hate their country like they’re taught right now” and will promote “the nuclear family” including “the roles of mothers and fathers” and the “things that make men and women different and unique.”

To protect students, he says he will support school districts that allow trained teachers to carry concealed weapons. He would provide federal funding so schools can hire veterans, retired police officers, and other trained gun owners as armed school guards.

Trump wants to force the homeless off city streets by building tent cities on large open parcels of inexpensive land. At the same time, he says he will work with states to ban urban camping, giving violators the choice between being arrested or receiving treatment.

He also wants to bring back large mental institutions to reinstitutionalize those who are “severely mentally ill” or “dangerously deranged.”

Trump would again push to send the National Guard to cities such as Chicago that are struggling with violence. He would use the federal government’s funding and prosecution authorities to strong-arm local governments.

He says he will require local law enforcement agencies that receive Justice Department grants to use controversial policing measures such as stop-and-frisk. As a deterrent, he says local police should be empowered to shoot suspected shoplifters in the act. “Very simply, if you rob a store, you can fully expect to be shot as you are leaving that store,” he said in one recent speech.

Trump has called for the death penalty for drug smugglers and those who traffic women and children. He has also pledged a federal takeover of the nation’s capital, calling Washington a “dirty, crime-ridden death trap” unbefitting of the country.

The Justice Department is opposing the effort to broadcast the trial, scheduled to begin in March, and notes that federal court rules prohibit televised proceedings.

News organizations, including the Associated Press, have argued there has never been a federal case that warrants making an exception to that rule more than a former president standing trial on accusations that he tried to subvert the will of voters in an election.

Lawyers for Trump, who has characterized the case against him as politically motivated, said in court papers late Friday that “every person in America, and beyond, should have the opportunity to study this case firsthand.”

“President Trump absolutely agrees, and in fact demands, that these proceedings should be fully televised so that the American public can see firsthand that this case, just like others, is nothing more than a dreamt-up unconstitutional charade that should never be allowed to happen again,” Trump’s lawyers wrote

Trump was indicted on felony charges in August for working to overturn the results of the 2020 election, which he lost to Democrat Joe Biden, in the run-up to the violent riot at the U.S. Capitol by his supporters. Trump is the Republican front-runner for his party’s presidential nomination in 2024.

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The request for a televised trial comes as the federal election case in Washington has emerged as the most potent and direct legal threat to Trump’s political fortunes.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan has appeared determined to keep the Washington trial date as scheduled.

On Friday, the federal judge in the separate classified documents prosecution of Trump pushed back multiple deadlines in a way that makes it highly unlikely that that case can proceed to trial next May as had been planned. Trump is facing dozens of felony counts under the Espionage Act.

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Richer reported from Boston. Associated Press reporter Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.

Trump’s long-awaited testimony about property valuations and financial statements was punctuated by personal jabs at a judge he said was biased against him and at the state attorney general, whom he derided as a “political hack.” He proudly boasted of his real estate business — “I’m worth billions of dollars more than the financial statements” — and disputed claims that he had deceived banks and insurers.

“This is the opposite of fraud,” he declared. Referring to New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat whose office brought the case, he said, “The fraud is her.”

The testy exchanges underscored Trump’s unwillingness to adapt his famously freewheeling rhetorical style to a formal courtroom setting governed by rules of evidence and legal protocol. But while his presence on the stand was a vivid reminder of the legal woes he faces as he vies to reclaim the White House in 2024, it also functioned as a campaign platform for the former president and leading Republican presidential candidate to raise anew his claims of political persecution at the hands of government lawyers and judges.

“People are sick and tired of what’s happening. I think it is a very sad say for America,” Trump told reporters outside the courtroom after roughly three-and-a-half hours on the stand.

Trump’s testimony got off to a contentious start Monday, with state Judge Arthur Engoron admonishing him to keep his answers concise and reminding him that “this is not a political rally.”

“We don’t have time to waste,” the exasperated judge said at one point. At another, turning to Trump’s attorney, the judge said, “I beseech you to control him if you can. If you can’t, I will.”

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The civil trial is one of numerous legal proceedings Trump is confronting, including federal and state charges accusing him of crimes including illegally hoarding classified documents and scheming to overturn the 2020 presidential election. His legal and political strategies have now become completely intertwined as he hopscotches between campaign events and court hearings — a schedule that will only intensify once his criminal trials begin.

Though the fraud case doesn’t carry the prospect of prison as the criminal prosecutions do, its allegations of financial improprieties cut to the heart of the brand he spent decades crafting, and the suggestion that Trump is worth less than he’s claimed has been interpreted by him as a cutting insult.

“I’m worth billions of dollars more than the financial statements,” he said, telling a state lawyer, “You go around and try and demean me and try and hurt me, probably for political reasons.”

The courtroom at 60 Centre St. has become a familiar destination for Trump. He has spent hours over the past month voluntarily seated at the defense table, observing the proceedings. He took the stand previously, unexpectedly and briefly, after he was accused of violating a partial gag order. He denied violating the rules, but Engoron disagreed and fined him anyway.

His turn as a witness gave him the biggest opportunity yet to respond to allegations against him.

Summoned by lawyers for the state, Trump repeatedly balked at the suggestion that he had ever intended to defraud financial institutions. He said that he’d been misquoted or taken too literally in past public comments about his business dealings and his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, and that disclaimers in his financial statements covered any missteps. And he returned to a familiar position that no one had been victimized.

“Not one bank lost money. Not one insurance company lost money. And the insurance company that you said lost is still my insurance company,” he said. “They’re one of the biggest insurance companies in the world and they don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Tensions between Engoron and Trump, already on display in recent weeks, when the judge fined him a total of $15,000 for incendiary outside-of-court comments, were evident Monday when the ex-president was repeatedly scolded about the length and content of his answers.

“Mr. Kise, can you control your client? This is not a political rally. This is a courtroom,” Engoron told Trump lawyer Christopher Kise, who himself has clashed with the judge. Kise responded that Trump was entitled to latitude as a former president and current candidate taking time away from the campaign to be on the witness stand.

“The court needs to hear what he has to say about these statements, why they’re viable and why there was no intent” to deceive anyone, Kise said.

Engoron, who determined in a ruling earlier that Trump committed fraud for years while building the real estate empire that catapulted him to fame, cautioned at one point that he was prepared to draw “negative inferences” against the former president if he failed to rein in his answers.

“I do not want to hear everything this witness has to say. He has a lot to say that has nothing to do with the case or the questions.”

Despite the testy back-and-forth early in the day, Trump was later able to veer into expansive answers without anyone cutting him off, using the opportunity to rail against James, the judge and the proceedings in general.

“I think that she’s a political hack, and I think she used this case to try and become governor and she used it successfully to become attorney general. I think it’s a disgrace that this case is going on,” Trump said.

James, who was in the courtroom, stared straight ahead at Trump as he spoke and was seen chuckling when Trump suggested she didn’t know anything about one of his properties that’s across the street from her office. Outside court, she said, “At the end of the day the only thing that matters are the facts and the numbers, and numbers, my friends, don’t lie.”

She also told reporters, “He rambled. He hurled insults. But we expected that.”

Of Engoron, Trump said, “He ruled against me and he said I was a fraud before he knew anything about me.”

The questions in Monday’s testimony centered on the core of the allegations by the state attorney general: that Trump and his company intentionally inflated property values and deceived banks and insurers in the pursuit of business deals and loans.

Echoing the stance taken by two of his sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric, in their own testimony, Trump sought to downplay his direct involvement in preparing and assessing the financial statements that the attorney general claims were grossly inflated and fraudulent.

“All I did was authorize and tell people to give whatever is necessary for the accountants to do the statements,” he said. As for the results, “I would look at them, I would see them, and maybe on some occasions, I would have some suggestions.”

He also played down the significance of the statements, which went to banks and others to secure financing and deals. As he had in the lead-up to testifying, Trump pointed to a disclaimer that he said amounted to telling recipients to do their own calculating.

“Banks didn’t find them very relevant, and they had a disclaimer clause — you would call it a worthless statement clause,” he said, insisting that after decades in real estate, “I probably know banks as well as anybody … I know what they look at. They look at the deal, they look at the location.”

He complained that his 2014 financial statements shouldn’t be a subject of the lawsuit at all.

“First of all it’s so long ago, it’s well beyond the statute of limitations,” Trump said before turning on the judge, saying he allowed state lawyers to pursue claims involving such years-old documents “because he always rules against me.”

Engoron said: “You can attack me in whichever way you want but please answer the questions.”

Eric Trump testified Friday that he was relying on accountants to ensure the accuracy of financial statements that authorities say fraudulently exaggerated his father’s wealth and the value of his assets to deceive banks and insurers.

On the witness stand for a second day in the civil case brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, Eric Trump was pressed about what steps he took to verify information before signing documents certifying to lender Deutsche Bank that his father’s financial statements were correct.

The son insisted he would never sign something that was inaccurate.

“I relied on one of the biggest accounting firms in the country. And I relied on a great legal team. And when they gave me comfort that the statement was perfect, I was more than happy to execute,” he said.

Eric Trump’s comments echoed those of his brother, Donald Trump Jr., whose testimony earlier this week appeared to be laying groundwork to blame any irregularities in the financial statements on the Trump Organization’s longtime outside accountant, Donald Bender. Trump Jr. testified that the company “relied heavily on” Bender as “a point person for just about anything we did, accounting wise.”

James’ lawsuit alleges that Donald Trump, his company and top executives, including Eric and Donald Jr., conspired to exaggerate his wealth by billions of dollars on his financial statements. The documents were given to banks, insurers and others to secure loans and make deals.

Another executive of his father’s company testified that Eric Trump was on a video call about his father’s financial statement as recently as 2021. The family and company were aware by then that James’ office was looking into the statements. But Eric reiterated Friday that he had no memory of the call.

“I get thousands of calls,” he said, saying he picks up his phone at 5 a.m. and puts it down at midnight.

Earlier in the trial, appraiser David McArdle testified that Eric Trump took an active interest a decade ago in appraisals of some Trump-owned properties, including a golf course where the family envisioned 71 high-end townhomes in New York’s suburban Westchester County. In an email at the time, McArdle said that “Eric Trump has lofty ideas on value,” assuming the townhouses would easily sell for $1,000 per square foot.

The Trump son has testified that he barely remembers McArdle. But as for his own views on the potential development’s value, “I think a thousand dollars per square foot would absolutely be achievable, yes,” he told the court Thursday. The villas were never built.

Donald Trump and other defendants — including sons Donald Jr. and Eric — deny any wrongdoing. The former president has called the case a “sham,” a “scam,” and “a continuation of the single greatest witch hunt of all time.”

The civil lawsuit is separate from four criminal cases the former president is facing while he campaigns to retake the White House in 2024.

The former president, who has periodically appeared in court to watch the trial, is expected to follow on the witness stand on Monday. His daughter Ivanka Trump is also scheduled to testify next week after an appeals court late Thursday denied her request to delay her testimony.

The Trumps are being summoned to the stand by James’ office, but defense lawyers will also have a chance to question them and can call them back as part of the defense case later.

Judge Arthur Engoron has ordered that a court-appointed receiver take control of some Trump companies, putting the future oversight of Trump Tower and other marquee properties in question. But an appeals court has blocked enforcement of that aspect of Engoron’s ruling for now.

A New York appeals court on Thursday denied a request by Ivanka Trump to avoid testifying in the $250 million fraud trial of her family and its business empire.

Ivanka, the eldest daughter of former President Donald Trump and wife of billionaire Jared Kushner, had argued in part that she would suffer “undue hardship” if she were forced to testify “in the middle of a school week.”

The ruling means Ivanka Trump must appear in Manhattan Supreme Court on Wednesday, as previously ordered. Her father is scheduled to testify in the case Monday.

Ms. Trump’s two adult brothers, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, both testified this week, with Eric returning to the stand Friday morning. Both Trump brothers appeared to try to distance themselves from financial statements at the center of New York Attorney General Letitia James’ civil fraud case.

James alleges a decade-long scheme by Trump Sr., his adult sons, the Trump Organization and others to inflate his net worth in order to get various financial perks, including tax benefits and better loan terms.

James seeks about $250 million in damages, and wants to bar the defendants from running another New York business.

Ivanka Trump was dismissed as a party in the case earlier this year, after an appeals court found that the claims against her fell outside the statute of limitations. Trump Sr., Trump Jr. and Eric remain co-defendants.

In a one-sentence ruling Thursday night, the First Judicial Department of the New York Supreme Court’s Appellate Division denied Ivanka’s bid not to testify.

That decision came just hours after Ivanka’s attorney, Bennett Moskowitz, argued for a temporary stay pending their challenge of Judge Arthur Engoron’s order rejecting her request to avoid the witness stand.

Moskowitz argued that the subpoenas for her testimony were improperly served, that Engoron erred in his prior ruling, and that the court lacked jurisdiction over her because she is not a defendant and does not live in New York.

“Ms. Trump, who resides in Florida with her three minor children, will suffer undue hardship if a stay is denied and she is required to testify at trial in New York in the middle of a school week, in a case she has already been dismissed from, before her appeal is heard,” Moskowitz wrote.

The final line of that filing asked the court to pause the entire trial, which has been ongoing for a month and is expected to continue until late December.

In a response motion opposing Ivanka’s request, James called Trump’s arguments “utterly meritless.”

As a former executive vice president for development and acquisitions at the Trump Organization, Ivanka Trump “has firsthand knowledge of issues that are central to the ongoing trial,” wrote James.

The attorney general also dismissed the notion that a mandatory court appearance would subject Ivanka to undue hardship.

“Ms. Trump’s mere need to attend trial for a single day to testify truthfully is not itself a serious harm that warrants emergency relief,” the AG wrote.

Moskowitz’s reference to Ms. Trumps’ children’s school schedule as a factor in her testimony decision attracted attention online, where some legal experts noted that the Kushner family has more than ample means to afford additional childcare.

They also pointed out that during the Trump presidency, Ivanka frequently accompanied her father on both domestic and overseas trips.

Ivanka Trump asked a New York appeals court to pause the $250 million fraud trial of her family and its business empire as she appeals a judge‘s order requiring her to testify in the case next week.

The request to stay the entire trial came at the tail end of a Thursday court filing arguing that Ivanka Trump will face “undue hardship” if forced to testify — in part because she is scheduled to appear “in the middle of a school week.”

New York Attorney General Letitia James urged the appeals court to reject that request, calling it a “drastic” and baseless move that “would upend an ongoing trial.”

Ivanka Trump’s filing in the First Judicial Department of the New York Supreme Court’s Appellate Division mainly sought a temporary stay of the order for her testimony while she pursues an appeal.

On Wednesday, her attorney filed a notice that she is appealing “each and every part” of Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron’s order rejecting her bid to avoid the witness stand.

She is currently expected to begin testifying next Wednesday, following her father, former President Donald Trump.

Her two adult brothers, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, testified this week.

All three of Ivanka’s family members are named as co-defendants in James’ case, alleging a decade-long scheme to falsely inflate Donald Trump Sr.’s net worth in order to get various financial perks, including tax benefits and better loan terms.

Ivanka Trump was originally listed as a co-defendant as well, but she was removed earlier this year on statute of limitations grounds by a New York appeals court earlier.

James’ lawsuit described her as an executive vice president for development and acquisitions at the Trump Organization until early January 2017, when she became a senior advisor to her father in the White House.

Eric and Trump Jr. took over the Trump Organization after their father became president.

In Thursday’s filing to the appeals court, Ivanka’s attorney argued that she is “beyond the jurisdiction” of Engoron’s court and that the judge made “multiple errors” when he declined to quash subpoenas for her testimony.

The lawyer, Bennett Moskowitz, argued the court lacks personal jurisdiction over Ivanka, noting that she lives not in New York but in Florida.

He also argued that her subpoenas were improperly served. “Ms. Trump, who resides in Florida with her three minor children, will suffer undue hardship if a stay is denied and she is required to testify at trial in New York in the middle of a school week, in a case she has already been dismissed from, before her appeal is heard,” Moskowitz wrote.

James fired back in a court filing later Thursday, calling the arguments about a lack of jurisdiction “utterly meritless.” The attorney general noted that Ivanka owns New York property and “still transacts business in the state.”

“Ms. Trump’s arguments are based on the false premise that witnesses with relevant, firsthand knowledge may be called to testify only if they are ‘a primary actor’ in the case,” James told the appeals court.

Ivanka Trump “has firsthand knowledge of issues that are central to the ongoing trial,” James wrote. “And staying her testimony may well serve to delay the fair and orderly resolution of a trial that has now been proceeding for over almost a month, in which OAG is nearing completion of its case in chief.”

James added: “Ms. Trump’s mere need to attend trial for a single day to testify truthfully is not itself a serious harm that warrants emergency relief.”

The late Ivana Trump’s townhouse in New York has sat on the market for one full year with no takers. In September, it took a $4 million cut from its original asking price, down to $22.5 million. 

The extravagant residence remains virtually untouched since her death in July 2022. In fact, very little has changed since Ivana Trump, former President Donald Trump’s first ex-wife, renovated the home in the 1990s. 

“It’s very beautiful and very French, Versailles-flavored on the inside,” according to the home’s listing agent, J. Roger Erickson of Douglas Elliman. He was hired by Ivana Trump’s estate, which benefits her three children Ivanka, Donald Jr. and Eric, according to Erickson.

The six-story, almost 8,800-square-foot townhouse was built in 1879. It’s still decorated with the late Ivana Trump’s furnishings, clad in red carpets and red silk-covered walls, and dripping with gold accents and ornate crystal chandeliers.

“Ivana said that, ‘The house is as Louis the 16th would have lived if he had money,’ and that sums it up perfectly in her own words,” said Erickson.

In many instances, sellers have their homes professionally staged to make their residence more appealing to prospective buyers. In this case, the interiors at 10 E. 64th St. are still very much in the taste of its late owner.

Since her death from a fall on the home’s grand staircase, the residence remains a time capsule, with family photos still adorning walls and shelves. A large poster of one of Ivana’s magazine cover appearances hangs on a wall outside the home office. Her book “Raising Trump” sits on the coffee table in the living room.

Public records show Ivana bought the limestone townhome in 1992 for $2.5 million. According to Erickson, it was in disrepair when Ivana bought it, and she spent millions to gut renovate and infuse every floor with her distinctive style.

“Over 30 years the market has … skyrocketed,” said Erickson.

The latest asking price puts the townhouse’s price per square foot just under $2,600, in line with the average price per square foot for luxury home sales (top 10% of sales) seen in the third quarter, according to the Elliman Report.

However, the listing, which went up for sale last November, has been on the market longer than average for a townhouse in NYC, which was about five and half months in the same quarter and measured from the last price change to the contract date, according to Jonathan Miller president of Miller Samuel Inc., a real estate appraisal and consulting firm.

When properties like this one linger on the market for longer than the average marketing time, the listing is likely over priced, Miller told CNBC.

“The highly personalized interior decor of this townhouse is also probably contributing to the marketing delay since,” said Miller.

Only time will tell if the recent reduction in asking price will help get the home sold.

Here’s a look around Ivana Trump’s former residence.

Ivana’s former en suite bedroom spans the entire third floor and includes a fireplace and terrace.

The primary bath is covered in pink onyx, mirrors and gold fixtures. It opens to both the bedroom and a leopard-themed library.

The library’s furniture is upholstered in the spotted pattern, as are the pillows, walls and carpeting. The room is appointed with paintings that feature leopards, a small blond doll in a fur coat perched on the leopard sofa, a tray emblazoned with a wildcat, and a photo portrait of a young Ivanka with her mom. Both are pictured seated on the room’s leopard sofa with Ivana wearing a leopard dress as she kisses her daughter’s cheek.

Among the home’s five bedrooms is Ivanka’s former suite which includes a fireplace and canopied bed that is still adorned with a gold crown on top. In the bath, a few of the ceramic tiles on the walls and in the shower are personalized with “Ivanka” handwritten and embellished with hearts.

Off a small kitchen on the second floor is a small dining area with an overhead crystal chandelier hanging directly below a skylight. Ivana’s children would consider selling the home fully furnished, Erickson told CNBC.

In the rear of the townhouse is a 700-square-foot brick courtyard.

Real estate taxes on the residence are almost $10,900 a month or about $130,000 per year, according to the listing.

When Donald Trump tried to buy the Buffalo Bills in 2014, investment bankers doubted the NFL would allow it but encouraged him to stay in the running, according to internal emails aired Tuesday at the former president’s civil fraud trial.

“Trump has little chance of being approved by the NFL,” given that he had owned casinos and had a role in the rival USFL’s 1980s antitrust suit against the NFL, then-Morgan Stanley executive K. Don Cornwell wrote to colleagues in April 2014. “That being said, his strong show of support doesn’t hurt the process.”

“He probably does have the dough” and claimed he’d been courting the NFL, another Morgan Stanley banker, Jeffrey Holzschuh, wrote back, adding: “but never know the real facts with him.”

Three months later, Trump offered $1 billion cash for the Bills, becoming one of three known finalists seeking to buy the team after the death of founder and Hall of Fame owner Ralph Wilson. The owners of the NHL’s Buffalo Sabres, Terry and Kim Pegula, ultimately bought the Bills for $1.4 billion. A group led by rock star Jon Bon Jovi had also been interested in acquiring the team.

A decade later, Trump’s failed Bills bid is one of the business moves under scrutiny in the trial of a lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James. She accuses the ex-president and current Republican 2024 front-runner of deceiving banks, insurers and others by giving them financial statements that massively inflated the values of his assets.

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Trump denies any wrongdoing and says his annual “statements of financial condition” actually lowballed his wealth. He casts the lawsuit as part of an effort by James and other Democrats to choke his campaign.

Trump owned the USFL’s New Jersey Generals and led the upstart league to sue the NFL in the mid-1980s, alleging its established rivals had monopolized professional football. The USFL achieved a Pyrrhic victory, with a jury awarding just $1 in damages — multiplied to $3 via court rules and totaling $3.76 with interest once upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. The USFL, which had sought $1.3 billion, folded shortly after.

Trump testified in the antitrust case that then-NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle floated the idea that Trump could own an NFL franchise and urged him not to sue. Trump said Rozelle also unsuccessfully urged him to abandon plans to switch the USFL’s season from spring to fall. The schedule change, which Trump spearheaded, pitted the USFL against the NFL and was widely blamed for the newer league’s demise.

In offering to buy the Bills, Trump cited his net worth as over $8 billion in an initial offer letter but never provided his financial statements. His then-lawyer Michael Cohen told the bankers that Trump wouldn’t release his financial records until told he was “the final bidder,” according to an email shown in court Tuesday.

Instead, at a presentation to the bankers, Trump handed out copies of one of Forbes magazine’s lists of wealthy celebrities, Cornwell testified. Trump was the star of NBC’s “The Apprentice” at the time.

Throughout the sale process, Cohen insisted Trump was serious about his bid and his commitment to keeping the Bills in Buffalo. Cohen disputed reports that Trump didn’t have the financial resources to pull off the deal, claiming his then-boss was worth billions of dollars and pointing to his many properties as proof.

“There’s nobody more serious than Donald Trump,” Cohen said in an interview with The Associated Press in 2014.

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Once the bids were being formally submitted, Cohen conceded to the AP that Trump’s bid was not going to win. Cohen said the businessman wasn’t interested in paying more than market value for the Bills, a team that had an estimated worth of $870 million but was projected to sell for up to $1.2 billion.

In the early going in May 2014, some Morgan Stanley bankers and an NFL official met to talk about dozens of possible Bills buyers, according to an email shown in court Tuesday.

When it came to Trump, the upshot of the conversation was: “question his liquidity and ability to get votes” from other team owners in an approval vote, according to the email. It also said the league would want to examine management contracts for any Trump-branded casinos, to see whether he had any influence, even if not ownership.

Two months later, Trump hadn’t provided his financial documents, and his bid wasn’t the highest. Still, the bankers prepared talking points that told him his bid was below several others, but “you could prevail if during the diligence process you can move up in value.”

Separately, Cornwell wrote to colleagues in August 2014 that they “still want to keep him around” and said that Trump had asked to be “pre-vetted” privately, so the bank would do so.

“Well… he will stay in process,” Holzschuh wrote to Cornwell a week later, adding that Trump “is very sensitive about his rep” and didn’t want to spend money on the process if the price was going to be too high. But, Holzschuh added, “I encouraged him to put his best offer forward and let the process work.”

Cornwell testified that since the sale was an open process, the bankers “had to talk to all interested parties.”

But Trump lawyer Christopher Kise suggested the bank essentially strung the businessman along, saying: “They never considered him a serious bidder. They took him in to use his name to bid up the price.”

Trump told the AP in 2016 that had he been able to buy the Bills, it’s unlikely that he would’ve run for president.

“If I bought that team, I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing,” he said.

__

Associated Press reporter John Wawrow in Buffalo, New York, contributed to this report.

The ex-president’s eldest son is an executive vice president of the family’s Trump Organization and has been a trustee of a trust set up to hold its assets when his father was in the White House.

At least one of the annual financial statements bore language saying the trustees “are responsible” for the document. But Donald Trump Jr. said he didn’t recall ever working on any of the financial statements and had “no specific knowledge” of them.

The lawsuit centers on whether the former president and his business misled banks and insurers by inflating his net worth on the financial statements. He and other defendants, including sons Donald Jr. and Eric, deny wrongdoing.

Trump Jr. said he signed off on statements as a trustee, but had left the work to outside accountants and the company’s then-finance chief, Allen Weisselberg.

“As a trustee, I have an obligation to listen those who are expert — who have an expertise of these things,” he said.

“I wasn’t working on the document, but if they tell me that it’s accurate, based on their accounting assessment of all of the materials,” he said, “these people had an incredible intimate knowledge, and I relied on them.”

The first family member to testify, he is due to return to the stand Thursday. Next up will be his brother and fellow Trump Organization Executive Vice President Eric Trump and, on Monday, their father — the family patriarch, company founder, former president and 2024 Republican front-runner.

Daughter Ivanka, a former Trump Organization executive and White House adviser, is scheduled to take the stand Nov. 8. But her lawyers on Wednesday appealed Judge Arthur Engoron‘s decision to require her testimony.

New York Attorney General Letitia James brought the lawsuit, alleging that Donald Trump, his company and top executives, including Eric and Donald Jr., conspired to exaggerate his wealth by billions of dollars on his financial statements. The documents were given to banks, insurers and others to secure loans and make deals.

The former president has called the case a “sham,” a “scam,” and “a continuation of the single greatest witch hunt of all time.”

James is a Democrat, as is Engoron, who ruled before the trial that Trump’s financial statements were fraudulent. The judge ordered that a court-appointed receiver seize control of some Trump companies, potentially stripping the former president and his family of such marquee properties as Trump Tower, though an appeals court has halted enforcement for now.

“Leave my children alone, Engoron,” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social site Wednesday, before court convened.

Engoron will decide the current case; state law doesn’t allow for juries in this type of lawsuit, he has said.

The Trumps are being summoned to the stand by James’ office, but defense lawyers will also have a chance to question them and can call them back as part of the defense case later.

During about 85 minutes on the witness stand Wednesday, Trump Jr. seemed collected, quipping “I should have worn makeup” as news photographers took his photo before questioning began.

He made some more lighthearted asides during questioning about his education and career. When asked whether he belonged to an accountants organization, the non-accountant replied, “Sounds very exciting, but no.”

More seriously, he appeared to be laying groundwork to blame any irregularities in the financial statements on the Trump Organization’s longtime outside accountant, Donald Bender. Trump Jr. testified that the company “relied heavily on” Bender as “a point person for just about anything we did, accounting wise.”

Bender, for his part, testified last month that Trump’s company wasn’t always forthcoming with all the information required for the financial statements.

During a deposition, or sworn pretrial questioning, Eric Trump also said he hadn’t had “any involvement in the statement of financial condition, to the best of my knowledge.”

Eric Trump has attended several days of the trial, but his elder brother hadn’t been to court before Wednesday. Out of court, however, Trump Jr. had repeatedly denounced the case and judge.

“It doesn’t matter what the rules are, it doesn’t matter what the Constitution says, it doesn’t matter what general practices and business would be,” Donald Trump Jr. said Monday on Newsmax. “It doesn’t matter. They have a narrative, they have an end goal, and they’ll do whatever it takes to get there.”

State lawyers have asked other witnesses about the Trump children’s roles leading the Trump Organization and their involvement, over the years, in valuing their father’s properties and preparing his financial statements. Their names have also appeared on various emails and documents entered into evidence.

Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump were also heard from — briefly and virtually — earlier in the trial. Snippets of their depositions were shown during opening statements on Oct. 2.

The indictment returned Oct. 25 and unsealed Monday accuses Arthur Ray Hanson II of Huntsville of leaving threatening voicemails for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and Fulton County Sheriff Pat Labat on Aug. 6. Reached by phone Monday, Hanson, 59, said he is not guilty of the charges.

Willis on Aug. 14 obtained an indictment against Trump and 18 other people, accusing them of participating in a wide-ranging scheme to try to illegally overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia. The indictment — the fourth criminal case filed against Trump in a matter of months — had been widely anticipated.

Shortly before the indictment was returned, Labat was asked during a news conference whether Trump would have a mug shot taken if he was indicted. Labat responded, “Unless someone tells me differently, we are following our normal practices and so it doesn’t matter your status, we’ll have a mug shot ready for you.”

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Prosecutors allege that Hanson called the Fulton County government customer service line and left voicemails for the prosecutor and the sheriff about a week before the indictment was returned.

In a message for Willis, Hanson is alleged to have warned her to watch out, that she won’t always have people around who can protect her, that there would be moments when she would be vulnerable. “When you charge Trump on that fourth indictment, anytime you’re alone, be looking over your shoulder,” he said, among other things, according to the indictment.

In the message for Labat, Hanson threatened the sheriff over the idea of taking a mug shot, the indictment says. Among his alleged comments are: “If you take a mug shot of the president and you’re the reason it happened, some bad (expletive)’s gonna happen to you,” and “You gonna get (expletive) up you keep (expletive) with my president.”

Hanson said he’s “not that person that you think at all” and said he didn’t want to explain or talk about a pending case.

“It’s all a bunch of (expletive). That’s all it is,” he said. “Nobody was ever gonna hurt anybody, ever, to my knowledge.”

Hanson made an initial appearance in federal court in Huntsville and is scheduled to be formally arraigned in Atlanta on Nov. 13, prosecutors said in a news release.

“Sending interstate threats to physically harm prosecutors and law enforcement officers is a vile act intended to interfere with the administration of justice and intimidate individuals who accept a solemn duty to protect and safeguard the rights of citizens,” U.S. Attorney Ryan K. Buchanan said in the release. “When someone threatens to harm public servants for doing their jobs to enforce our criminal laws, it potentially weakens the very foundation of our society.”

Hanson is not the first person to be charged over alleged threats made in relation to a criminal case against Trump. A Texas woman was arrested in August, charged with threatening to kill a member of Congress and the federal judge overseeing a criminal case against the former president in Washington.

Attorney Eric Olson recounted Trump’s violent rhetoric preceding the Jan. 6 attack and his encouraging a crowd that came within “40 feet” of the vice president when it stormed the Capitol. He said Trump “summoned and organized the mob.”

“We are here because Trump claims, after all that, that he has the right to be president again,” Olson said. “But our Constitution, the shared charter of our nation, says he cannot do so.”

Trump’s legal team and presidential campaign assailed the lawsuit as little more than an attempt by Democrats to derail his attempt to reclaim his old job. Trump is so far dominating the Republican presidential primary.

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Before the hearing on the lawsuit began, Trump’s lawyers filed a motion to have the judge recuse herself because she had donated in the past to a liberal group in the state. She said no. The campaign also noted the current lawsuit was filed by a liberal nonprofit in a state that voted for Democrat Joe Biden in 2020.

“They send money to these dark money groups — they go to a Democratic jurisdiction and a Democratic judge,” Trump spokesman Jason Miller said.

Monday’s hearing in Colorado state court is in the first of two lawsuits that could end up reaching the U.S. Supreme Court. On Thursday, the Minnesota Supreme Court hears oral arguments in a similar case.

Ultimately, either the Colorado or Minnesota case is expected to land at the U.S. Supreme Court, which has never ruled on the Civil War-era provision. Section Three of the 14th Amendment prohibits those who swore an oath to uphold the Constitution and then “engaged in insurrection” against it from holding higher office.

The Colorado testimony began with details about the Jan. 6 assault that was intended to stop Congress from certifying Biden’s election win. Witnesses included some who were there.

Officer Daniel Hodges of Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department recalled being beaten and having someone try to gouge out his eye as he defended the Capitol from the rioters. Footage from the body camera he was wearing that day was shown in court.

“I was afraid for my life and my colleagues,” Hodges said. “I was afraid for the people in the U.S. Capitol building — congressmen, the vice president and what these people would do to them and how it would affect our democracy.”

Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell testified that members of the House watched the attack on their phones with mounting alarm as they grabbed gas masks and contemplated how to defend themselves. He said they all followed Trump’s messages on Twitter carefully.

“We connected the president’s tweets to our own safety in the chamber and also the integrity of the proceedings,” said Swalwell, who was manager of the House’s impeachment of Trump for the attack and also filed a federal lawsuit against him for inciting the riot.

Former Capitol Police Officer Winston Pingeon testified about several hours of what he called “hand-to-hand combat” with Trump supporters storming the Capitol. The plaintiffs’ lawyers played several videos capturing the day’s violence, as well as a montage of Trump tweets and statements falsely blaming election fraud for his 2020 loss, culminating in his heated speech to the crowd on Jan. 6.

The case will pivot on whether the Jan. 6 attack meets the meaning of “insurrection” in the 14th Amendment. It will also hinge on whether Trump’s action meets the definition of “engaging” and whether the rarely used provision was meant to apply to the presidency.

Trump’s lawyers contend the former president was simply exercising his free speech rights to warn about election results he did not believe were legitimate. They noted cases where the congressional authors of Section Three declined to use it more than a century ago against people who only rhetorically backed the confederacy.

His lawyers said none of the issues are simple in a provision of the Constitution that hasn’t been used in 150 years. In court filings, they said the insurrection clause was never meant to apply to the office of president, which is not mentioned in the text, unlike “Senator or Representative in Congress” and “elector of President and Vice President.”

“This is a legal Hail Mary by the Democrats,” said Mike Davis, an attorney who appeared with representatives of the Trump campaign outside court before the trial began. “This case is going to fail.”

An attorney representing Trump, Scott Gessler, called the lawsuit “anti-democratic” and noted that at least one other presidential candidate — socialist labor organizer Eugene Debs — ran from prison without people trying to disqualify him.

A former Colorado secretary of state, Gessler said there is an informal principle in election law known as “the rule of democracy,” which essentially means to “err on the side of letting people vote” whenever there is an ambiguity.

At the start of Monday’s hearing — held in a large downtown Denver courtroom filled with attorneys, journalists and several armed sheriff’s deputies — the judge rejected the motion by Trump’s attorneys that asked her to step aside because she once contributed money to a liberal group.

Trump’s campaign said it had filed a motion for the judge, Sarah B. Wallace, to recuse herself because she had made a $100 donation in October 2022 to the Colorado Turnout Project, a group whose website says it was formed to “prevent violent insurrections” such as the Jan. 6 attack.

She was appointed to the bench in August of that year by Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat. Wallace denied the motion, saying she didn’t recall the donation, made before she formally took the bench, until the motion was filed and has no preconceptions about the legal issues in the case.

“I will not allow this legal proceeding to turn into a circus,” she said.

It was already expected that the ex-president and sons Donald Jr. and Eric would testify. The timing became clear Friday, when the judge ruled that daughter Ivanka Trump also must take the stand.

The schedule sets up a blockbuster stretch for the trial of New York Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit. She alleges that the former president, now the Republican front-runner for 2024, overstated his wealth for years on financial statements that were given to banks, insurers and others to help secure loans and deals.

Trump denies any wrongdoing and has called the trial a politically motivated sham. James is a Democrat.

Donald Trump and the two sons are defendants in the case, but the state is initially calling them to the stand before the defense begins its case. The defense can then call them again.

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Ivanka Trump was dismissed as a defendant months ago. Defense attorneys and her lawyer contended that she shouldn’t have to testify, noting that she moved out of New York and left her Trump Organization job in 2017. The state’s lawyers argued that the former Trump Organization executive vice president has relevant information.

Judge Arthur Engoron sided with the state, citing documents showing that Ivanka Trump continued to have ties to some businesses in New York and still owns Manhattan apartments.

“Ms. Trump has clearly availed herself of the privilege of doing business in New York,” Engoron said. He said her testimony wouldn’t be scheduled before Nov. 1, to give her lawyers time to appeal. Her brothers are set to testify next Wednesday and Thursday.

In a surprise appearance on the witness stand, Donald Trump ended up briefly testifying Wednesday to answer Engoron’s questions about an out-of-court comment.

Ivanka Trump’s lawyer, Bennet Moskowitz, had told the judge Friday that state lawyers “just don’t have jurisdiction over her.”

A state appeals court in June tossed the claims against her as too old. Ivanka Trump announced in January 2017, ahead of her father’s inauguration, that she was stepping away from her Trump Organization job. She soon became an unpaid senior adviser in the Trump White House. After her father’s term ended, she moved to Florida.

“The idea that somehow Ms. Trump is under the control of the Trump Organization or any of the defendants, her father — anyone who has raised a daughter past the age of 13 knows that they’re not under their control,” said Christopher Kise, a lawyer for the ex-president.

Kise maintained that state lawyers “just want another free-for-all on another of President Trump’s children.”

State lawyers, however, argued that Ivanka Trump was a key participant in some events discussed in the case and remains financially and professionally intertwined with the family business and its leaders.

“She is 100% someone who can come in and testify,” said Kevin Wallace, a lawyer for the attorney general’s office.

Associated Press writer Michael R. Sisak contributed to this report.

The former president ignores and antagonizes anyone who tells him no. He built a business — and later political — brand as someone who says and does what he wants, largely without consequence. Even after losing the White House, Trump remains accustomed to deference, surrounded by people who greet him with nightly standing ovations at his clubs and cheer his most outrageous lies.

But Trump came face-to-face with a new reality Wednesday when he was called to the witness stand and fined $10,000 for violating a gag order prohibiting him from attacking court personnel in his New York civil fraud case. Trump denied he was referring to a senior law clerk when he told reporters in the courthouse hallway that someone “sitting alongside” Judge Arthur Engoron was “perhaps even much more partisan than he is.”

Engoron wasn’t having it.

“I find that the witness is not credible,” he concluded before issuing the fine. Minutes later, Trump stormed out of the courtroom in an apparent fit of anger.

The $10,000 holds little financial consequence for a wealthy defendant who flew to his appearance aboard a private jet.

But the courtroom drama previews the tensions mounting between Trump’s competing legal and political interests as he vies for the Republican presidential nomination while facing a litany of criminal and civil cases. And it underscores how efforts to hold Trump accountable are testing the legal system in unprecedented ways as judges struggle with how to rein in the former president’s inflammatory rhetoric while balancing the free speech rights of a political candidate.

“It’s really a new frontier for the legal system, and the legal system is really struggling with how to control this man who has no respect for the rule of law,” said Jimmy Gurule, a Notre Dame law school professor.

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The court system has never encountered this type of defendant. Trump is not only a former president, but also the leading candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. He has turned his legal fights into a centerpiece of his campaign while also painting himself as the victim of coordinated political persecution.

Lawyers typically tell criminal defendants to stay quiet, knowing prosecutors can use any utterance against them. But Trump has turned the camera-lined hallway outside the courtroom into his own personal campaign stage, holding impromptu press conferences multiple times a day as he enters and exits the room. He also broadcasts his grievances on his social media platform, where he regularly slams Engoron as “a Radical Left Democrat” controlled by New York Attorney General Letitia James “and her Thugs.”

Gurule said courts are hamstrung in trying to punish Trump the way they would normal defendants because of his position and personal wealth. A $10,000 fine is unlikely to deter someone as rich as Trump. And while Engoron floated the possibility of holding Trump “in contempt of court, and possibly imprisoning him” for further violations, jailing an ex-president who is under Secret Service protection would present enormous logistical challenges, in addition to the grave political implications of putting a leading political candidate behind bars.

The absence of meaningful consequences raises questions about whether Trump’s prominence has allowed him to exist under a “different standard of law” than other defendants, Gurule said.

Indeed, fines and the threat of jail haven’t deterred Trump yet. Just days ago, he was fined $5,000 for violating the same gag order, which Engoron imposed after Trump targeted his principal law clerk on social media. While Trump immediately deleted the post, the court later learned that a copy remained posted on his campaign website, which his attorneys called an unintentional oversight.

But Trump, so far, has capitalized politically on his trials, plastering his mug shot on merchandise that has brought in millions of dollars and fundraising off every development. Trump fretted last week that his appearances in court weren’t drawing as much media attention with the spotlight turned to the war in the Middle East and the House speakership debacle. But with the latest courtroom drama, he was once again making headlines, overshadowing his rivals and filling his campaign coffers.

“For some people, this is what they like about Trump — that he doesn’t back down, he pushes against others and he is his own master. But in the world of the courts, the rules are different,” said Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor and professor at Loyola Law School.

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While Trump’s tactics may have political benefits, they could also help prosecutors argue the former president believes he’s above the law.

“If he disregards orders of the court, then it may add to the argument that he was disregarding other laws as well,” she said.

“By his actions, he’s messaging that the laws don’t apply to me. And that’s problematic because a good prosecutor — and I think Jack Smith is a good prosecutor — can use that at the right time against him,” Levenson said, referring to the special prosecutor overseeing the federal cases against Trump.

Indeed, things are likely to get much more complicated for Trump in the coming months as his four criminal trials get underway. While the New York fraud case is a civil trial at which Trump has appeared voluntarily, he is likely to face far tougher restrictions and harsher punishments in his criminal cases.

In 2017, a federal judge in Brooklyn revoked the bail of pharmaceutical company CEO Martin Shkreli, who had been convicted of fraud, and sent him to jail after he went on social media and offered a $5,000 bounty to anyone who could get him a strand of Democrat Hillary Clinton’s hair. Shkreli’s lawyers said he was just joking, but the judge called that offer “a solicitation of an assault.”

More recently, a federal judge in Manhattan revoked the bail of former cryptocurrency mogul Sam Bankman-Fried while he awaited trial on fraud charges after he gave journalists copies of the private writings of his former girlfriend, who was set to testify against him at a trial. The judge ruled that amounted to witness tampering.

Trump has so far seemed to abide by a separate gag order imposed by the judge overseeing his 2020 election interference criminal case in Washington. Trump has decried the order, which barred him from making public statements targeting prosecutors, court staff and potential witnesses, as unconstitutional and is appealing. But he waited until it was temporarily lifted Friday to resume his public attacks against Smith and label those who have made cooperation deals with prosecutors “weaklings and cowards.”

Prosecutors asked late Wednesday for the gag order to be reinstated, citing recent social media posts about Trump’s former chief of staff that they said represented an attempt to influence and intimidate him.

Trump has also avoided inflammatory remarks against Judge Aileen Cannon, who is overseeing the case into his alleged hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago club, and whom he appointed.

In a typical court proceeding, a judge would likely be more concerned about whether a defendant has blatantly broken court rules, like trying to speak to jurors or threatening witnesses, than stray comments made outside of court about feeling like court personnel are biased. But Trump has an unparalleled megaphone, making his message potentially more dangerous at a time when judges are increasingly under threat.

The judge in Trump’s hush-money criminal case, Juan Manuel Merchan, received dozens of death threats around the time of Trump’s arraignment in April after the former president lashed out at him on social media. New York court officials have beefed up security for judges and court personnel involved in Trump matters in the wake of the threats.

“In the current overheated climate, incendiary untruths can, and in some cases already have, led to serious physical harm, and worse,” Engoron said upon fining Trump on Friday.

___ Tucker reported from Washington and Durkin Richer from Boston. Associated Press writers Michael R. Sisak, Michelle L. Price, Jake Offenhartz and Jennifer Peltz contributed to this report.

The visibly angry former president’s sudden departure elicited gasps from the courtroom and sent his own Secret Service agents chasing after him, NBC News reported.

Trump left while Michael Cohen, his former personal lawyer who is a star witness against him in the case, was still on the stand.

Cohen, under cross-examination, said he did not recall if Trump had asked him to inflate the values of his assets on financial records at the heart of the civil case.

Cliff Robert, an attorney for the Trump family, then asked Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron for a directed verdict based on Cohen’s answer. The judge denied the request — and Trump immediately got up and left.

It was only the latest clash between the judge and the defendants that afternoon.

Shortly beforehand, Engoron fined Trump $10,000 for once again violating a gag order barring him from targeting the judge’s staff.

Engoron had summoned Trump to the witness stand to explain comments he made outside the courtroom earlier in the day, when he complained about a “very partisan judge with a person who’s very partisan sitting alongside him, perhaps even much more partisan than he is.”

The judge took that as a reference to his law clerk, Allison Greenfield, who sits next to Engoron in court.

Trump had previously been barred from making public statements about Engoron’s staff, after he sent a social media post attacking Greenfield on the second day of the trial.

Under questioning from Engoron about his latest remarks, Trump said that he was referring to Cohen, who has been testifying throughout the trial day.

But Engoron said that answer was not credible, based on the language Trump used.

“Don’t do it again or it will be worse,” Engoron warned after issuing the fine.

Engoron’s ruling is the second time Trump has been found in violation of his gag order in the civil fraud trial. Engoron fined Trump $5,000 last week, warning that future violations could carry much more severe sanctions, including imprisonment.

The fireworks came at the end of the second day of testimony from Cohen, who faced a barrage of attacks about his credibility as a witness.

Trump and his legal team had spent much of the previous trial day targeting Cohen’s criminal history, attempting to paint him as a “serial liar” whose word could not be trusted.

Trump doubled down Wednesday during a mid-morning break, saying Cohen “went to jail for lying” and branding him “a totally discredited witness.”

New York Attorney General Letitia James’ civil case accuses Trump, his two adult sons, the Trump Organization and top executives of falsely inflating the values of Trump’s real estate properties and other assets in order to get tax benefits and better loan terms.

James seeks around $250 million in damages, and she wants to bar Trump and his co-defendants from running another business in New York.

In his first day on the stand, Cohen had accused Trump of directing him and another Trump Organization executive to falsely inflate the values of his assets on financial statements.

Trump “would look at the total assets and say, ‘I’m actually not worth $4.5 billion. I am really worth more like $6 billion,'” Cohen testified under oath.

But Trump’s attorney Alina Habba grilled Cohen on cross-examination, highlighting his 2018 guilty plea on charges including lying to Congress. Habba asked him if he lied to the judge in that case during his plea hearing, and Cohen replied that he had.

On Wednesday, Habba picked up where she left off, needling Cohen on his admission of lying to the judge before accusing him of “cashing in” on his current antagonism toward Trump.

Cohen has implicated his former boss in some of the crimes that he himself pleaded guilty to, including making secret hush-money payments to women who said they had extramarital affairs with Trump, and lying about his business dealings with Russia. Trump has pleaded not guilty in a separate New York criminal case charging him with falsifying business records related to the hush-money payments.

Cohen, Trump’s once-loyal aide, is now a star witness against him in James’ trial. Cohen’s 2019 testimony to Congress about Trump’s allegedly fraudulent business practices is what led James to open her sweeping investigation.

Engoron, who will deliver verdicts in the no-jury trial, has already found Trump liable for fraud and ordered the cancellation of the defendants’ New York business certificates. The trial, which is expected to stretch into late December, will resolve James’ six remaining claims.

Cohen’s ‘animosity’ toward Trump in focus

Habba, in an apparent attempt to establish a financial motive for the witness, contrasted Cohen’s current loathing for Trump with his past statements overflowing with praise for his then-boss.

Cohen confirmed in court that he once had said he would “take a bullet” for Trump and had vowed to “never walk away” from him.

She then questioned whether Cohen sought a job in Trump’s White House following his 2016 election victory. Cohen said he did not, adding that he received the job of personal attorney that he had asked for.

Habba quoted Cohen’s words from his tell-all memoir “Disloyal,” saying that “of course” he was “cashing in” on his relationship with Trump.

When she asked if Cohen had “significant animosity” toward Trump, Cohen replied, “Yes, I do.”

Cohen also agreed that his career now involves publicly attacking Trump.

The bubbling tensions between the lawyers and the witness occasionally boiled over.

“I have answered every question that you want. Why are you screaming at me?” Cohen asked Habba at one point. 

Trump, who stared down Cohen in court on Tuesday, repeatedly attacked his former lawyer in between the proceedings. He called Cohen a “proven liar,” a “felon” and a “disgrace” outside the courtroom.

He launched more attacks on social media, writing Tuesday evening that Cohen “was a complete and total disaster” in the trial.

“Lie after lie, and getting caught each time,” claimed Trump.

Cohen declined CNBC’s request for comment ahead of his testimony Wednesday, noting in an email that Engoron has directed him not to discuss the case while he is a witness.

An attorney for Cohen did not respond to a request for comment.

This is developing news. Please check back for updates.

The motions filed late Monday in the case charging the Republican with plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 election he lost are on top of a pending argument by defense attorneys that he is immune from federal prosecution for actions taken within his official role as president.

Special counsel Jack Smith’s team urged a judge last week to reject that argument and is expected to do the same for the latest motions. It is routine for defendants to ask a judge to dismiss the charges against them, but such requests are rarely granted. In Trump’s case, though, the challenges to the indictment could at a minimum force a delay in a prosecution that is set for trial in Washington next March.

Taken together, the motions cut to the heart of some of Trump’s most oft-repeated public defenses: that he is being prosecuted for political reasons by the Biden administration Justice Department and that he was within his First Amendment rights to challenge the outcome of the election and to allege that it had been tainted by fraud — a finding not supported by courts across the country or even by Trump’s own attorney general.

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The lawyers claim prosecutors are attempting to criminalize political speech and political advocacy, arguing that First Amendment protections extend even to statements “made in advocating for government officials to act on one’s views.” They said the prosecution team “cannot criminalize claims that the 2020 Presidential election was stolen” nor “impose its views on a disputed political question” like the election’s integrity.

“The fact that the indictment alleges that the speech at issue was supposedly, according to the prosecution, ‘false’ makes no difference,” the defense wrote. “Under the First Amendment, each individual American participating in a free marketplace of ideas — not the federal Government — decides for him or herself what is true and false on great disputed social and political questions.”

Smith’s team conceded at the outset of the four-count indictment that Trump could indeed lawfully challenge his loss to Democrat Joe Biden but said his actions went far beyond that, including by illegally conspiring to block the official counting of electoral votes by Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, when rioters who supported him stormed the Capitol and caused a violent clash with police and a delay to the proceedings. A spokesman for Smith declined to comment on Tuesday.

The defense lawyers also contend that Trump, the early front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, is being prosecuted for vindictive and political reasons, alleging that “Biden’s publicly stated objective is to use the criminal justice system to incapacitate President Trump, his main political rival and the leading candidate in the upcoming election.” It says the Justice Department appointed Smith as special counsel last year as a way to “insulate Biden and his supporters from scrutiny of their obvious and illegal bias.”

Trump’s lawyers are also asking to strike from the indictment references to the pro-Trump mob’s attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6 because they say prosecutors have not accused the then-president of inciting the riot.

“Allegations in the indictment relating to these actions, when President Trump has not been charged with responsibility for them, is highly prejudicial and inflammatory because members of the jury may wrongfully impute fault to President Trump for these actions,” his attorneys wrote.

___

Richer reported from Boston.

It was a fraught face-to-face encounter between Trump and the now-disbarred lawyer who once pledged to “take a bullet” for him. Cohen eventually ended up in prison and became a prominent witness against his former boss in venues from courthouses to Congress.

Now, Cohen is a key figure in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit alleging that Trump and his company duped banks, insurers and others by giving them financial statements that inflated his wealth.

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“I was tasked by Mr. Trump to increase the total assets, based upon a number that he arbitrarily elected,” Cohen testified, saying that he and former Trump Organization finance chief Allen Weisselberg labored “to reverse-engineer the various different asset classes, increase those assets, in order to achieve a number that Mr. Trump had tasked us.”

Asked what that number was, Cohen replied: “Whatever number Trump told us to.”

Trump denies James’ allegations. Outside court, Trump dismissed Cohen’s account as the words of “a proven liar” who pleaded guilty to tax evasion, lying to Congress and campaign finance violations.

“I’m not worried at all about his testimony,” Trump said, adding: “He’s not a credible witness.”

In another possible legal blow to Trump, nearly 1,000 miles away in Atlanta, attorney Jenna Ellis pleaded guilty on Tuesday to a felony charge over efforts to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia.

Ellis, the fourth defendant in the case to enter into a plea deal with prosecutors, was one of 18 charged alongside Trump.

In New York, the former president and Republican 2024 front-runner voluntarily came to court for the highly anticipated testimony, attending the Manhattan trial for a sixth day this month. Cohen has said he hadn’t seen Trump for five years until now.

“Heck of a reunion,” Cohen said during the court break. Earlier, he insisted outside court that “this is not about Donald Trump vs. Michael Cohen or Michael Cohen vs. Donald Trump. This is about accountability, plain and simple.”

As Cohen testified, Trump at times whispered to his lawyers. At other points, the former president hunched forward in his seat, watching intently, or leaned back with crossed arms.

Cohen, meanwhile, looked away from his former employer, keeping his eyes on state lawyer Colleen Faherty.

Trump, Cohen said, would summon him and Weisselberg and say, for example: “I’m actually not worth four and a half billion dollars. I’m really worth more of six.”

Cohen said he and the finance chief would then “inflate the value” of Trump properties by pegging them to “comparable” real estate that was actually different — brand-new developments with higher ceilings, more sweeping views and no rent regulation, for instance.

Insurance company executives were shown the inflated statements, where the combination of extremely high values and low liabilities could net Trump more favorable premiums, Cohen testified. Plus, he said, Trump would deliberately show up about three-quarters of the way through his deputies’ meetings with insurers and spark a conversation to the effect that he was rich enough to self-insure if he couldn’t get a good premium.

Drawing emphatic head-shaking from Trump, Cohen said Weisselberg indicated that he spoke to Donald Trump Jr. and siblings Eric and Ivanka Trump before preparing their father’s financial statements.

The two sons are defendants in the lawsuit and deny wrongdoing. An appeals court dismissed Ivanka Trump from the case in June.

Judge Arthur Engoron already has ruled that Trump and his company committed fraud. The trial involves remaining claims of conspiracy, insurance fraud and falsifying business records.

Trump says his assets were actually undervalued, and he maintains that disclaimers on his financial statements essentially told recipients to check the numbers out for themselves.

He has derided the case as a “sham,” a “scam” and “a continuation of the single greatest witch hunt of all time.” The ex-president argues that the case is part of an effort by James and other Democrats to drag down his campaign.

Cohen spent a decade as Trump’s fiercely loyal personal lawyer before famously breaking with him in 2018 amid a federal investigation that sent Cohen to federal prison. He is also a major prosecution witness in Trump’s separate Manhattan hush-money criminal case, scheduled for trial next spring.

James has credited Cohen as the impetus for her civil investigation, which led to the fraud lawsuit and trial. She cited Cohen’s testimony to Congress in 2019 that Trump had a history of misrepresenting the value of assets to gain favorable loan terms and tax benefits.

Earlier this month, Trump dropped a $500 million lawsuit that accused Cohen of “spreading falsehoods,” causing “vast reputational harm” and breaking a confidentiality agreement for talking publicly about the hush-money payments. A Trump spokesperson said the former president was only pausing the lawsuit, while campaigning and fighting four criminal cases, and would refile later.

Cohen took the stand after William Kelly, an attorney for Trump’s longtime former accounting firm, Mazars USA. The firm cut ties with Trump last year after James’ office questioned the reliability of his financial statements, though Mazars said it hadn’t found any “material discrepancies” in the statements as a whole, however.

Defense lawyer Jesus M. Suarez suggested that the accounting firm abandoned its longtime clients to get in the attorney general’s good graces and head off potential legal problems. But Kelly insisted “there was no currying favor” and Mazars was just “being a good corporate citizen.”

Trump’s attorneys sought to delay the trial Tuesday, arguing that coronavirus cases among James’ staff put the former president’s health at risk. The attorney general’s office, in a statement, said it had taken all steps to notify the relevant parties and had followed health guidance.

Trump later complained outside court that “what they did with COVID in the courtroom was a disgrace,” but he and the attorneys beside him didn’t don masks.

Associated Press writer Michael R. Sisak contributed to this report.

Returning to the Granite State to register for its presidential primary, Trump held a rally where he railed against President Joe Biden’s response to the Hamas attack on Israel and vowed to build an Iron Dome-style missile defense shield over the U.S.

But he focused much of his dark and at times profane speech on the criminal and civil cases against him, at one point suggesting he would go to prison like the former South African president who spent 27 years in prison for opposing South Africa’s apartheid system and was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize.

“I don’t mind being Nelson Mandela because I’m doing it for a reason,” Trump told am amped-up crowd of supporters at a sports complex in Derry, New Hampshire. “We’ve got to save our country from these fascists, these lunatics that we’re dealing with. They’re horrible people and they’re destroying our country.”

Trump is facing four criminal indictments as well as civil trials that span allegations that he inflated his worth, misclassified hush money payments to women during his 2016 campaign, illegally tried to overturn his 2020 election loss and hoarded classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago club.

The comments came after Trump formally filed for the first-in-the-nation primary, becoming the first person who has served as president to do so in person more than once.

“Vote for Trump and solve your problems,” he wrote on the commemorative poster at the statehouse in Concord that all the candidates are asked to sign.

Candidates this year have until Oct. 27 to officially sign up, and dozens are expected to do so. The process is easy: They only need to meet the basic requirements to be president, fill out a one-page form and pay a $1,000 filing fee. In 2020, 33 Democrats and 17 Republicans signed up. The all-time high was 1992, when 61 people got on the ballot.

Trump won both the 2016 and 2020 Republican primaries in New Hampshire but lost the state in both general elections.

After signing up for the 2016 contest on the first day of the filing period eight years ago, Trump sent then-Vice President Mike Pence to file his paperwork for the 2020 contest. That was in keeping with a tradition of other incumbents who also sent surrogates, but his return on Monday was something new.

Also new was the security surrounding his visit. Only supporters selected by the campaign were allowed to line the hallway to the secretary of state’s office at the Statehouse, and access to the building was restricted.

In 2015, he used the experience in part to boast about his personal wealth.

“They wanted a cashier’s check,” Trump said. “So this is from a bank that’s not actually as rich as we are.”

On Monday, he touted his wide lead in current New Hampshire polls and noted that support for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has dropped significantly.

“Bad things are happening, but we keep going up,” he said.

Later, at his rally, Trump continued to criticize Biden’s response to the Hamas attack on Israel, calling the speech the president gave in response to the war last Thursday night “a grotesque betrayal of Israel” and “one of the most dangerous and deluded speeches ever delivered from the Oval Office.”

He charged that Biden, in linking the threats posed by Hamas and Russia, “went before the American people and said that if you want to support Israel, then you have to give a blank check” to help Ukraine stave off Russia’s ongoing invasion.

To protect the country, Trump said that, if he returns to the White House, he will order the construction of a state-of-the-art missile defense shield over the U.S. that he said would be “capable of blasting Chinese, Russian, and Iranian missiles out of our skies.”

“Americans deserve an Iron Dome, and that’s what we’re going to have,” he said, referring to Israel’s vaunted defense system, which has intercepted thousands of missiles in the days since the attack.

In the weeks since, Trump has been leaning into the anti-immigration rhetoric that fueled his 2016 campaign, calling for an expanded Muslim travel ban and new ideological tests for immigrants. He has also warned that those who want to do harm to the U.S. may be infiltrating the country’s southern border along with South American migrants.

He read the lyrics of “The Snake,” a dark song that he’s used since his first campaign as an allegory of what he says are the dangers of illegal immigration, and claimed Biden would turn the country “into a hotbed for jihadists and make our cities into dumping grounds resembling the Gaza Strip.”

At a news conference Monday, New Hampshire Democrats criticized Trump and predicted state voters would reject him if he becomes the GOP nominee.

“At a time when our country confronts significant problems at home and around the world, and when our global leadership is as indispensable as ever, we need to be united. But Trump is incapable of bringing us together,” said U.S. Sen. Maggie Hassan, a Democrat. “We are the Live Free or Die State: We have no use for a man who would overturn our elections or praise dictators. I know that as Granite Staters and Americans, we will reject Trump and we will win next November.”

A recent Saint Anselm College poll had Trump leading Haley in New Hampshire by a 45% to 15% margin, and a University of New Hampshire poll had him in first at 39%, followed by Vivek Ramaswamy at 13%. A Suffolk University poll released two week’s ago had Trump at 49%, followed by Haley at 19%.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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When Republicans gathered on December 14, 2020, claiming to be legitimate electors casting the state’s 16 electoral votes for Donald Trump, they met at the Georgia Capitol in a room just upstairs from the building’s public entrance. A Trump campaign official asked for the electors’ “complete discretion,” telling them to say only that they were meeting with two state senators who were there.

“Your duties are imperative to ensure the end result — a win in Georgia for President Trump — but will be hampered unless we have complete secrecy and discretion,” Robert Sinners wrote in an email uncovered by investigators.

But reporters for The Associated Press and other news organizations noticed the Republicans entering the building and were eventually admitted into the room, where they photographed and recorded video of the proceeding. In the chaotic weeks after the 2020 election, the gathering’s significance wasn’t immediately clear. But it has emerged as a critical element to the prosecution of Trump and 18 others who were indicted by a Georgia grand jury in August for efforts to overturn Democrat Joe Biden‘s narrow win in the state.

Donald Trump Oct 20, 2023

Trump co-defendant Kenneth Chesebro strikes plea deal with Georgia prosecutors

Donald Trump Oct 19, 2023

Sidney Powell pleads guilty over efforts to overturn Trump loss in Georgia and agrees to cooperate with prosecution

The meeting was cited as a central element in court proceedings Friday as part of a last-minute deal with attorney Kenneth Chesebro, who pleaded guilty to one felony charge of conspiracy to commit filing false documents.

Chesebro, who prosecutors have said helped originate the plan for Republican electors to meet in states where Biden was certified as the winner, is now one of three people who have pleaded guilty in the case. Attorney Sidney Powell pleaded guilty Thursday to six misdemeanors accusing her of intentionally interfering with the performance of election duties as part of a broader conspiracy prosecutors say violated Georgia’s anti-racketeering law.

While Democrats met in the ornate state Senate chamber to cast electoral votes for Biden, the Republicans sat around three worn and nicked wooden conference tables to consider options for keeping Trump in the White House. In the language of the case laid out by prosecutors, these were “fake” or “false” or “fraudulent” electors. At least eight Georgia Republican electors present that day have agreed to testify in exchange for immunity from state charges.

The meeting was led by David Shafer, then chairman of the Georgia Republican Party. Lending it the air of an official proceeding, a court reporter was present, something Shafer denied during questioning by Fulton County prosecutors in April 2022. That denial contributed to a charge of false statements and writings against Shafer.

More improvised elements of the meeting became clear as the group considered its officers. Shawn Still, who is now a state senator, wasn’t initially elected as secretary, for instance. But halfway through the meeting, Shafer noted that Still’s name was printed as the secretary on documents.

“I would like to avoid reprinting the documents,” Shafer said, asking the electors to replace another Republican with Still.

One of only three people the grand jury indicted for participating in the vote, Still may have been dragged into legal jeopardy when he was elected secretary. The third indicted elector, Cathy Latham, was also charged for helping outsiders access state voting equipment in south Georgia’s Coffee County.

As the meeting unfolded, the Republicans sought to replace four electors who were previously lined up to support Trump. One had registered to vote in Alabama and was no longer eligible. State Sen. Burt Jones, later elected lieutenant governor with Trump’s backing, took his spot.

Three other electors didn’t show up, including John Isakson Jr., son of late Republican U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson. Isakson told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2022 that he stayed away because the meeting seemed like “political gamesmanship.”

Prosecutors allege Shafer and Still committed yet more felonies by creating a document claiming to fill those vacancies. State law says that action needed Gov. Brian Kemp’s consent. The Republican governor had days earlier certified Biden as Georgia’s winner for a second time after a recount.

Sinners, the Trump official, printed new elector certificates on a noisy portable printer. The racket of the machine gave the meeting a mundane, bureaucratic feel in an unadorned space usually set aside for state lawmakers to host constituents.

One by one, the 16 Republicans were called. Each rose and walked to the table, signing certificates pronouncing Trump and then-Vice President Mike Pence as the preferred choice of Georgia voters. That’s the moment, grand jurors allege, when they committed the felonies for which they’ve been charged: impersonating a public officer, first degree forgery and making false statements in writing.

“They were fake electors; they were impersonating electors. They were no electors,” Fulton County prosecutor Anna Cross told a federal judge in September, adding there was no evidence that Shafer, Still, Latham or other Republicans believed Trump had actually won.

Their defenders call them “alternate” or “contingent” electors, saying they were just trying to keep Trump’s legal options open as a lawsuit challenged Georgia’s election results. Some Republicans argue Trump never got a fair shake in Georgia because that lawsuit was never tried, despite a state law calling for election challenges to be heard within 20 days. A Georgia Republican Party website raising money to defend electors calls them “patriots who served.”

“If we did not hold this meeting, then our election contest would effectively be abandoned,” Shafer said during the December meeting, talking to attorney Ray Smith, who was there advising the electors and was also indicted. “And so the only way for us to have any judge consider the merits of our complaint, the thousands of people who we allege voted unlawfully, is for us to have this meeting.”

Shafer defended his actions then and now by citing an episode that played out in Hawaii in 1960. Democrats met that year after Republican Richard Nixon was certified as the state’s winner and sent three electoral votes to the U.S. Senate backing John F. Kennedy.

Todd Zywicki, a law professor at George Mason University in Virginia, signed a July 11 declaration concluding actions by Shafer and other Georgia Republican electors were “lawful, reasonable, proper and necessary” considering the election contest and the Hawaii precedent.

Lawyers for the indicted electors argue it was up to Congress to determine which slates should be counted.

But Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ office, in a court filing, disputed Shafer’s claim that the actions of Georgia Republicans in 2020 bore any similarity to those of Hawaii Democrats in 1960. Her staff cites a major distinction — Democrats eventually won a recount in Hawaii that a court affirmed and the governor certified, sending official documents to the Senate.

“The factual situations are so readily distinguishable as to make the comparison meaningless,” Willis’ team wrote, arguing against Shafer’s attempt to remove his case to federal court. Willis’ office wrote that the Republican meeting “was used to further a clumsy but relentless pressure campaign on the vice president and state legislatures, and as a means to publicly undermine the legitimate results of the presidential election.”

Sinners, the Trump campaign staffer who helped arrange the meeting, now rejects its purpose. He denies the notion that Trump won Georgia and now works for Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state who came to national attention for rebuffing pressure from the then-president to “find” enough votes to ensure his win. Sinners cooperated with the U.S. House committee that investigated the violent insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021. He hasn’t said whether he’s cooperating with Willis.

In an interview, he made his regrets clear about what unfolded in the Georgia Capitol during one of the most turbulent periods in American politics.

“This was an ill-advised attempt by the former president’s campaign to create a false reality — a victory,” Sinners said.

Chesebro, who was charged alongside Donald Trump and more than a dozen other codefendants with attempting to delay the transfer of power after the 2020 election, was scheduled to stand trial this week. He accepted the offer as jury selection was underway on Friday, and after rejecting an earlier deal.

Former Trump attorney Sidney Powell entered a guilty plea unexpectedly on Thursday morning. The two lawyers were set to stand trial together before pleading guilty in the case.

Read the full story on NBCNews.com here.

The judge warned that future violations will subject Trump to “far more severe sanctions” — including imprisonment.

“Incendiary untruths can and have led to serious physical harm,” Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron said in court earlier Friday, before asking a defense lawyer to explain why Trump should not be punished or imprisoned.

Trump’s attorney apologized on his behalf, saying the violation was unintentional.

The judge’s admonition is the first time Trump has been threatened with consequences for violating court-ordered restrictions on his speech. Trump was not in court to hear the rebuke, having left New York on Wednesday after attending two more days of the civil trial.

Engoron imposed a narrow gag order in the case earlier this month, after Trump sent a social media post attacking the judge’s law clerk.

Engoron at the time ordered that the Truth Social post be deleted, and he barred Trump and other parties in the case from making public statements about his staff.

But the post remained up on Trump’s website, donaldjtrump.com, for more than two weeks, archived screenshots of the page show.

The left-leaning website MeidasTouch published an article Thursday about the not-deleted post. The Daily Beast reported that that article led attorneys on both sides of the trial to be notified about the post, which was ultimately removed Thursday night.

“Last night I learned the offending post was never removed from a website,” Engoron said in court on Friday morning, NBC News reported.

“This is a blatant violation of the gag order. I made it clear failure to comply will result in serious sanctions,” he said. “It remained on the Donald J. Trump campaign site and in fact it has been on there for the past 17 days, [and] it was removed late last night after an email from this court.”

“Incendiary untruths can and have led to serious physical harm,” Engoron said. “I will now allow the defendant to explain why this should not end up with serious sanctions or I could possibly imprison him.”

Defense attorney Christopher Kise told Engoron that the violation was “truly inadvertent” based on his understanding of the facts.

“The Truth Social post was taken down when the court asked,” Kise said, and Trump “never made any more comments about court staff, but it appears no one took it down on the campaign website.”

“It is unfortunate and I apologize on behalf of my client,” he said.

Engoron said he would take Kise’s remarks “under advisement,” but added that Trump “is still responsible for what appears on the site.”

“I want to make clear that Mr. Trump is responsible for the large machine, even if it is a large machine,” the judge said, according to NBC.

Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal lawyer who expects to testify against him next Tuesday, said he doubted Kise’s explanation.

“Donald knows exactly what he is doing and any statements to the contrary are misguided,” Cohen said in a statement to CNBC. “It is all about his intent to intimidate. Plain and simple.”

The case brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James accuses Trump, his two adult sons, his company and top executives of fraudulently inflating the values of their assets to get tax benefits and advantageous loan terms.

Trump has denied wrongdoing, though Engoron has already found the defendants liable for fraud and ordered the dissolution of their New York business certificates. The trial aims to settle six other claims by James, who seeks $250 million in damages and wants to bar the defendants from running a business in New York.

Engoron’s gag order isn’t the only limit on Trump’s speech in legal matters. A federal judge in Washington, D.C., in mid-October imposed a partial gag order in special counsel Jack Smith’s criminal case accusing Trump of conspiring to overturn his 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden. Trump has pleaded not guilty in that case.

That gag order, which followed many posts by Trump attacking various parties in the case, barred him from publicly targeting the special counsel and potential witnesses. Trump’s attorneys are appealing that order.

— CNBC’s Dan Mangan contributed reporting.

Powell, who was charged alongside Trump and 17 others with violating the state’s anti-racketeering law, entered the plea just a day before jury selection was set to start in her trial. She pleaded guilty to six misdemeanors accusing her of conspiring to intentionally interfere with the performance of election duties.

As part of the deal, she will serve six years of probation, will be fined $6,000 and will have to write an apology letter to Georgia and its residents. She also recorded a statement for prosecutors and agreed to testify truthfully against her co-defendants at future trials.

Powell was initially charged with racketeering and six other counts as part of a wide-ranging scheme to keep the Republican president in power after he lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden. Prosecutors say she also participated in an unauthorized breach of elections equipment in a rural Georgia county elections office.

The plea deal makes Powell the most prominent known person to be working with prosecutors investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn the election. Her cooperation in the case and participation in strategy talks threaten to expose the former president and offer insight on what he was saying and doing in the critical period after the election.

Above all, the guilty plea is a remarkable about-face for a lawyer who, perhaps more than anyone else, strenuously pushed baseless conspiracy theories about a stolen election in the face of extensive evidence to the contrary. She also has important knowledge about high-profile events, including a news conference she participated in on behalf of Trump and his campaign shortly after the election and on a White House meeting she attended in mid-December of 2020 in which prosecutors say ways to influence the outcome of the election were discussed.

Powell’s only comments in court came in response to routine questions from prosecutor Daysha Young and the judge.

There was a moment of levity when Young asked, “How old are you, ma’am?”

“Oh gosh,” Powell said with a chuckle. “Sixty-eight, despite my astonishingly youthful countenance.”

But Powell was solemn and succinct when Young asked, “How do you plead to the six counts of conspiracy to commit intentional interference with performance of election duties?”

“Guilty,” Powell said, her hands folded in front of her on the defense table.

John Fishwick, a former U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia, called Powell’s plea a “significant win” for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.

“This is somebody who was at ground zero of these allegations and a lawyer who is pleading guilty,” he said. “This is very significant.”

Fishwick also said Powell’s plea is helpful to Jack Smith, the Justice Department’s special counsel.

Powell is referenced, though not by name, as one of six unindicted co-conspirators in Smith’s federal case charging Trump with plotting to overturn the election. That indictment notes how Trump had privately acknowledged to others that Powell’s unfounded claims of election fraud were “crazy,” yet nonetheless he promoted and embraced a lawsuit that Powell filed against the state of Georgia that included what prosecutors said were “far-fetched” and baseless assertions.

Barry Coburn, a Washington-based lawyer for Powell, declined to comment Thursday.

Powell gained notoriety for threatening in a Fox Business interview in November 2020 to “release the Kraken,” invoking a mythical sea monster when talking about a lawsuit she planned to file to challenge the results of the presidential election. Similar suits she filed in several states were promptly dismissed.

She was about to go on trial on with lawyer Kenneth Chesebro after each filed a demand for a speedy trial. Jury selection was still set to begin Friday for Chesebro to go on trial by himself, though prosecutors said earlier that they also planned to look into the possibility of offering him a plea deal.

Chesebro’s attorneys didn’t immediately respond to messages seeking comment Thursday on whether he would also accept a plea deal.

A lower-profile defendant in the case, bail bondsman Scott Graham Hall, last month pleaded guilty to five misdemeanor charges. He was sentenced to five years of probation and agreed to testify in further proceedings.

Steve Sadow, the lead attorney for Trump in the Georgia case, expressed confidence that Powell’s plea wouldn’t hurt his own client’s case.

“Assuming truthful testimony in the Fulton County case, it will be favorable to my overall defense strategy,” he said.

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Prosecutors allege that Powell conspired with Hall and others to access election equipment without authorization and hired computer forensics firm SullivanStrickler to send a team to Coffee County, in south Georgia, to copy software and data from voting machines and computers there. The indictment says a person who is not named sent an email to a top SullivanStrickler executive and instructed him to send all data copied from Dominion Voting Systems equipment in Coffee County to an unidentified lawyer associated with Powell and the Trump campaign.

Trial dates have not been set for the 16 remaining defendants, including former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who was a Trump lawyer, and Mark Meadows, who was the Trump White House’s chief of staff.

Willis has faced some criticism over her wide-ranging indictment and use of the state’s anti-racketeering law to charge so many defendants. Some people had speculated that, if her case did not go well, it could undermine Smith’s case, Fishwick said.

“This certainly shows that at least, as of today, it’s not undermining it. In fact, it’s strengthening his case,” Fishwick said.

Associated Press writers Eric Tucker in Washington and Sudhin Thanawala in Atlanta contributed to this report.

Donald Trump will be back in court Tuesday for his New York civil fraud trial, but a face-to-face showdown with former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen will have to wait.

Cohen, a key witness in the state’s case against the former president, postponed his testimony, saying he needed to attend to a health problem.

“I’m not bowing out. I’m not nervous to testify. I’m not being paid off. I have a medical issue that I need to attend to. It’s as simple as that,” Cohen said last week on X, formerly known as Twitter. Judge Arthur Engoron said Monday that the earliest Cohen can now testify is Oct. 23.

Cohen’s absence is scrambling the trial schedule in its third week, forcing the New York attorney general’s office to call other witnesses earlier than planned. It’s also robbing the proceedings — which have been heavy on spreadsheets and accounting talk — of the drama of a Cohen-Trump confrontation, at least for now.

Trump, who is campaigning for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, attended the trial’s first three days, Oct. 2-4. The trial is expected to last into December, but a lot has happened so far.

THE LAWSUIT: WHAT IS THE TRIAL ABOUT?

The trial stems from a lawsuit New York Attorney General Letitia James filed in 2022 alleging that Trump and top executives at his family company, the Trump Organization, conspired to pad his net worth by billions of dollars on financial statements provided to banks, insurers and others to make deals and secure loans.

Among the allegations: Trump claimed his Trump Tower penthouse was nearly three times its actual size and worth $327 million, more than any other apartment had ever sold for. He also valued his Mar-a-Lago estate as high as $739 million based on the idea that the property could be developed for residential use, which is prohibited by deed terms.

In a pretrial court filing, James’ office estimated that Trump exaggerated his wealth by as much as $3.6 billion.

THE DEFENDANTS: WHO IS ON TRIAL?

James is suing Trump, his company, top executives — including his sons Eric and Donald Trump Jr. — and the corporate entities through which Trump owns such properties as the Doral golf resort near Miami, Fla., a hotel and condo skyscraper in Chicago, a Wall Street office building and a 212-acre estate north of New York City.

Longtime Trump Organization executives Allen Weisselberg and Jeffrey McConney are also defendants. Weisselberg, the company’s former chief financial officer, and McConney, the former controller, were both involved in preparing the annual financial statements at issue in the case.

Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, was initially named as a defendant, but an appeals court dropped her in June after finding that claims against her were outside the statute of limitations.

THE EX-PRESIDENT: WHAT DOES TRUMP SAY?

Trump denies wrongdoing. He has argued that a disclaimer on his financial statements absolves him of any culpability and that some of his assets are worth far more than what’s listed on the documents.

In comments to TV cameras outside the courtroom on the trial’s first day, Trump called the case a “sham,” a “scam,” and “a continuation of the single greatest witch hunt of all time.”

“What we have here is an attempt to hurt me in an election,” he said, adding, “I don’t think the people of this country are going to stand for it.”

During his earlier trip to court, Trump rankled the judge by maligning his law clerk in a social media post. Engoron imposed a limited gag order, warning participants in the case not to smear members of his staff. He also ordered Trump to delete the post.

THE LAW: HOW DID THIS CASE COME ABOUT?

James, a Democrat, is suing Trump under a New York statute known as Executive Law 63(12). The law, passed in 1956, gives the state’s attorney general broad power to investigate allegations of persistent fraud and illegality in business dealings.

Potential penalties include revoking a company’s business licenses and forcing it to pay back ill-gotten gains.

James started her investigation after Cohen, who went to prison for tax evasion and orchestrating secret payments to cover up stories of extramarital affairs that Trump denied, told Congress his former boss had a history of misrepresenting the value of assets.

In the past, the law has been used against predatory lenders, neglectful nursing home operators and others.

THE WITNESSES: WHO HAS TESTIFIED?

State lawyers have called eight witnesses so far, including Trump Organization insiders Weisselberg, McConney, Assistant Vice President Patrick Birney and hotel division chief Mark Hawthorn.

They’ve also called accountants Donald Bender and Camron Harris, whose firms Trump hired to prepare his financial statements. Trump’s lawyers have attempted to blame those firms for any problems. A retired Deutsche Bank official testified the financial statements were key to Trump securing hundreds of millions of dollars in loans.

Weisselberg acknowledged that information in Trump’s financial statements wasn’t always accurate, such as valuing his penthouse based on the wrong size. He also struggled to answer many questions, saying “I don’t remember” or “I don’t recall” more than 100 times.

McConney detailed various methods Trump executives used to increase Trump’s property values, including one instance in which he added $20 million to the penthouse’s value partly because of Trump’s celebrity.

Trump is expected to testify in a few weeks.

THE JUDGE: WHO WILL DECIDE THE TRIAL?

Trump’s civil trial doesn’t have a jury. Instead, Engoron is presiding over what’s known as a bench trial. He will issue a ruling once the trial is over.

Engoron, 74, joined the bench in 2003. A Democrat, he was previously involved in resolving disputes arising from James’ investigation of Trump. In that role, he forced Trump to sit for a deposition and, last year, held him in contempt of court and fined him $110,000 for being slow to respond to a subpoena.

As the judge explained when the trial started, he’ll be deciding the case because neither side sought a jury and state law doesn’t allow for juries for this type of lawsuit.

James wants the Trump defendants banned from doing business in New York. She’s also seeking the return of $250 million in what she alleges were ill-gotten gains.

PRETRIAL RULING: WASN’T SOME OF THIS DECIDED ALREADY?

In a decision last month, Engoron resolved the lawsuit’s top claim, ruling that Trump committed years of fraud by inflating the value of assets in his financial statements.

Among other things, the judge rebuked Trump for lying about the size of his Trump Tower penthouse, writing: “A discrepancy of this order of magnitude, by a real estate developer sizing up his own living space of decades, can only be considered fraud.”

Engoron ordered that a court-appointed receiver take control of some Trump companies, putting the future oversight of Trump Tower and other marquee properties in doubt. An appeals court has since blocked enforcement of that aspect of the ruling, at least for now.

The trial concerns six remaining claims in the lawsuit, including allegations of conspiracy, insurance fraud and falsifying business records.

THE STAKES: IS THIS A CRIMINAL CASE?

No. Trump has four pending criminal cases. This is not one of them.

Manhattan prosecutors had looked into bringing criminal charges over the allegations in James’ lawsuit but declined to do so.

Instead, the Manhattan district attorney’s office charged Trump in March with falsifying business records related to hush money paid on his behalf.

Indictments in Georgia and Washington, D.C. allege Trump plotted to overturn his 2020 election loss. In Florida, he is charged with hoarding classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.

The order from U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan marks a milestone moment in the federal case that accuses Trump of illegally conspiring to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden. It’s the most serious restriction a court has placed on Trump’s incendiary rhetoric, which has become a centerpiece of his grievance-filled campaign to return to the White House while fighting criminal charges in four cases.

The order may end a line of attack that Trump has made central to his campaign for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. But it may be only the beginning of an unprecedented fight over what limits can be a placed on the speech of a defendant who is also campaigning for America’s highest public office.

In a social media post shortly after the hearing in Washington’s federal court, Trump vowed to appeal. During a campaign appearance in Iowa later Monday, Trump decried the order as unconstitutional, and claimed it would only help him in the polls.

Speaking from the bench, Chutkan said Trump is entitled to criticize the Justice Department generally and assert his belief that the case is politically motivated but can’t mount a “smear campaign” against prosecutors and court personnel.

“No other criminal defendant would be allowed to do so, and I’m not going to allow it in this case,” Chutkan said.

Chutkan, who was nominated to the bench by President Barack Obama, said she would impose “sanctions as may be necessary” if the gag order is violated, but she wasn’t more specific. Judges can threaten gag order violators with fines or jail time, but jailing a presidential candidate could prompt serious political blowback and pose logistical hurdles.

While ending the stream of Trump’s harsh language may make the case easier to manage, the court order is likely to also fuel Trump’s claims of political persecution. Trump’s campaign quickly seized on the gag order in a fundraising appeal email Monday afternoon, falsely claiming that it was requested by Biden.

At rallies and in social media posts, Trump has repeatedly sought to vilify Smith and other prosecutors, casting himself as the victim of a politicized justice system working to deny him another term. His disparaging remarks have continued since prosecutors requested the gag order last month, including in a media post on Sunday in which he called Smith “deranged” and called Chutkan “highly partisan.”

Gag orders are not unheard of in high-profile cases, but there is little legal precedent for court orders limiting the speech of defendants running for public office and none addressing presidential candidates. Legal experts have said the issue may end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Trump’s lawyer John Lauro fiercely opposed any gag order, saying Trump is entitled to criticize prosecutors and “speak truth to oppression.”

“He is allowed to make statements the prosecution doesn’t like. That’s part of living with the First Amendment,” said Lauro, who declined to comment on the ruling after the hearing.

The ruling came as Trump was onboard his plane traveling to early-voting Iowa for a pair of campaign events. It is unclear whether Trump will abide by the new restrictions, and for how long. In a statement, a Trump spokesperson called the judge’s decision “an absolute abomination.”

Smith’s team argued that Trump knows that his incendiary remarks — calling the justice system “rigged,” Chutkan a “Trump-hating judge,” and prosecutors a “team of thugs” — could inspire his supporters to threaten or harass his targets. Prosecutors said it is part of Trump’s effort to erode the public’s faith in the judicial system just like they say he sought to undermine confidence in the 2020 election by spreading lies of fraud after he lost to Biden.

“What Mr. Lauro is saying is the defendant is above the law and he is not subject to the rules of this court like any other defendant is,” prosecutor Molly Gaston told the judge. “All this order would do is prevent him from using the campaign as an opportunity to make materially prejudicial statements about this case.”

The judge repeatedly pushed back against claims from the defense that prosecutors were seeking to censor the Trump’s political speech. Chutkan said Trump “does not have a right to say and do exactly as he pleases.”

“You keep talking about censorship like the defendant has unfettered First Amendment rights. He doesn’t,” Chutkan told Lauro. “We’re not talking about censorship here. We’re talking restrictions to ensure there is a fair administration of justice on this case.”

She also cut off Trump’s lawyer when he suggested the case was politically motivated, telling him: “Obviously, you have an audience other than me in mind.” And she rejected a defense bid to delay the trial, currently scheduled to begin in March, until after the 2024 election, saying “this trial will not yield to the election cycle.”

Lauro said Trump had not violated his pretrial conditions, and those were enough to keep him in check for the future. He told the judge, “What you have put in place is working.” Chutkan burst out laughing.

“I’m going to have to take issue with that,” the judge said.

Reading aloud a slew of statements from Trump, Chutkan repeatedly raised concerns that his remarks could inspire violence.

“If you call certain people thugs enough times doesn’t that suggest, Mr. Lauro, that someone should get them off the streets?” she asked Trump’s lawyer.

Prosecutors said Trump’s litany of attacks was already having consequences. They noted that a top prosecutor on Smith’s team received intimidating communications after being singled out by Trump, and a Texas woman was charged in August with making racist death threats against Chutkan, who is of Black and Asian descent, in a phone message left at her chambers.

It’s the second gag order imposed on Trump in the last month. The judge overseeing Trump’s civil fraud trial in New York earlier this month issued a more limited gag order prohibiting personal attacks against court personnel following a social media post from Trump that maligned the judge’s principal clerk.

___

Richer reported from Boston. Associated Press reporters Eric Tucker in Washington and Jill Colvin in New York contributed.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan will hear arguments Monday in Washington over whether Trump has gone too far with remarks such as calling prosecutors a “team of thugs” and one possible witness “a gutless pig.”

It is the biggest test yet for Chutkan, underscoring the unprecedented complexities of prosecuting the former Republican president as the judge vows not to let political considerations guide her decisions.

Ending the stream of Trump’s harsh language would make the case easier to manage. But among the difficult questions Chutkan must navigate is how any gag order might be enforced and how one could be fashioned that does not risk provoking Trump’s base and fueling his claims of political persecution as he campaigns to retake the White House in 2024.

“She has to think about the serious risk that it’s not just his words that could trigger violence, but that she could play into the conspiracy theories that Trump’s followers tend to believe in, and that her act of issuing a gag order might trigger a very disturbing response,” said Catherine Ross said, a George Washington University law school professor.

“If we allow that to stop a judge from doing what is called for, that’s a big problem for rule of law. But on the other hand, if I were the judge, I would certainly be thinking about it,” she said.

Short of issuing an order, Chutkan has already suggested that inflammatory comments could force her to move up the trial, now scheduled to begin in March, to guard against tainting the jury pool. Judges can threaten gag order violators with fines or jail time, but jailing a presidential candidate could prompt serious political blowback and pose logistical hurdles.

Chutkan, who was nominated to the bench by President Barack Obama, isn’t the first judge to confront the consequences of Trump’s speech. The judge in his civil fraud trial in New York recently imposed a limited gag order prohibiting personal attacks against court personnel following a social media post that maligned the judge’s principal clerk.

Special counsel Jack Smith’s team envisions a broader order, seeking to bar Trump from making inflammatory and intimidating comments about lawyers, witnesses and others involved in the case that accuses the former president of illegally plotting to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden. Trump’s lawyers call it a “desperate effort at censorship” that would prevent Trump from telling his side of the story while campaigning.

A complicating factor is that many of the potential witnesses in the case are themselves public figures. In the case of Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence is also running against Trump for the GOP nomination. That could open the door for Trump’s team to argue that he should be permitted to respond to public broadsides he sees on television or seek a competitive edge by denouncing a political rival for the White House.

Burt Neuborne, a longtime civil liberties lawyer who challenged gag orders on behalf of defendants and lawyers in other cases, questioned whether a formal order was necessary because witness intimidation is already a crime and the court can guard against a tainted jury by carefully questioning prospective jurors before trial. A gag order may also slow down the case because it’s likely Trump either violates it and the judge will want to punish him or Trump will challenge the order in advance, he said.

“And so in some sense, you may be playing directly into his hands by essentially creating yet another mechanism for him to try to push this until after the 2024 election because my sense is that any gag order that she issues will eventually reach the Supreme Court,” Neuborne said.

But Barbara McQuade, a former U.S. attorney in Michigan, said she believes the judge can issue a narrow enough order that withstands legal challenges and protects both the case and Trump’s abilities to campaign.

“Especially in this case, where Donald Trump has made it apparent that he will say all kinds of outrageous and vitriolic things about the parties, about the judge, about witnesses unless she acts,” said McQuade, a University of Michigan Law School professor. “So in some ways she has, I think, a responsibility to act here.”

There is some limited precedent for restricting speech of political candidates who are criminal defendants.

In one case, a federal appeals court in 1987 lifted a gag order on U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Sr., a Tennessee Democrat charged in a fraud case. Ford, who was ultimately acquitted, claimed the case brought under Republican President Ronald Reagan’s administration was racially and politically motivated.

Ford’s gag order prohibited him from even sharing his opinion of or discussing facts of the case. The court noted that Ford would soon be up for reelection and said the gag order would unfairly prevent him from responding to attacks from his political opponents and block his constituents from hearing the “views of their congressman on this issue of undoubted public importance.”

Another appeals court in 2000 upheld a gag order challenged by then-Louisiana Insurance Commissioner Jim Brown in a fraud case, noting the order allowed assertions of innocence and other general statements about the case.

The court, however, also noted that the judge briefly lifted the gag order to avoid interfering with Brown’s reelection campaign, saying that the “urgency of a campaign, which may well require that a candidate, for the benefit of the electorate as well as himself, have absolute freedom to discuss his qualifications, has passed.”

Chutkan herself has experience with gag orders.

In 2018, she imposed an order restricting the comments of lawyers in the case of Maria Butina, a Russian gun activist who pleaded guilty to working in America as a secret agent for Moscow. The order followed prosecutors’ admission that they had wrongly accused Butina of trading sex for access as well as public comments by her lawyer that Chutkan said had “crossed the line.”

The next year, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson imposed a gag order on Trump ally Roger Stone in his obstruction and witness tampering case after he posted a photo of judge with what appeared to be crosshairs of a gun. Though she warned she could jail him if he violated the order, she instead barred him from using social media months later after he again publicly disparaged the case against him.

But that order was in direct response to a specific action, said Bruce Rogow, Stone’s attorney in that case. He said he was dubious that Trump’s attacks, “while in very poor taste,” posed the kind of danger to merit a gag order.

“Trump’s talk may be déclassé, but the First Amendment defends his right to present his distorted view of the world up to the point that he presents a true threat to people or the administration of justice. Not easy to measure,” Rogow wrote in an email. “Like obscenity, one knows it when you see it.”

____

Richer reported from Boston.

The evidence appeared in an email attachment shown as Allen Weisselberg, the former finance chief of Trump’s company, testified in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ fraud lawsuit against Trump and his Trump Organization. Trump denies any wrongdoing.

The attachment was a 1994 document, signed by Trump, that pegged his Trump Tower triplex at 10,996 square feet — not the 30,000 square feet later claimed for years on financial statements that were given to banks, insurers and others to make deals and secure loans.

Weisselberg said he recalled seeing the email but not the attachment, explaining that the attachments were documents he already had on file in the company’s offices. But in any event, he said, he didn’t pay much mind to the apartment’s size because its value amounted to a fraction of Trump’s wealth.

“I never even thought about the apartment. It was de minimis, in my mind,” Weisselberg said, using a Latin term that means, essentially, too small to care about.

“It was not something that was that important to me when looking at a $6 billion, $5 billion net worth,” Weisselberg said.

Later, Weisselberg said he applied the same logic when confronted with an appraised value for Trump’s Seven Springs estate north of New York City that was $230 million less than his financial statements showed. Asked if he would’ve alerted the disparity to the accounting firm preparing the statements, Weisselberg said no.

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Nevertheless, Weisselberg acknowledged signing documents certifying that financial summaries given to banks to meet loan requirements were “true, correct, and completely and fairly” represented Trump’s financial condition.

Weisselberg repeatedly said he couldn’t remember whether he discussed the financial statements with Trump while they were being finalized. The former chief financial officer said he reviewed drafts “from a 30,000-foot level” but paid special attention to something “very important” to Trump: the descriptions of his properties.

“It was a little bit of a marketing piece for banks to read about our properties, how well they’re taken care of, that they’re first-class properties,” said Weisselberg, who added that Trump scrutinized the language used in such descriptions.

“He might say, ‘Don’t use the word “beautiful” — use the word “magnificent,”’ or something like that,” Weisselberg testified.

Meanwhile, in Trump’s separate election interference case in Washington on Tuesday, prosecutors urged the judge to protect prospective jurors’ identities, citing the former president’s “continued use of social media as a weapon of intimidation in court proceedings.” Trump lawyer John Lauro declined to comment.

In that federal criminal case, Trump has pleaded not guilty to illegally plotting to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

In New York, Weisselberg said Tuesday he learned of the Trump Tower penthouse size discrepancy only when a Forbes magazine reporter pointed it out to him in 2016. He testified that he initially disputed the magazine’s findings but said he couldn’t recall whether he directed anyone to look into the matter.

“You don’t recall if you did anything to confirm who was right?” state lawyer Louis Solomon asked?

Weisselberg said he did not.

As Forbes zeroed in on the apartment size question in 2017, emails show, a company spokesperson told another Trump executive that, per Weisselberg, they weren’t to engage on the size issue. A week later, Trump’s 2016 financial statement was released, using the incorrect square footage.

Over the years, Trump Organization executives had greatly boosted their estimate of the apartment’s value for reasons ranging from the boss’s fame to comparing it to an asking price on another triplex — though that other one ultimately sold for 60% less, another former exec testified last week.

When The Wall Street Journal wrote about the $135 million listing for a property near Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida in 2018, Weisselberg wrote a note telling a staffer to hang onto the article and “see what it ends up selling for.”

Asked Tuesday to explain, Weisselberg testified: “Anybody can ask anything for a dollar amount. That doesn’t mean it’s going to sell.”

Weisselberg, testifying as a prosecution witness, is also a defendant in the lawsuit. He took the stand after a recent jail stint for evading taxes on perks he got while working for Trump.

James’ lawsuit alleges that Weisselberg engineered Trump’s financial statements to meet his demands that they show increases in his net worth and signed off on lofty valuations for assets despite appraisals to the contrary.

Trump attended the first three days of the non-jury trial last week but hasn’t returned since.

Weisselberg left a New York City jail six months ago after serving 100 days for dodging taxes on $1.7 million in extras that came with his Trump Organization job, including a Manhattan apartment, school tuition for his grandchildren and luxury cars for him and his wife.

During sworn pretrial questioning in May, Weisselberg, 76, testified that he was having trouble sleeping, started seeing a therapist and was taking a generic form of Valium as he tried to “reacclimate myself back to society.”

Trump, in a pretrial deposition in April, said his former longtime lieutenant was liked and respected, and “now, he’s gone through hell and back.”

“What’s happened to him is very sad,” Trump said.

In a pretrial ruling last month, Judge Arthur Engoron found that Trump, Weisselberg and other defendants committed years of fraud by exaggerating the value of Trump’s assets and net worth on his financial statements.

As punishment, Engoron ordered that a court-appointed receiver take control of some Trump companies, putting the future oversight of Trump Tower and other marquee properties in doubt. An appeals court on Friday blocked enforcement of that aspect of Engoron’s ruling, at least for now.

The civil trial concerns allegations of conspiracy, insurance fraud and falsifying business records. James is seeking $250 million in penalties and a ban on Trump doing business in New York.

Siding with New York’s attorney general in a lawsuit accusing Trump of grossly overvaluing his assets, Judge Arthur Engoron found that Trump consistently exaggerated Mar-a-Lago’s worth. He noted that one Trump estimate of the club’s value was 2,300% times the Palm Beach County tax appraiser’s valuations, which ranged from $18 million to $37 million.

But Palm Beach real estate agents who specialize in high-end properties scoffed at the idea that the estate could be worth that little, in the unlikely event Trump ever sold.

“Ludicrous,” agent Liza Pulitzer said about the judge citing the county’s tax appraisal as a benchmark. Homes a tenth the size of Mar-a-Lago on tiny inland lots sell for that in the Town of Palm Beach, a wealthy island enclave.

“The entire real estate community felt it was a joke when they saw that figure,” said Pulitzer, who works for the firm Brown Harris Stevens.

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“That thing would get snapped up for hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars,” said Rob Thomson, owner of Waterfront Properties and a Mar-a-Lago member. “There is zero chance that it’s going to sell for $40 million or $50 million.”

In the ongoing trial over the lawsuit, though, what a private buyer might pay for a place like Mar-a-Lago isn’t the only factor in determining whether Trump is liable for fraud.

What is Mar-a-Lago?

The 126-room, 62,500-square-foot (5,810-square-meter) mansion is Trump’s primary home. It is also a club, private beach resort, historical artifact and banquet hall with a ballroom that features gold leaf. It is where Trump stored government documents federal prosecutors say he took illegally after leaving office in 2021.

While Trump has long admitted using “truthful hyperbole” in his business dealings, he is not exaggerating when he calls Mar-a-Lago unique.

Built in 1927 by cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post and her second husband, financier E.F. Hutton, she gave the property its name — Spanish for “sea-to-lake” — because its 17 acres (7 hectares) stretch from the Atlantic Ocean to the Intracoastal Waterway.

Post kept the mansion after the couple’s divorce, using it to host opulent galas. In 1969, Mar-a-Lago was designated a National Historic Landmark.

Post, who died in 1973, bequeathed the property to the U.S. government as a winter get-away for presidents, but Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter never used it. The government, citing the high upkeep costs, returned it to Post’s foundation in 1981.

The property fell into disrepair. Trump bought it in 1985 for about $10 million, the equivalent of $30 million today. He invested heavily in its refurbishment.

By the early 1990s, however, Trump was in financial distress after several of his businesses flopped. He told Palm Beach town officials he couldn’t afford the $3 million annual upkeep, and proposed subdividing the property and building mansions. The town rejected the plan.

Negotiations continued and in 1993 the town agreed he could turn the estate into a private club, giving him cash flow he could use for maintenance. He built the ballroom, but signed away development rights.

The agreement limits the club to 500 members — the initiation fee is $500,000 with annual dues of $20,000.

Trump typically lives at Mar-a-Lago from October to May before summering in New Jersey.

So what is Mar-a-Lago worth?

That’s hard to say. The biggest problem is there are no comparable properties. No one builds mansions in Palm Beach like Mar-a-Lago anymore and those that did exist were demolished long ago, broken up or turned into a museum.

Trump, in an April deposition, justified his belief that Mar-a-Lago could be worth $1 billion by comparing it to the price the Mona Lisa or a painting by Renoir would command — the ultra-wealthy will pay a premium to buy something that’s one-of-a-kind.

Eli Beracha, chair of Florida International University’s Hollo School of Real Estate, agreed it’s difficult to assess the value of any unique property. The fact that Trump owned Mar-a-Lago would likely increase its sale price.

“Some people are going to argue that not everyone likes Trump — some people would actually pay less because of that. … But the high bidder is probably going to be a person who buys it because it belonged to Trump,” Beracha said.

Pulitzer said the rock-bottom price for Mar-a-Lago would be $300 million. Thomson said at least $600 million. If uber-billionaires got into a bidding war, they said, a sale of a billion dollars or more would be possible.

The much smaller Palm Beach compound once owned by the Kennedy political dynasty sold for $70 million three years ago.

So how did Palm Beach County come up with such a low tax assessment?

The county gives Mar-a-Lago its current value for taxation of $37 million based on its annual net operating income as a club and not on its resale value as a home or its reconstruction cost. It is one of nine private clubs in the county taxed that way.

Becky Robinson, the tax assessor’s spokesperson, said that method is used because private clubs are so rarely sold or built, making it impossible to set their tax rates by comparing them to similar properties. Mar-a-Lago’s property tax bill will be $602,000 this year, county records show.

U.S. Rep. Jared Moskowitz, a South Florida Democrat, wrote the county saying if Trump claims Mar-a-Lago is worth $1 billion, he should be taxed accordingly. If Mar-a-Lago had a $1 billion assessed value, it’s property tax bill would be approximately $18 million.

Why it matters

Robinson said the county bases its assessments on the law and its formulas, not the value owners claim.

In her lawsuit against Trump, New York Attorney General Letitia James argued that Mar-a-Lago was one of multiple assets Trump overvalued in financial statements given to banks and others.

On those statements, Trump valued Mar-a-Lago as high as $739 million — a figure James said ignored deed restrictions requiring the property to be used as a social club — not a private home. Her lawyers have argued that in his financial statements, Trump should have valued Mar-a-Lago the same way the county does, based on its club status.

Trump’s financial statements, the New York lawyers wrote, valued the club “based on the false and misleading premise that it was an unrestricted residential plot of land that could be sold and used as a private home, which was clearly not the case.”

Trump’s lawyers have said no trickery was involved, and that banks probably didn’t rely on his financial statements anyway when determining whether to lend him money.

Trump shared the information with Anthony Pratt during an April 2021 conversation at the Palm Beach, Fla., golf club, according to ABC News, which first reported the development, citing sources familiar with the matter. The New York Times also confirmed the former president shared the information with Pratt, citing  two people familiar with the matter.

Pratt recounted that he told Trump during their conversation that Australia should buy submarines from the U.S., and an excited Trump “leaning” toward Pratt as if to be discreet, told him two pieces of information about American submarines, ABC reported, citing the anonymous sources. Trump shared the number of warheads that U.S. submarines typically carry and how close they can get to Russian submarines without being detected, according to both ABC and the New York Times.

The revelation was reported to special counsel Jack Smith’s office, which charged Trump this year with mishandling classified documents, and prosecutors and FBI agents have twice interviewed Pratt this year about the discussion, ABC reported.

Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign spokesman, Steven Cheung, said in response to questions about the report, “These illegal leaks are coming from sources which totally lack proper context and relevant information. The Department of Justice should investigate the criminal leaking, instead of perpetrating their baseless witch-hunts while knowing that President Trump did nothing wrong, has always insisted on truth and transparency, and acted in a proper manner, according to the law.” NBC News has also reached out to Pratt’s company for comment.

Read the full story on NBCNews.com

Shane Jason Woods, 45, was the first person charged with assaulting a member of the news media during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.

Woods, of Auburn, Illinois, took a running start and tackled the Reuters cameraman “like an NFL linebacker hunting a quarterback after an interception,” federal prosecutors wrote in a court filing.

Woods also attacked and injured a Capitol police officer who was 100 pounds lighter than him, according to prosecutors. He blindsided the officer, knocking her off her feet and into a metal barricade. The next day, the officer was still in pain and said she felt as if she had been “hit by a truck,” prosecutors said.

“Woods’ actions were as cowardly as they were violent and opportunistic,” prosecutors wrote. “He targeted people smaller than him who did not see him coming. He attacked people who had done nothing whatsoever to even engage with him, let alone harm or block him.”

Prosecutors said they tried to interview the cameraman but don’t know if he was injured.

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta sentenced Woods to four years and six months of incarceration. Prosecutors had recommended a prison sentence of five years and 11 months.

Woods, who ran an HVAC repair business, was arrested in June 2021 and pleaded guilty to assault charges in September 2022.

He also has been charged in Illinois with first-degree murder in the death of a woman killed in a wrong-way car collision on Nov. 8, 2022.

While free on bond conditions for the Jan. 6 case, Woods was pulled over for speeding but drove off and fled from law enforcement. Woods was drunk and driving in the wrong direction down a highway in Springfield, Illinois, when his pickup truck slammed into a car driven by 35-year-old Lauren Wegner, authorities said. Wegner was killed, and two other people were injured in the crash.

Woods was injured in the crash and was taken to a hospital, where a police officer overheard him saying that he had intentionally driven the wrong way on the highway and had been trying to crash into a semi-trailer truck, according to federal prosecutors. He remains jailed in Sangamon County, Illinois, while awaiting a trial scheduled to start in January, according to online court records.

“Just like on January 6, Woods’ behavior was cowardly, monstrous, and devoid of any consideration of others,” prosecutors wrote.

A defense attorney said in a court filing that it appears Woods’ “lack of judgment has been exacerbated by his drug and alcohol abuse as well as untreated mental health issues.”

Woods was armed with a knife when he joined the mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 and disrupted the joint session of Congress for certifying Democrat Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory over the Republican incumbent. Trump had earlier that day addressed the crowd of his supporters at a rally near the White House, encouraging them to “fight like hell.”

More than 1,100 people have been charged with Jan. 6-related federal crimes. Approximately 800 of them have pleaded guilty or been convicted by juries or judges after trials in Washington, D.C. Over 650 have been sentenced, with roughly two-thirds of them receiving terms of imprisonment ranging from three days to 22 years, according to an Associated Press analysis of court records.

___

Associated Press writer Claire Savage in Chicago contributed to this report.

A judge issued a gag order Tuesday after Donald Trump attacked the judge’s law clerk on social media and in comments to reporters covering his New York business fraud trial.

“Consider this a gag order on all parties with respect to posting or publicly speaking about any member of my staff,” Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron said on the second day of the former president’s civil trial.

Engoron said personal attacks on his staff were unacceptable and intolerable.

The judge was angered by Trump’s post earlier Tuesday on his Truth Social site that included disparaging comments about the clerk alongside a photo of her posing with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

Trump in that post had called the clerk “Schumer’s girlfriend” and accused her of “running this case against me.”

“How disgraceful!” Trump wrote in the post, which included the clerk’s full name. “This case should be dismissed immediately!!”

Trump mentioned Schumer and the clerk again during a break in the proceedings later that day, as he claimed that the trial was “rigged” and “fraudulent.”

The clerk is seated almost directly across from Trump in court.

Trump later deleted the post.

Also on Tuesday, Trump’s presidential campaign sent out a lengthy email criticizing Engoron as a “Far-Left Democrat.”

The email, entitled “Meet Judge Arthur F. Engoron,” cited numerous stories in conservative media accusing Engoron of political bias.

Trump had already slammed New York Attorney General Letitia James as a “fraud” and called for the case to be dismissed before the trial resumed Tuesday morning.

“And she should probably be dismissed also,” he said of James, whose lawsuit is the subject of the case.

He had glared at James on the first day of the trial when he passed her walking out of the courtroom.

The attorney general accuses Trump, two of his adult sons, the Trump Organization, and top executives of fraudulently valuing real estate properties to obtain more favorable loan and insurance terms, and tax benefits.

In addition to seeking $250 million in damages, James is seeking a ban on Trump and his sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, from running a business in New York.

The second day of trial resumed with testimony from Donald Bender, a former accountant for Trump and his business.

Trump on Tuesday said that he will testify in the trial “at the appropriate time.”

During a Dec. 9, 2020, call to the White House, Dershowitz told Trump that Brandon Bernard, at 40, wasn’t the man he was when Todd and Stacie Bagley were killed in 1999 and that he deserved to have his sentence commuted to life in prison.

Trump sounded sincere when he said he wished he could spare Bernard’s life, but he added apologetically that he’d already promised the victims’ relatives that Bernard would be put to death, Dershowitz said about the 20-minute call.

“‘They’re on their way. They’re on their way,’” Trump kept saying, Dershowitz recalled. The relatives, Trump explained, were on the road to the prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, where federal executions are carried out and it was “’too late to pull them back.’”

Bernard was executed the next day.

Secrecy was a hallmark of the 13 federal executions during the last six months of Trump’s presidency. Although reporters were allowed to witness them, it was impossible to know at the time what was happening behind the scenes.

Fresh details have emerged since the executions, including from Dershowitz, who spoke recently to The Associated Press. The fuller picture reveals that officials cut corners and relied on a pliant Supreme Court to get the executions done, even when some — including Trump himself, in Bernard’s case — agreed that there might be valid reasons not to proceed with them all.

Other newly available information includes an autopsy report obtained by the AP for Corey Johnson, convicted of seven drug-related killings. It concluded that during his execution, he suffered pulmonary edema, a painful condition akin to drowning. So much fluid rushed up his trachea that some exited his mouth.

More federal executions carried out under much the same conditions may not be far off.

President Joe Biden hasn’t kept a promise he’d abolish the federal death penalty. Although his Justice Department announced a moratorium on federal executions in 2021, that can be lifted easily.

So, unless Biden clears death row, “history will repeat itself” if a pro-death penalty candidate, like Trump, wins in 2024, said Robert Dunham, a Temple Law School adjunct professor on capital punishment.

Trump’s 2016 win didn’t particularly worry federal death row inmates, prisoner Billie Allen, who was and remains in the unit, said by email. After all, there hadn’t been a public clamor for federal executions to resume following a 17-year hiatus.

But guards began practicing executions in 2019, including by wheeling other guards role-playing as inmates out of cells in restraint chairs.

“It was a sign … executions were about to take place,” Allen said. “Many of us knew Trump was going to keep killing … until he ran out of time.”

Observers assumed it was Trump’s initiative. But in his 2022 book, “One Damn Thing After Another,” Trump’s attorney general at the time of the executions, Bill Barr, suggested it was actually his.

Barr said he spoke to Trump just once about the plans. Regarding capital punishment, Trump asked, “Why do you support it?” Barr wrote that Trump seemed satisfied when he answered that for brutal killings, it was “the only punishment that fit the crime.”

In 2019, Barr approved the use of pentobarbital in executions despite evidence it might cause pulmonary edema, making it possible for them to resume.

Starting in 2019, inmates froze when guards entered death row to tell one among them “the warden wants to speak with you,” dreaded words signifying an inmate had been selected for execution, Allen and other inmates explained.

Guards wearing surgical masks stopped at cell No. 315 on Oct. 16, 2020. It was Bernard’s cell.

“Their eyes were all I needed to see,” Bernard explained in a statement posted for him on social media. ”(Their) eyes held … only pity and sadness.”

To be selected, an inmate’s guilt had to be certain and their victims had to have been uniquely vulnerable, Barr wrote.

It wasn’t obvious Bernard met that criteria.

The kidnapping and robbery of the young couple who were on a Texas religious retreat was brutal. They were locked in their car’s trunk for hours, begging for their lives, before accomplice Christopher Vialva shot them in the head.

Bernard’s role was murkier. He allegedly set the car ablaze with the bodies inside. During the trial, prosecutors said smoke in Stacie’s lungs indicated the fire had killed her. That evidence was disputed.

Lawyers for Bernard and Vialva, who were tried together, say prosecutors also mischaracterized the Black defendants to a nearly all-white jury as gang thugs.

By all accounts, Bernard transformed himself in prison and encouraged fellow inmates to follow his example. Introspective and polite, he didn’t commit a single rules infraction during two decades in prison.

Each execution required up to 300 staff and contractors. Government lawyers cited those logistics in arguing against any delays.

Unfailingly, the conservative-tilted Supreme Court cleared all legal obstacles

The pace of executions alarmed Lisa Montgomery, who was held in Texas prior to her Terre Haute execution. She had killed an expectant Missouri mother and cut the baby from her womb.

“If they do two a month, then I’m screwed,” Montgomery said during an Aug. 27, 2020, phone conversation, call transcripts revealed.

Her lawyers momentarily considered taking her off her medications so she’d “go absolutely psychotic,” proving mental fragility exacerbated by sexual abuse in childhood, said her lawyer, Kelley Henry.

“Ultimately, we weren’t going to do that to her,” Henry said.

When courts greenlit executions of her clients convicted on state charges, Henry at least followed the logic.

“With the Trump executions, I can’t give you a view of the law that would explain why any of them happened,” she said.

Mental health and other issues should have precluded many of the executions, said Robin Maher, director of the Death Penalty Information Center, which tracks state and federal executions.

“For anyone who believed that the death penalty only punishes the worst of the worst, these executions were a rude awakening,” she said.

Without explaining why, the Supreme Court rejected Bernard’s final request for a stay on his execution day.

In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that whether prosecutors exaggerated his gang status knowing he held the lowest rank deserved more scrutiny.

He never had the chance to prove those claims, she wrote. “Now he never will.”

Within hours, executioners poked an IV line into each of Bernard’s arms, including a backup in case the first one failed, in accordance with protocols.

Speaking with striking calm, Bernard turned toward the Bagley relatives in an adjacent witness room and said, “I’m sorry.”

He watched a marshal pick up a death chamber phone, perhaps hoping Trump had commuted his sentence after all.

Bernard was pronounced dead at 9:27 p.m.

When word reached Dershowitz, he was devastated.

“I can tell you, I shed tears,” he said. “This was a wasted life.”

What haunts him is that he believes Trump might have intervened if he hadn’t already made his promise to the Bagley relatives.

“This is a terrible thing to say,” Dershowitz said, “but I believe if I had spoken to the president a month earlier, I might have been able to persuade him.”

___

Tarm witnessed 10 of the 13 federal executions.

Aggrieved and defiant, former President Donald Trump sat through hours of sometimes testy opening arguments Monday in a fraud lawsuit that could cost him control of some of his most prized properties.

“Disgraceful trial,” he declared during a lunch break, after listening to lawyers for New York Attorney General Letitia James excoriate him as a habitual liar. The state’s lawsuit accuses the business-mogul-turned-politician and his company of deceiving banks, insurers and others by misstating his wealth for years in financial statements.

“They were lying year after year after year,” Kevin Wallace, a lawyer in James’ office, said in an opening statement as Trump sat at the defense table. He looked straight ahead, arms crossed, facing away from a screen that showed details of Wallace’s presentation.

Trump denies wrongdoing and voluntarily attended a trial that he called a “sham," a “scam,” a waste of the state's time and “a continuation of the single greatest witch hunt of all time.” Currently the Republican front-runner in the 2024 presidential race, he reiterated claims that James, a Democrat, is trying to thwart his bid to return to the White House.

“What we have here is an attempt to hurt me in an election,” he said outside court, adding, “I don’t think the people of this country are going to stand for it.”

Trump sneered at James as he passed her on his way out at lunchtime; she left smiling. Meanwhile, his campaign immediately began fundraising off the appearance.

But Trump left for the day claiming he’d scored a victory, pointing to comments that he viewed as Judge Arthur Engoron coming around to the defense view that most of the suit’s allegations are too old.

The judge suggested that testimony about Trump’s 2011 financial statement was beyond the legal time limit. Wallace promised to link it to a more recent loan agreement, but Trump took the judge’s remarks as an “outstanding” development for him.

Engoron ruled last week that Trump committed fraud in his business dealings. If upheld on appeal, the ruling could force Trump to give up New York properties including Trump Tower, a Wall Street office building, golf courses and a suburban estate. Trump has called it a “a corporate death penalty” and insisted the judge, a Democrat, is unfair and out to get him.

The non-jury trial concerns six remaining claims in the lawsuit, including allegations of conspiracy, insurance fraud and falsifying business records. Engoron said that neither side sought a jury and that state law doesn't allow for juries when suits seek not only money but a court order setting out something a defendant must do or not do.

James is seeking $250 million in penalties and a ban on Trump doing business in New York.

“No matter how powerful you are, and no matter how much money you think you have, no one is above the law," she said on her way into the courthouse.

Trump says that James and the judge are undervaluing such assets as his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. He and his lawyers also maintain that disclaimers on his financial statements made clear that they were estimates and that banks would have to perform their own analysis.

The former president, his two eldest sons, Trump Organization executives and fixer-turned-foe Michael Cohen are all listed among dozens of potential witnesses.

Trump isn’t expected to testify for several weeks. His trip to court Monday marked a remarkable departure from his past practice.

Trump didn't go to court as either a witness or a spectator when his company and one of its top executives was convicted of tax fraud last year. He didn't show, either, for a civil trial earlier this year in which a jury found him liable for sexually assaulting the writer E. Jean Carroll in a department store dressing room.

This time, “I wanted to watch this witch hunt myself,” he said outside court.

In a recent court filing, James' office alleged Trump exaggerated his wealth by as much as $3.6 billion.

He claimed his three-story Trump Tower penthouse, replete with gold-plated fixtures, was nearly three times its actual size and worth $327 million, far more than any New York City apartment ever has fetched, James said. He valued Mar-a-Lago as high as $739 million — more than 10 times a more reasonable estimate of its worth, James maintained.

“Every estimate was determined by Mr. Trump," Wallace said in his opening statement. He pointed to pretrial testimony by Trump Organization figures and ex-insiders including Cohen, who said the company estimated assets to get to a predetermined number “that Mr. Trump wanted.”

Wallace said the alleged scheme got the company better loan rates, saving it $100 million in interest.

“They hid their weaknesses and convinced these banks to take on hundreds of millions of dollars in risk," he said, adding, “While the defendants can exaggerate to Forbes magazine or on television, they cannot do it while conducting business in the state of New York.”

Defense lawyers said the financial statements were legitimate representations of prime properties that can command top dollar.

"That is not fraud. That is real estate,” attorney Alina Habba said in an opening statement. She accused the attorney general’s office of “setting a very dangerous precedent for all business owners in the state of New York.”

Defense experts will testify that valuing properties is subjective, Trump attorneys said. He and his lawyers have also argued that no one was harmed by anything in the financial statements, which were given to banks to secure loans and to financial magazines to justify his place among the world’s billionaires.

Banks that made loans to him were fully repaid. Business partners made money. And Trump's own company flourished.

Defense lawyer Christopher Kise blasted last week’s fraud ruling, telling the judge he shouldn't have made a decision before hearing expert trial testimony on property valuations. Engoron, tiring of the defense’s criticism, shot back: “Respectfully, what’s that expression? You’re stalking the dead horse here.”

Testimony began Monday afternoon with Donald Bender, a longtime partner at accounting firm Mazars LLP, describing how he spent 50 to 60 hours a year preparing Trump's financial statements. Mazars cut ties with Trump last year after James’ office raised questions about the documents' reliability.

James’ lawsuit is one of several legal headaches for Trump as he campaigns to return to the White House. He has been indicted four times since March, accused of plotting to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden, hoarding classified documents and falsifying business records related to hush money paid on his behalf. He has pleaded not guilty to all the allegations.

The New York fraud trial is expected to last into December, Engoron said.

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Now, in the twilight of a distinguished two-decade career on the bench, the erudite, Ivy League-educated judge is presiding over his biggest case yet: deciding the future of former President Donald Trump’s real estate empire.

Last week, Engoron ruled that Trump committed years of fraud by exaggerating his wealth and the value of assets on financial statements he used to get loans and make deals. As punishment, the judge said he would dissolve some of Trump’s companies — a decision that could cause him to lose control of marquee New York properties, like Trump Tower.

Starting Monday, Engoron will preside over a non-jury trial in Manhattan to resolve remaining claims in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit against Trump, his company and top executives. He will also decide on monetary damages. James’ office is seeking $250 million.

Donald Trump Sep 29, 2023

IRS consultant charged with leaking Trump's tax information

Trump, who is listed as a potential witness and could end up face-to-face with Engoron in court, called the judge’s fraud ruling “the corporate death penalty.” He referred to Engoron as a “political hack” and said his would appeal.

“I have a Deranged, Trump Hating Judge, who RAILROADED this FAKE CASE through a NYS Court at a speed never before seen,” the 2024 Republican frontrunner wrote on his Truth Social platform.

Through a court spokesperson, Engoron has declined to comment on Trump’s barbs. He is barred from commenting to the news media about the case.

Trump typically hasn’t gone to court in the many cases involving his company. He was absent from a criminal trial in which the Trump Organization and one of its top executives was convicted of tax evasion and skipped a civil trial in which he was found responsible for sexually assaulting the writer E. Jean Carroll. But asked Friday if he planned to be at the New York trial, Trump said: “I may. I may.”

Engoron, a Democrat, has ruled repeatedly against Trump in the three years he’s been presiding over James’ lawsuit. He’s forced Trump to sit for a deposition, held him in contempt and fined him $110,000.

Now, Engoron is poised to permanently disrupt the collection of skyscrapers, golf courses and other properties that vaulted Trump to fame and the White House.

At a hearing in the case last Wednesday, the day after his ruling, Engoron offered “a little bit of New York humor” to break the tension. He repeated an oft-told story about a judge who ended up agreeing with everyone who spoke in his courtroom.

Engoron, a fan of puns and pop culture references, routinely turns to humor — even in the gravest of hearings and decisions.

“We certainly can use it today,” Trump lawyer Christopher Kise said.

Engoron, a few years younger than Trump at 74, spent his early years in Queens, about 3.8 miles (6 kilometers) east of the former president’s childhood home.

Engoron’s family later moved to East Williston on Long Island, where he ran track and wrote for the student newspaper at The Wheatley School, a public high school in Old Westbury, New York, and graduated in 1967.

A proud alum, Engoron is the founder and director of the school’s alumni association and writes an online newsletter with news about fellow graduates who’ve nicknamed him the “Mayor of Wheatley.” He even posted a link last year to an article about his involvement in the Trump case.

At the end of one newsletter, he posted a quippy call to action: “Please send me your autobiography before someone else sends me your obituary.”

Engoron first made headlines in 1964, when he and three friends won the grand prize in a “Banner Day” contest where the New York Mets, then just two years into their existence, invited fans to parade across the field carrying banners painted with creative messages about the team.

In an early sign of Engoron’s irreverence, the message was a take off on a popular political quote from the era: “Extremism In Defense Of The Mets Is No Vice.” Engoron was just 15 at the time.

While attending Columbia University in the 1960s, Engoron drove a taxi — a fact he revealed a decade ago while ruling against then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s plan to expand yellow cab service outside New York City. A state appeals court later reversed that decision.

Engoron’s rulings are rife with biographical information, part full-disclosure, part nostalgia. He revealed in one decision that he participated in “huge, sometimes boisterous, Vietnam War protests.” He’s also described himself as a free-speech absolutist and said he’s been a member of the American Civil Liberties Union since 1994.

Engoron got his law degree from New York University in 1979. He’s worked as a litigator and was a law clerk for 11 years for a judge in the same court where he now sits. Engoron also taught piano and drums and played keyboard in what he describes as a “moderately successful” bar band. He’s been married three times and has four children, according to his Wheatley alumni page biography.

Engoron joined the bench in 2003 as a judge on the New York City Civil Court, which handles small claims and other lesser-stakes lawsuits. In 2013, he was appointed an acting justice of the state’s trial court and ran unopposed for a permanent post in 2015. His term runs until 2029, though New York requires judges at his level retire when they turn 76.

A former law clerk, Michelle Bernstein Ravenscroft, said she remembered Engoron being “kind and approachable and that he was very invested in making sure his clerks had a good learning experience with him.”

Engoron frequently peppers his rulings with song lyrics, movie quotes and the occasional New York City history lesson. He’s quoted Bob Dylan and Shakespeare and movies like “City Slickers” and the Marx Brothers classic “Duck Soup.” He signs them with a logo of sorts, his initials, AE, drawn together in a circle.

In 2017, Engoron turned to the Frank Sinatra hit “Love and Marriage” which, the song notes, “go together like a horse and carriage” for a ruling restricting protests on horse-drawn carriages in Central Park. He punily titled a subsection “Balancing of the Equines, er, Equities.”

In a 2015 ruling on the custody of “Stevie” — a female, mixed-breed, part Basenji — Engoron offered a philosophical discussion of the rights of animals — or lack thereof — while reversing his previous ruling that sought to do what was in the pet’s best interest.

“Conferring rights on animals would create the ultimate slippery slope,” he said, reasoning that “if dogs were deemed to have rights, why not cats, raccoons, squirrels, fish, ants, cockroaches? Could you be imprisoned for swatting a fly? Where will it all end?”

In another ruling, Engoron said New York’s review process for new housing “seems like Rube Goldberg, Franz Kafka, and the Marquis de Sade cooked it up over martinis.”

Engoron has been involved in Trump-related cases since 2020, when he was assigned to intervene in quarrels among Trump’s lawyers and James’ office over demands for evidence and the direction of her investigation.

Trump’s lawyers wanted James’ lawsuit moved to a judge in the court’s Commercial Division, which is set up to handle complex corporate litigation, but an administrative judge kept the case with Engoron, citing his experience with the matter.

Back in the courtroom last Wednesday, as Trump’s lawyers reached rare consensus with James’ office on procedural issues, Engoron dispatched with one last quip.

“I knew this case would be a love fest,” he said.

___

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As interest grows for the rumored couple, even Trump weighed in on the situationship that is brewing between the pop star and NFL pro. The former president was asked his opinion about the pair during an interview with Daily Caller on Sept. 29.

“I wish the best for both of them. I hope they enjoy their life, maybe together, maybe not — most likely not,” Trump said.

Whether you’re emotionally invested in Swift and Kelce or not, there is no denying that attention around the pair is making headlines left and right.

Even Steve Kornacki broke down the Swelce/Traylor/Tayvis stats during the 3rd Hour of TODAY on Sept. 29. Both born in 1989, the two stars have impressive career stats, with Kelce winning two Super Bowls and Swift a 12-time Grammy Award winner. “It’s quite a match,” he said during “Kickoff With Kornacki.”

Then there’s TODAY’s Savannah Guthrie’s daughter, Vale, who told her that Kelce “better not break” the singer’s heart. “My daughter said this morning, ‘If he breaks her heart, I’ll break him,’” she said on Thursday’s TODAY.

“Sunday Night Football,” when Kelce’s Kansas City Chiefs take on the New York Jets, has turned into a can’t-miss event as the “Welcome to New York” singer is expected to attend and cheer on the tight end, two sources confirmed to NBC News.

A source told TODAY that Swift and Kelce hung out in New York more than a month ago and “are just getting to know each other.”

After Kelce shared that he attempted to give Swift a friendship bracelet with his phone number, he then invited her to one of his games, saying “I threw the ball in her court,” during ESPN’s “The Pat McAfee Show.”

And she accepted, cheering him on during his Sept. 24 game alongside his mom, Donna Kelce. They were spotted hanging out together after the game and driving away together.

“To see the slow-motion chest bumps, to see the high fives with mom, to see how Cheese Kingdom was all excited that she was there, that s— was absolutely hysterical,” Travis Kelce said during his “New Heights” podcast with brother Jason Kelce. “It was definitely a game I’ll remember, that’s for damn sure.”

After Swift’s appearance at the game, ticket sales for Chiefs home games tripled in a 24 hour window, according to StubHub data. They sold more seats in one day than they have since the start of the season.

While Swift may appear at more games, Travis Kelce says he will try to keep talk of his relationship with the singer to a minimum.

“What’s real is that it’s my personal life, and I want to respect both of our lives. She’s not in the media as much as I am,” he said on his podcast. “So everything moving forward, I think me talking about sports and saying, ‘All right now,’ would have to be kind of where I keep it.”

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Charles Littlejohn, of Washington, D.C., was working at the IRS as a government contractor when he stole tax return information linked with a public official “and thousands of the nation’s wealthiest people, including returns and return information dating back more than 15 years,” prosecutors said in court documents.

A source confirmed to NBC News that Trump was the unnamed public official whose records had been leaked. CNN was the first to report that the charges pertained to the disclosure of Trump’s taxes.

Read the full story on NBC News.com here

As part of the deal, Scott Graham Hall will receive five years of probation and agreed to testify in further proceedings. He was also ordered to write a letter of apology to the citizens of Georgia and is forbidden from participating in polling activities.

Hall, 59, pleaded guilty to five counts of conspiracy to commit intentional interference with performance of election duties, all misdemeanors. Prosecutors had accused him of participating in a breach of election equipment in rural Coffee County and initially charged him with racketeering and six conspiracy counts, all felonies.

He is one of the lower-level players in the indictment filed last month alleging a wide-ranging scheme to overturn Democrat Joe Biden’s presidential victory and keep the Republican Trump in power. But the plea deal nonetheless is a major development in the case and marks a win for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis as she pursues a historic racketeering case against a former president.

Hall’s attorney Jeff Weiner, who was in court with him Friday, said under the deal, his client’s record will be wiped clean after he completes probation. The agreement allows Hall to avoid the stress of “living under a serious felony indictment” without knowing when he might go to trial, the attorney said in a phone interview.

“This way, it’s over,” Weiner said. “He can sleep well and get on with his life.”

Weiner said Hall does not know much about the alleged conspiracy, and he would be surprised if prosecutors called him to testify.

Trump attorney Steve Sadow referred a request for comment on Hall’s plea deal to Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung, who did not immediately respond.

Hall was described in the 98-page indictment as an associate of longtime Trump adviser David Bossie.

The security breach in the county about 200 miles southeast of Atlanta is among the first known attempts by Trump allies to access voting systems as they sought evidence to back up their unsubstantiated claims that such equipment had been used to manipulate the presidential vote. It was followed a short time later by breaches in three Michigan counties involving some of the same people and again in a western Colorado county that Trump won handily.

Authorities allege the breach began on Jan. 7, 2021, a day after the violent assault on the U.S. Capitol, and continued over the span of a few weeks.

Authorities say Hall and co-defendants conspired to allow others to “unlawfully access secure voting equipment and voter data.” This included ballot images, voting equipment software and personal vote information that was later made available to people in other states, according to the indictment.

Earlier Friday, prosecutor Nathan Wade revealed at a separate hearing that the district attorney’s office planned to offer plea deals to lawyers Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro. Attorneys for the pair were present at the hearing and didn’t indicate whether their clients would accept the offers.

Powell and Chesebro have requested speedy trials and are set to be tried together on Oct. 23, despite their lawyers arguing that they don’t know each other and are not accused of having participated in the same acts.

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Powell is accused of participating in a breach of election equipment in rural Coffee County. She’s alleged to have hired and paid a computer forensics team that copied data and software from the election equipment without authorization.

Chesebro is accused of working on the coordination and execution of a plan to have 16 Georgia Republicans sign a certificate declaring falsely that Trump won and declaring themselves the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors.

Also on Friday, U.S. District Judge Steve Jones rejected requests by four other defendants — former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark and three fake electors — to move the charges against them from state court to federal court. He had previously rejected a similar request from Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.

The practical effects of moving to federal court would have been a jury pool that includes a broader area and is potentially more conservative than Fulton County alone and a trial that would not be photographed or televised, as cameras are not allowed inside federal courtrooms. But it would not have opened the door for Trump, if he’s reelected in 2024, or another president to issue pardons because any conviction would still happen under state law.

The indictment says Clark wrote a letter after the election that said the Justice Department had “identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple States, including the State of Georgia” and asked top department officials to sign it and send it to Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and state legislative leaders. Clark knew at the time that that statement was false, the indictment alleges.

Clark’s attorneys had argued that the actions described in the indictment related directly to his work as a federal official at the Justice Department. Clark at the time was the assistant attorney general overseeing the environment and natural resources division and was the acting assistant attorney general over the civil division.

But the judge said Clark provided no evidence to show that he was acting within the scope of his role in the Justice Department when he wrote a letter in December 2020 claiming the department was investigating voter irregularities. “To the contrary, the evidence before the Court indicates the opposite: Clark’s role in the Civil Division did not include any role in the investigation or oversight of State elections,” Jones wrote.

David Shafer, Shawn Still and Cathy Latham were among the 16 Republicans who falsely certified they were the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors.

Their lawyers argued in court that they were not fake electors but were instead a “contingent” slate in case the original election results were tossed out by a court. As such, the lawyers said, their status as electors means they were acting as federal officials and were performing the duties required by federal law.

Jones said Friday that all three had failed to establish they were federal officers or acted under the direction of a federal officer.

As for the claim that they were contingent electors, Jones wrote that even if that were true, “contingent presidential electors are a creation of Georgia state law, not federal law.”

Associated Press writers Alanna Durkin Richer in Boston and Sudhin Thanawala in Atlanta contributed to this report.

With less than four months until the Iowa caucuses officially jumpstart the GOP nomination process, the pressure is building on Trump’s rivals to show they can emerge as a genuine alternative.

Here are some early takeaways from the debate:

DESANTIS HITS TRUMP

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had an aggressive start, using his first answer to criticize Trump for skipping the debate and for adding to the national debt while serving as president.

“Donald Trump is missing in action,” DeSantis said. “He should be here on this stage tonight. He owes it to you to defend his record.”

The Florida governor has been slow to attack Trump for most of the campaign. But as he’s struggled to make inroads against the former president, he’s started slowly sharpening his critiques of the man whose endorsement he once embraced.

With his position in the race at risk of stalling, DeSantis faced pressure to have a standout and aggressive performance Wednesday.

DeSantis seemed eager to jump in on a question after Trump was criticized by former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who has made hammering Trump a focus of his campaign. DeSantis began speaking at the same time as another candidate and when finally given the floor, he used his answer to hit President Joe Biden and Trump in the same swipe, accusing them of lacking leadership.

DeSantis found an opportunity later in the debate to hit Trump on abortion, an area where he’s recently stepped up his attacks from the right.

DeSantis said Trump was wrong to blame the Republican Party’s lackluster performance in the 2022 midterm elections on the overturning of national abortion rights.

“He should be here explaining his comments,” DeSantis said. “I want him to look into the eyes and tell people who’ve been fighting this fight for a long time.”

GOP’S SHIFT FROM REAGAN

Instead of facing his rivals on the debate stage, Trump was in Michigan working to win over blue-collar voters in the midst of an autoworkers’ strike.

The debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library highlighted the way the GOP has drifted from some of the former president’s core values. One of them was highlighted right away — immigration.

A clip of the 40th president calling for “amnesty” for people in the country illegally preceded a question about immigration policy. Christie, who once represented a Democratic state and backed a similar proposal a decade ago, distanced himself from that, saying it was effectively ancient history.

“We’re no longer in a position to do that anymore,” Christie said, calling for “enforcing the law.”

Nikki Haley, the daughter of Indian immigrants and a former South Carolina governor, went a step further, calling for an end to foreign aid to Latin America until the border is secured.

“Only when we fix the immigration system, only when we make the border secure should we ever put more money into this,” the former United Nations representative said.

The rightward shift on migration was percolating even before Trump’s presidential run began in 2015, but his victory the following year accelerated it. Even entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, also the son of Indian immigrants, jumped in to highlight his proposal to revoke U.S. citizenship for children born in the country to parents who are here illegally.

That’d require a constitutional amendment and has also been embraced by Trump, but it shows how far the modern GOP has drifted from Reagan.

A NEW TONE FROM RAMASWAMY?

Ramaswamy seemed to take pride in antagonizing his rivals during the first debate, declaring that “everyone on this stage is corrupt” except him because he was a political outsider, a biotech entrepreneur who wrote a book entitled “Woke, Inc.” and decided to run for president.

It got him attention, but also seemed to have gotten under the skins of not only his rivals, but GOP primary voters. Ramaswamy tried a kinder, gentler approach this time.

“These are good people on this stage,” he declared at the start of the debate. Later Ramaswamy repeatedly cited Reagan’s so-called “11th commandment” to never criticize another Republican.

He even tried a little humble pie. “I’m the new guy here so I know I have to earn your trust,” he told the crowd, saying he may seem “a bit of a know-it-all” but he’d be eager to listen to more experienced hands in the Oval Office.

He certainly didn’t defuse the tension onstage — Ramaswamy ended up at the bottom of a political dogpile again as candidates lined up to criticize him.

A MORE ASSERTIVE TIM SCOTT

After delivering a somewhat underwhelming performance during the first debate, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott sought to more forcefully assert himself on Wednesday.

The only Black person on stage, Scott jumped on a question to DeSantis about revisions to Florida’s school curriculum that required teachers to instruct middle-school students that enslaved people “developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

After DeSantis defended the standards, Scott responded that “there is not a redeeming quality in slavery.”

The senator then tried to criticize both DeSantis and Vice President Kamala Harris, who is Black and of South Asian descent. Scott then gave a long answer defending America’s evolution and raised his voice in a crescendo, declaring, “America is not a racist country,” which drew applause.

RUNNING TO WIN?

The seven candidates onstage kept talking about what they would do when they become president. But there was little evidence any of them was trying to win that office.

The participants spent the two hours largely agreeing with each other on substance, but bickering over baroque bits of policy or history. Unless prompted, they didn’t bring up the man who is absolutely dominating the field, Trump.

The only exception was Christie, whose entire campaign is predicated on slamming the man whose two prior candidacies he supported. But even most of Christie’s barbs were about Trump’s debate dodging rather than trying to persuade Republican voters to end their love affair with the ex-president.

Still, he went further than just about anyone else in arguing against Trump, closing the debate by saying, “This man has not only divided our party, he’s divided families all over this country.”

That was just about the only thing that made any single candidate stand out. Otherwise, they all sounded similar on most issues without staking out any distinct ground. It wasn’t until the end that DeSantis touted his Florida record of a conservative renaissance. Unlike in the initial debate, Haley didn’t highlight her background as an accountant, mom, governor and diplomat into one package. She instead got into sniping fests with Scott, a fellow South Carolinian.

Her most memorable line of the night was aimed at Ramaswamy, who is among a pack of candidates trailing Trump and generally falling behind DeSantis in national polls.

“Every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber for what you say,” Haley told the 38-year-old political novice.

THE CRINGE DEBATE

It was probably the sharpest line of the night, and it was aimed down.

There were some awkward and downright cringeworthy moments during the debate, from lines that were heavily rehearsed to some clunky retorts.

Christie, in an early broadside against Trump, looked directly into the camera and declared that if he keeps skipping debates, he would deserve a new nickname: “Donald Duck.”

SCATTERED LAUGHTER WAS SLOW TO FOLLOW

Christie made another uncomfortable barb later at someone no one expected to be mentioned Wednesday: first lady Jill Biden. The New Jersey governor, while trying to suggest that teachers unions have a strong influence in Biden’s White House, declared the president is “sleeping with a member of the teachers union.” The first lady is a community college teacher and member of the National Education Association.

Rather than staying away from the uncomfortable subject of private marital relations, former Vice President Mike Pence ran toward the subject when he got his first opportunity after several other candidates gave other answers around education. He referred to his own wife’s work as a teacher.

“I gotta admit, I’ve been sleeping with a teacher for 38 years,” Pence said.

He didn’t need to.