Matthew Chapman is a video game designer who attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and lives in San Marcos, Texas. Before joining Raw Story, he wrote for Shareblue and AlterNet, specializing in election and policy coverage.
On Thursday, Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) filed a lawsuit against Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, for moving ahead with a citywide face mask requirement amid the coronavirus pandemic.
On Wednesday, Kemp had issued an executive order nullifying mask requirements at the municipal level. However, Bottoms refused to back down, daring the governor to take her to court over public health.
BREAKING: Governor Kemp has filed a lawsuit against Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and the Atlanta City Council followi… https://t.co/SD0oPN4VYr
Following the second day of his criminal trial in Manhattan, former President Donald Trump was interviewed on the far-right Newsmax TV while he visited a bodega in New York City — and wasted no time in lobbing yet another attack on the criminal justice system.
"Do you believe you violated the gag order?" a reporter asked the former president.
"No, I didn’t. There shouldn't be a gag order. Let me just tell you the gag order is totally unconstitutional," said Trump. "The judge should not be there. The judge is highly conflicted. He should not be there."
Trump, whose attorneys have similarly been making the rounds on TV complaining about the propriety of the case, did not elaborate on why he believes the gag order to be unconstitutional; however, he has repeatedly attacked the judge, Juan Merchan, even going after his family and claiming he should be removed because his daughter worked for a company that partnered with Democratic political campaigns.
The attacks prompted Merchan to expand the gag order to explicitly restrict the former president from making such attacks on family members of officers of the court, although Trump is nonetheless still allowed to continue criticizing Merchan himself, as well as Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
The case, which is the first of four criminal trials the former president is scheduled to stand, centers on allegations that Trump criminally falsified business records in order to conceal a hush payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels, which Bragg argues was a scheme to suppress information about an affair from voters in the 2016 presidential election. Trump pleaded not guilty to charges and further denies that the affair in question happened at all.
A New Yorker paneled Tuesday during jury selection in former President Donald Trump's criminal hush money trial has alarm bells ringing for one legal expert following the case.
The juror in question is an IT consultant who told the court he found former President Donald Trump "fascinating and mysterious,” and said that he also found it “interesting” that Trump “walks into a room, and he sets people off one way or another," according to a CBS News report.
"I would have struck that juror immediately if I was the prosecutor," said former federal prosecutor Elie Honig. "I'm not sure, and we can always second guess after the fact, but that one would have jumped off the page to me as a strike."
Honig, appearing on CNN's "The Situation Room" Tuesday night, admitted it's possible to infer too much, because he wasn't physically in the courtroom.
"I mean, look, Donald Trump, whatever anyone may say, Donald Trump is enormously charismatic; I guess charismatic can be positive or negative and that would worry me... but this is not going to wind up in a Not Guilty verdict," Honig said.
"You need to all 12 to say not guilty."
The anonymous Manhattanites could find themselves at the center of a historic trial in which Trump stands accused of fudging business records to cover payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels.
The IT worker who finds Trump fascinating joins an English teacher, an oncology nurse, a sales professional, a software engineer and two lawyers, reports show.
Eleven more jurors need to be sworn in before opening statements get underway against the presumptive Republican nominee.
Honig suspects Trump's legal team hope to win over one or two rogue jurors who, like the IT consultant, find him "fascinating" enough to raise their hands and cast doubt.
"What Trump is playing for here as a hung jury and what people have to understand is, 11-to-one is a hung jury, so I want a wild card if I'm Trump's team," Honig said.
"I want someone on that jury who's enamored with Trump; who finds him fascinating, who finds him charismatic — and that ["fascinating"] comment would definitely worry me from the prosecutor's perspective."
Trump's one-time attorney Michael Cohen discussed Trump's complaint on the "Political Beatdown" podcast with Ben Meiselas on Tuesday during a heated conversation about the former president.
"I wasn't aware that he went to any of the kids' graduations," said Cohen.
Trump is the father of five children: Donald Jr., Eric, Ivanka, Tiffany and Barron, his son with his current wife Melania. Cohen said he often helped Melania find Barron's schooling, before Trump considered a presidential run.
"It was Melania and I that put Barron into school here, private school in Manhattan," Cohen said. "When ultimately it was agreed that Melania and Barron were going to move to D.C. and so on, it was Melania and I that went and got him into school in Potomac, in D.C."
Cohen then ridiculed Trump for the complaint levied against Merchan by noting the events in his life he himself missed while serving time in federal prison.
"I find it not just comical, right, but I find it — I find it insulting that that's the big issue," added Cohen. "You know, I missed ... my 25th anniversary, and my wife's 50th birthday, because I was in Otisville, in part because of things that I had done at the direction and for the benefit of Donald Trump."
Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts that he falsified business records to cover up hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels, as is contended by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
Cohen is expected to be a star witness in the trial.
"So before I start shedding a tear for him, for Barron, and, I'm sure Melania is extremely excited he's not going to be there," Cohen said. "Rest assured I'm not losing any sleep and I won't shed a tear that Trump can't go to Barron's graduation."
