International

Donald Trump pleads not guilty to classified documents charges

Published

1 year ago

June 14, 2023

Former president Donald Trump

Former President Donald Trump has pleaded not guilty to 37 charges related to alleged mishandling of classified documents.

Trump’s lawyers asked for a jury trial during the former president’s arraignment Tuesday at a federal courthouse in Miami. “We most certainly enter a plea of not guilty,” Trump attorney Todd Blanche told the judge.

During the hearing, Trump sat hunched over with his arms crossed and a scowl on his face. He did not speak.

Here’s what else happened at Tuesday’s hearing, which ended after roughly 45 minutes:

Magistrate Judge Jonathan Goodman ruled that Trump could not communicate with Nauta about the case. The judge also told prosecutors to make a list of potential witnesses that Trump can’t communicate with about the case – except through counsel.
The judge did not, however, place any travel restrictions on either defendant.
The Justice Department recommended that both Trump and Nauta be released with no financial or special conditions. Prosecutor David Harbach said that “the government does not view either defendant as a flight risk.”

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Goodman began the hearing thanking “the entire law enforcement community” for their work on Tuesday.
Before the arraignment hearing, deputy marshals booked the former president and took electronic copies of his fingerprints. They did not take a mugshot of Trump since he is easily recognizable. The booking process took about 10 minutes.

The criminal charges in the Justice Department’s classified documents case escalates the legal jeopardy surrounding the 2024 GOP front-runner. Special counsel Jack Smith attended Tuesday’s arraignment.

Trump faces 37 felony counts, alleging he illegally retained national defense information and that he concealed documents in violation of witness-tampering laws in the Justice Department’s probe into the materials.

Stop at Cuban restaurant

After the court hearing, Trump made an unannounced stop at Versailles, a well-known Cuban restaurant in Miami. Trump was surrounded by dozens of his supporters inside the restaurant, shaking hands and snapping photos with them.

“Food for everyone,” Trump told those gathered as they cheered.

At one point, Trump’s supporters sang him “happy birthday.” Trump’s birthday is on Wednesday.

“Some birthday, we got a government that is out of control,” Trump could be heard saying.

Following the restaurant stop, Trump flew back to New Jersey Tuesday evening where he spoke publicly at his Bedminster resort about what he called the “fake and fabricated charges.” The former president claimed he had “every right to have these documents” and said prosecutors “ought to drop this case immediately because they’re destroying our country.”

“They should never have done this,” he told the gathered crowd. “This was an unwritten rule, you just don’t unless it’s really bad. But you just don’t. But the seal is now broken.”

Earlier in the day, Trump posted on his social media before heading to court that it was “ONE OF THE SADDEST DAYS IN THE HISTORY OF OUR COUNTRY. WE ARE A NATION IN DECLINE!!!”

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Tuesday’s hearing will kickstart what will likely be a winding, dramatic judicial process, with criminal and appeal proceedings that may play out for years. US District Judge Aileen Cannon – a Trump nominee whose decision last year to order a third-party review of an FBI search of Mar-a-Lago was widely criticized and overturned by a conservative appeals court – has been assigned the case.

Attorneys Todd Blanche and Chris Kise represented Trump in court for the arraignment. However, the role Kise will play going forward is unclear, and he was sidelined during last year’s litigation over the Mar-a-Lago search amid Trump team infighting.

Another Trump attorney, Alina Habba, spoke outside the courthouse ahead of Trump’s arraignment, saying that the former president was “defiant.”

Habba ridiculed what she called a “two-tiered system of justice” and called the indictment an “unapologetic weaponization of the criminal justice system.”

The Justice Department’s counterintelligence chief Jay Bratt, who has been a key player in the documents probe so far, also attended Tuesday’s hearing, along with prosecutors Harbach and Julie Edelstein.

Seriousness of the charges

Before last week’s federal indictment, Trump also faced criminal charges brought by New York City’s local prosecutors for an alleged hush money scheme in the 2016 campaign in which Trump is accused of falsifying business records.

The new charges in the DOJ documents case are drastically more serious and present the possibility of several years in prison if Trump is ultimately convicted.

Thirty-one counts that Trump faces are for willful retention of national defense information, a charge that does not turn on whether the documents are classified. In addition to the obstruction conspiracy, he also faces four counts related to the concealment of the documents, as well as a false statements charge.

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“In a case like this, obstruction and tampering help prove the main charge, that the defendant willfully engaged in the charged conduct,” said David Aaron, a former federal prosecutor in espionage section of the DOJ’s national security division and a current senior counsel at Perkins Coie. “Those facts could also affect how a judge, the jury, or the public views the case and could substantially affect sentencing.”

What happens next

Now that Tuesday’s hearing is in the rearview mirror, the case will enter a legal grind of pretrial proceedings, including likely disputes over what evidence is put before a jury and whether the case should be thrown out altogether before going to trial. The Trump team will have plenty of opportunity to drag things out – potentially until after the 2024 election.

One major x-factor in the prosecution of the case is its assignment to Cannon, who sits in Ft. Pierce, Florida, but who is part of the pool of judges who are randomly cases filed in West Palm Beach, where the new indictment was brought.

“There are few things more powerful than a district judge in a federal case,” said Alan Rozenshtein, a former attorney in the DOJ National Security Division who is now a University of Minnesota law school professor. “She could – if she wanted to – cause huge problems for the prosecution. Would they be existential problems? Probably not.”

Cannon’s approach to last year’s Trump lawsuit challenging the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago search raised eyebrows among legal experts across the ideological spectrum for how she appeared to bend over backward to create special legal rules in favor of the former president. Her rationale for why such a review was necessary was torn apart by a panel of right-leaning appellate judges, including two Trump appointees, on the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals last December.

“She got so banged up by the 11th Circuit that she might be ultra-cautious,” Kel McClanahan, a national security lawyer and an adjunct professor at the George Washington University Law School, told CNN. “We just don’t know.”

Donald Trump

CNN

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International

Canada, Mexico, China respond to Trump tariff threats

Published

2 hours ago

November 27, 2024

Trends Admin

Canada, Mexico, China respond to Trump tariff threats

Officials from Canada, Mexico and China have warned US President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to impose sweeping tariffs on America’s three largest trading partners could upend the economies of all four countries.

“To one tariff will follow another in response and so on, until we put our common businesses at risk,” Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum said.

Trump vowed on Monday night to introduce 25% tariffs on goods coming from Mexico and Canada and an additional 10% on goods coming from China. He said the duties were a bid to clamp down on drugs and illegal immigration.

Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he spoke to Trump in the hours after the announcement and planned to hold a meeting with Canada’s provincial leaders on Wednesday to discuss a response.

A spokesman for China’s embassy in Washington DC told the BBC: “No-one will win a trade war or a tariff war.”

The international pushback came a day after Trump announced his plans for his first day in office, on 20 January, in a post on his social media website, Truth Social.

Trudeau said his country was prepared to work with the US in “constructive ways”.

“This is a relationship that we know takes a certain amount of working on, and that’s what we’ll do,” Trudeau told reporters.

In a phone call with Trump, Trudeau said the pair discussed trade and border security, with the prime minister pointing out that the number of migrants crossing the Canadian border was much smaller compared with the US-Mexico border.

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Trump’s team declined to confirm the phone call.

But Trump spokesman Steven Cheung added that world leaders had sought to “develop stronger relationships” with Trump “because he represents global peace and stability”.

Mexico’s President Sheinbaum told reporters on Tuesday that neither threats nor tariffs would solve the “migration phenomenon” or drug consumption in the US.

Reading from a letter that she said she would send to Trump, Sheinbaum also warned that Mexico would retaliate by imposing its own taxes on US imports, which would “put common enterprises at risk”.

She said Mexico had taken steps to tackle illegal migration into the US and that “caravans of migrants no longer reach the border”.

The issue of drugs, she added, “is a problem of public health and consumption in your country’s society”.

Sheinbaum, who took office last month, noted that US car manufacturers produce some of their parts in Mexico and Canada.

“If tariffs go up, who will it hurt? General Motors,” she said.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for China’s embassy in Washington, Liu Pengyu, told the BBC that “China-US economic and trade co-operation is mutually beneficial in nature”.

He denied that China allows chemicals used in the manufacture of illegal drugs – including fentanyl – to be smuggled to the US.

“China has responded to US request for verifying clues on certain cases and taken action,” Liu said.

“All these prove that the idea of China knowingly allowing fentanyl precursors to flow into the United States runs completely counter to facts and reality.”

President Joe Biden has left in place the tariffs on China that Trump introduced in his first term, and added a few more of his own.

Currently, a majority of what the two countries sell to each other is subject to tariffs – 66.4% of US imports from China and 58.3% of Chinese imports from the US.

Speaking in the House of Commons in Ottawa, Trudeau told lawmakers that “the idea of going to war with the United States isn’t what anyone wants”.

He called on them to not “panic”, and to work together.

“That is the work we will do seriously, methodically. But without freaking out,” he said.

The leaders of Canadian provinces suggested that they would impose their own tariffs on the US.

“The things we sell to the United States are the things they really need,” Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said on Tuesday. “We sell them oil, we sell them electricity, we sell them critical minerals and metals.”

America’s northern neighbour accounted for some $437bn (£347bn) of US imports in 2022, and was the largest market for US exports in the same year, according to US data.

Canada sends about 75% of its total exports to the US.

Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, said on Monday the proposed tariff would be “devastating to workers and jobs in both Canada and the US”.

“To compare us to Mexico is the most insulting thing I’ve ever heard,” said Ford.

Ford was echoed by the premiers of Quebec, Saskatchewan and British Columbia, while a post on the X account of Alberta Premier Danielle Smith acknowledged that Trump had “valid concerns related to illegal activities at our shared border”.

The Canadian dollar, the Loonie, has plunged in value since Trump vowed to impose tariffs on Canadian imports come January.

The Canadian dollar dipped below 71 US cents, the lowest level the Loonie has fallen to since May 2020, when Trump threatened to impose tariffs on Canadian goods during his first stint as US president. The Mexican peso fell to its lowest value this year, around 4.8 cents.

Canada, Mexico, China respond to Trump tariff threats

BBC

International

Relief as Israel agrees to ceasefire with Lebanon

Published

3 hours ago

November 27, 2024

Trends Admin

Relief as Israel agrees to ceasefire with Lebanon

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he will bring a US-brokered proposal for a ceasefire with Hezbollah in Lebanon to his government for approval as soon as Tuesday evening.

He said in a televised address that he would put “a ceasefire outline” to ministers “this evening”.

He however did not say how long the truce would last, noting “the length of the ceasefire depends on what happens in Lebanon”.

But it later learnt that the ceasefire would is for 60 days.

During the period, Hezbollah fighters are expected to retreat 40 kilometres from Israel’s border, with Israeli ground forces withdrawing from Lebanese territory.

“If Hezbollah violates the agreement and attempts to rearm, we will strike,” Netanyahu warned.

Key Israel backer the United States has led ceasefire efforts for Lebanon alongside France.

US President Joe Biden is optimistic the deal will lead to a “permanent cessation of hostilities”.

Biden added that the US would lead another push for a ceasefire in Gaza.

“In full coordination with the United States, we are maintaining full military freedom of action,” Netanyahu said, outlining the seven-front war Israel says it faces in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Iran.

Even as Netanyahu spoke about the ceasefire, the Israeli military carried out multiple strikes on heart of Beirut while the army said some 15 projectiles had entered Israeli airspace from Lebanon.

Demonstrators raise placards and Israeli flags during a protest in front of the Israeli Defence Ministry in the coastal city Tel Aviv on November 26, 2024, against a possible ceasefire with Hezbollah in Lebanon. – Israel’s security cabinet has started discussing a proposed ceasefire deal in its war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, an Israeli official confirmed to AFP on November 26. (Photo by Jack GUEZ / AFP)

The war in Lebanon escalated after nearly a year of limited cross-border exchanges of fire begun by Hezbollah, which said it was acting in support of Hamas after its October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which sparked the war in Gaza.

The war has killed at least 3,823 people in Lebanon since October 2023, according to the health ministry, most of them since September.

On the Israeli side, the hostilities have killed at least 82 soldiers and 47 civilians, authorities say.

Netanyahu said the ceasefire would allow Israel to focus on “the Iranian threat” and ramp up its fight against Hamas in Gaza.

“With Hezbollah out of the picture, Hamas is left on its own,” he said.

“We will increase our pressure on Hamas and that will help us in our sacred mission of releasing our hostages.”

During last year’s Hamas attack, militants took 251 hostages, of whom 97 are still held in Gaza, including 34 the army has declared dead.

International

Israeli strikes pound central Beirut, suburbs

Published

17 hours ago

November 26, 2024

Trends Admin

Israeli strikes pound central Beirut, suburbs

BEIRUT: Israeli strikes pounded a densely-populated part of the Lebanese capital and its southern suburbs on Tuesday, hours ahead of an anticipated announcement of a ceasefire ending hostilities between Israel and Lebanese armed group Hezbollah.

A strike on Beirut hit the Noueiri district with no evacuation warning and killed at least one person, Lebanon’s health ministry said in a preliminary toll.

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Minutes later, at least 10 Israeli strikes hit Beirut’s southern suburbs. They began approximately 30 minutes after the Israeli military issued evacuation orders for 20 locations in the area, the largest such warning yet.

As the strikes were under way, Israel’s military spokesperson Avichay Adraee said the air force was conducting a “widespread attack” on Hezbollah targets across the city.