International
Donald Trump pleads not guilty to classified documents charges
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
International
Gaza: Hamas studies new Israeli truce proposal, 32 more killed
Gaza: Hamas studies new Israeli truce proposal, 32 more killed
JEDDAH/GAZA STRIP: Palestinians in Rafah said on Saturday they were living in “constant terror” as Israel vows to push ahead with its planned assault on the south Gaza city flooded with displaced civilians.
The Israeli military has massed dozens of tanks and armored vehicles in southern Israel close to Rafah and hit locations in the city in near-daily airstrikes.
“We live in constant terror and fear of repeated displacement and invasion,” said Nidaa Safi, 30, who fled Israeli strikes in the north and came to Rafah with her husband and children.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said at least 34,388 people have been killed in the besieged territory during more than six months of war between Israel and Hamas militants.
The tally includes at least 32 deaths in the past 24 hours, a ministry statement said, adding that 77,437 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip since the war broke out when Hamas militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7.
Early Saturday, an airstrike hit a house in Rafah’s Tel Sultan neighborhood, killing a man, his wife and their sons, ages 12, 10 and 8, according to records of the Abu Yousef Al-Najjar hospital’s morgue. A neighbor’s 4-month-old girl was also killed.
Ahmed Omar rushed with other neighbors after the 1:30 a.m. strike to look for survivors, but said they only found bodies and body parts. “It’s a tragedy,” he said.
An Israeli airstrike later Saturday on a building in Rafah killed seven people, including six members of the Ashour family, according to the morgue.
Five people were killed in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza overnight when an Israeli strike hit a house, according to officials at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.
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Elsewhere, Israeli forces shot and killed two Palestinian men at a checkpoint in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the military said. It said the men had opened fire at troops stationed at Salem checkpoint near the city of Jenin.
Violence in the West Bank has flared since the war. The Ramallah-based Health Ministry says 491 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire.
Israel’s counterproposal
Hamas said it was studying Israel’s latest counterproposal for a ceasefire, a day after reports said a delegation from mediator Egypt was in Israel trying to jump-start stalled negotiations.
Israel’s foreign minister said that the Rafah incursion could be suspended should there be a deal to secure the release of Israeli hostages.
“The release of the hostages is the top priority for us,” said Israel Katz. “If there will be a deal, we will suspend the operation.”
The Egyptian delegation discussed a “new vision” for a prolonged ceasefire in Gaza, according to an Egyptian official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to freely discuss the developments.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether Israel’s proposal was directly related to the visit.
Khalil Al-Hayya, deputy head of Hamas’s political arm in Gaza, said it had “received the official Zionist occupation response to the movement’s position, which was delivered to the Egyptian and Qatari mediators on April 13.”
Negotiations earlier this month centered on a six-week ceasefire proposal and the release of 40 civilian and sick hostages in exchange for freeing hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.
A separate Hamas statement said leaders from the three main militant groups active in Gaza discussed attempts to end the war. It didn’t mention the Israeli proposal.
The armed wing of Hamas also released video footage of two men held hostage in Gaza, identified by Israeli campaign group the Hostages and Missing Families Forum as Keith Siegel and Omri Miran.
Mediators are working on a compromise that will answer most of both parties’ main demands, which could pave the way to continued negotiations with the goal of a deal to end the war, the official said.
Hamas has said it won’t back down from demands for a permanent ceasefire and full withdrawal of Israeli troops.
Israel has rejected both and said it will continue military operations until Hamas is defeated and that it will retain a security presence in Gaza.
There is growing international pressure for Hamas and Israel to reach a ceasefire deal and avert an Israeli attack on Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have sought refuge.
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Israel has insisted for months it plans a ground offensive into Rafah, on the border with Egypt, where it says many remaining Hamas militants remain, despite calls for restraint including from Israel’s staunchest ally, the United States.
Egypt has cautioned an offensive into Rafah could have “catastrophic consequences” on the humanitarian situation in Gaza, where famine is feared, and on regional peace and security.
Tolerating Israeli abuses
Washington has been critical of Israeli policies in the West Bank. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who is expected in Israel on Tuesday, recently determined an army unit committed rights abuses there before the war in Gaza.
But Blinken said in an undated letter to US House Speaker Mike Johnson, obtained by The Associated Press on Friday, that he’s postponing a decision on blocking aid to the unit to give Israel more time to right the wrongdoing. Blinken stressed that overall US military support for Israel’s defense wouldn’t be affected.
The US has also been building a pier to deliver aid to Gaza through a new port. Israel’s military confirmed Saturday that it would be operational by early May.
The BBC reported the UK government was considering deploying troops to drive the trucks to carry the aid to shore, citing unidentified government sources. British officials declined to comment.
Another aid effort, a three-ship flotilla coming from Turkiye, was prevented from sailing, organizers said.
Student protests over the war and its effect on Palestinians are growing on college campuses in the US, while demonstrations continue in many countries.
Hamas sparked the war by attacking southern Israel on Oct. 7, with militants killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking around 250 hostage. Israel says the militants still hold around 100 hostages and the remains of more than 30 others.
Gaza: Hamas studies new Israeli truce proposal, 32 more killed
Arab News
International
Ukraine receives bodies of 140 fallen soldiers from Russia
Ukraine receives bodies of 140 fallen soldiers from Russia
Ukraine has received the bodies of 140 soldiers killed while trying to defend the regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhya and Kherson from Russian attacks.
The authority responsible for prisoner-of-war matters said on Telegram on Friday that five bodies were from the Sumy section in northern Ukraine.
Russia has no Ukrainian territories under its control in this area; however, at the beginning of March, units of allegedly Russian volunteers fighting on the side of Ukraine made advances from the Sumy region into Russian territory.
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Once the identities of the dead have been established, they will be handed over to their relatives, the authority said.
The authority, known as the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, thanked the International Committee of the Red Cross for arranging the return.
Ukraine has been fending off a Russian invasion for over two years.
Despite the ongoing fighting, both sides regularly exchange the bodies of fallen soldiers and prisoners of war.
It is not yet known whether and how many dead soldiers Russia has received in return.
Ukraine receives bodies of 140 fallen soldiers from Russia
International
Weeks after Iran’s attack, Israel discovers another massive surface-to-surface missile
Weeks after Iran’s attack, Israel discovers another massive surface-to-surface missile
Weeks after missiles sent by Iran on April 14 rocked several parts of Israel, another debris of a surface-to-surface missile has been found in the southern part of the country.
According to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), the debris that was found by hikers in southern Israel, has been successfully evacuated.
“The effects of Iran’s attack on Israel can still be seen weeks after it occurred.
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“Earlier today, our troops removed the debris of a surface-to-surface missile intercepted during the Iranian attack. At the beginning of the week, the debris was found by hikers in southern Israel.
A complex removal, the process was made possible through advanced preparation by the Home Front Command and assistance from the IAF. During the process, the missile debris was cleared of hazardous materials, ” the IDF said in a post on Friday.
This is not the first missile discovered in the south since the attack. Similar missiles were discovered nearby in the Dead Sea area immediately after the major attack that Tehran launched against Israel, which included more than 300 suicide drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles.
Weeks after Iran’s attack, Israel discovers another massive surface-to-surface missile
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