If Trump were directing the Watergate break in, he would have sued Frank Wills.
The filing was part of the special counsel’s opposition to a bid by Trump to access a broad swath of classified intelligence as part of his defense against charges that he conspired to subvert the 2020 election and disenfranchise millions of voters, culminating in the violent Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Trump has argued that foreign governments fueled his supporters’ concerns about election integrity and that some classified evidence revealed potential meddling that justified his own professed fears about fraud.
But prosecutors say Trump’s new legal effort is just an extension of his election lies — and that, in fact, intelligence officials unanimously rejected the idea that foreign governments penetrated any systems that counted votes or could have altered the election tally itself. Rather, they said, intel officials documented some breaches of state voter registration databases that permitted various influence campaigns but were not capable of causing the vote-stealing scheme of which Trump has long sought to convince his followers.
Trump, Windom writes, tries to create a “false impression” and “manufacture confusion” by citing these “irrelevant network breaches” and conflating them with potential changes to the vote total.
www.politico.com/…
Former President Trump is no longer planning to testify in his ongoing New York civil fraud trial on Monday, he said in a Truth Social post on Sunday.
Why it matters: Trump, who took the stand in November, was expected to testify Monday as the final and star witness in his own defense in the case.
- The $250 million case — which is in its final stages — is putting his net worth on trial and threatening to block him from doing business in his native state.
[...]
The big picture: Trump, who is currently fighting four criminal cases, voluntarily attended court proceedings multiple times throughout the trial, which started in October.
- Trump frequently lambasted New York Judge Arthur Engoron, who is overseeing the trial and New York Attorney General Letitia James, who filed the suit against him, his adult children and his business last year.
- Trump, who lost a bid for a mistrial in the case, voluntarily showed up at the Manhattan courthouse last week as a spectator, when he derided the case as a "witch hunt" and slammed it as a "very corrupt trial."
Zoom in: During his first testimony in November, which lasted nearly four hours, Trump clashed with Engoron and acknowledged having some input on the financial statements at the center of the lawsuit.
www.axios.com/...