Mitchell Epner, a former federal prosecutor, said that Judge Engoron could have already “taken action” and held Donald Trump in contempt of court for his behaviour during today’s testimony.
Penalties for contempt, Epner added, could range from fines to “adverse inferences” and potentially even jail.
Judge Engoron already fined Trump $10,000 (£8,082) for comments made outside of court last month. Financial penalties could potentially be doubled after each outburst.
“I would not be surprised if the starting point for fines was $100,000 or something even higher,” Epner said.
“Whatever the judge does, it’s going to be designed to compel Trump to stop acting in the way he’s been acting”.
Wow, the speech his lawyers just gave is an incoherent rambling that has says absolutely nothing of substance, completely misses all points and stirs people up. He got himself a clone as lawyer.
Trump has just spent the past five minutes airing his frustrations about the New York fraud trial while on the stand.
He points his finger at New York Attorney General Letitia James as he yells that the “political hack back there” is carrying out the probe to hurt him.
At the end of the rant, Kevin Wallace of the attorney general’s team asks him, “You done?”
“Done,” Trump says, prompting some laughter from the courtroom.
Kevin Wallace of the attorney general’s team is pressing Trump about the several instances in which he has admitted to directing his team to lower the values of properties - after his team completed financial statements.
Trump is not providing many specifics. “They made a mistake,” he says, adding that the statements had an error disclaimer clause that mean “you don’t have to get sued by the Attorney General of New York”.
It’s the same way he’s been answering most questions today, evading a direct yes or no, and attacking the prosecution.
Trump’s attorney Chris Kise argued earlier in the day that Judge Engoron should allow Trump to give answers in his own way.
“With this witness, it’s far more efficient to listen and take it all in,” Kise said earlier, prompting Wallace to laugh.
It’s best that this conflict ends sooner rather than later. I’ve heard that Ukraine is outnumbered 3 to 1 and is sending injured soldiers and teenagers to the front lines. There’s no hope of them winning. Hindsight is 20/20 and it’s clear that the Ukrainians’ best option would’ve been to surrender in February 2022 and negotiate a peace agreement when they still had some bargaining power. Now they have none and this guy will go down in shame as Ukraine’s worst leader.
Unfortunately you don’t have to look very hard around here to find them. Lemmy is absolutely swarming with paid propagandists from the usual suspect countries.
They did have a peace agreement after Russia invaded…in 2014. Russia was handed Crimea. Yet, Appeasing dictators was proven yet again to not work. So, today they defend themselves from the invader.
We must continue to support them, we must continue to ensure Russia does not win their war of conquest.
You’ve lost the plot. More weapons can’t solve a lack of soldiers. Unless Western Europe/NATO plan to start WW3, the outcome has been decided. The humane thing isn’t to cheer for more war, but to understand that cheering for war itself was a mistake.
We were told Ukraine could win. We were told wrong. The people who gave us this false impression also told us we’d win the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Last I checked, those wars didn’t result in the victory we were promised, either.
Every gun and dollar given to Ukraine is a gun and dollar used against Russia, one of the US’s most obnoxious enemies. Every resource that Russia has to spend in the war is more expensive for them than it is for us, which will give them less resources to spend on being a pain to the US. Ukraine has almost no reason not to fight since losing means a loss of their country anyways, we could either take advantage of this opportunity or we can wait until Ukraine is weaker.
The better option would be to not help Ukraine and allow them to be steamrolled by a genocidal Russia? That is somehow better for Ukraine? They are fighting for their lives, we must continue to give them the tools to not be massacred by the invader.
What is taking away the focus is the fact that he supported the ethnic cleansing and genocide that Israel is committing in Palestine. So he thought that these things are not inherently bad, but only bad when they are happening to yourself - and fuck everyone else.
Now he’s just finding out that that might not have been the smartest move, if he have to explain to the world again that they must give a fuck about his war.
“Zelensky was one of the first leaders to call Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and express support for Israel.
“In the face of such a terrorist strike, everyone who values life must stand in solidarity … Israel has the full right to defend itself against terror,” Zelensky said in a statement shortly after the attack.”
It’s a bit of a leap to go from that to full on support for ethnic cleansing.
That is not the same as calling for ethnic cleansing.
Someone punches you in the face, you have a right to defend yourself. You don’t have a right to kill them, burn their house down, murder their entire family, and then take out the rest of the block “just to be sure”.
Okay devoid of all context and reality and focusing only on the rhetoric, you have a point.
Now imagine if I commit a genocide while claiming a right to defend myself, like the Nazis did? How is that phrase being deployed in that historical example?
If you claim a right to defend yourself while committing a genocide, it is in fact the same as calling for genocide.
If you had asked them, they would have told you differently. They would have told you about the long and complicated history that brought them to that point and the necessity of their actions. They would have told you about the barbarism of their enemies and the atrocities they carried out.
There are heroic stories from the Warsaw ghetto and partisans who refused to be captured and took to the forests that you’d be erasing by making such a claim. Martyrs. Examples you and I could only hope to live up to if we found ourselves in their shoes. Resilience against pain and suffering the likes of which we can only read about. The human spirit will not allow itself to be extinguished without a struggle. Those who wish to extinguish it will always have examples of violence occurring against them.
Because his very political existence has been to pull Ukraine to the west and Israel is the US’s 51st state. Things are going very badly for him and he’s eager to get as much favor from the patron state as he can. He’s going to get eaten alive by his local politics.
The Hamas-run health ministry says at least 45 people have been killed in what it said was an Israeli air strike at the Al-Maghazi refugee camp.
The head of Gaza’s Al-Aqsa hospital said 52 people were killed in the blast on Saturday night, slightly more than the number given by the health ministry.
Residents have been trying to dig with their hands through layers of cement in an attempt to extract those trapped under the rubble.
While there has been no official response yet, an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman told the BBC he was unable to confirm whether the camp was hit by an Israeli air strike.
“There is no safe place in Gaza,” Muhammad, a civil defence officer who rushed to the scene of Saturday’s strike to help, told the BBC.
“They ask the Palestinians to go to the south, but kill them everywhere - on the roads, in schools where people are sheltering, and even in hospitals.”
The original article contains 403 words, the summary contains 160 words. Saved 60%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
It’s kind of flying under the radar in the US but Africa (this region especially) had been enduring multiple failed and successful coups and more generally Africa is looking at drought, economic pressure, and terrorism. Africa is obviously enormous but there’s been a steady uptick in instability. Here’s a short article of you’d like to read more.
bbc.co.uk
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