Trump Begs Courts for Another Favor in Hush-Money Case

Donald Trump may have gotten a massive reprieve in the criminal sentencing for his hush-money trial, but that doesn’t mean that his attorneys are finished with trying to wipe the whole issue off the table.

Last week, New York State Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan delayed Trump’s sentencing from September 18 to November 26, after the presidential election. But by Monday, Trump’s legal team had already asked a federal appeals court to intervene, requesting a total pause in the proceedings on the basis that Merchan’s adjustment “does not allow adequate time for interlocutory” appeal after the Supreme Court’s broad immunity ruling.

“Because of the significance of the Presidential immunity doctrine, the federal government and the public share an interest in that outcome—even if these novel and complex issues are to be addressed after the 2024 Presidential election,” wrote Trump attorneys Emil Bove and Todd Blanche.

Trump was found guilty in May of 34 felony charges related to falsifying business records with the intent to further an underlying crime in the first degree. Trump was accused of using his former fixer Michael Cohen to sweep an affair with porn star Stormy Daniels under the rug before the 2016 presidential election in an effort to skew public opinion.

Trump’s other legal trials are also hanging in the balance. The former president’s January 6 federal election interference case, which resumed Thursday, was considered practically dead after the Supreme Court granted the presidential office sweeping immunity protections. But the Republican presidential nominee has managed to drop soundbites in recent weeks that amount to outright confessions to the underlying charges—something that legal experts believe could be used against him in court.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis doubled down Monday on his decision to dispatch state police to investigate thousands of verified signatures that helped to put a state constitutional amendment protecting the right to abortion on the ballot in November.

Following a roundtable discussion with condominium owners in Miami Lakes, Florida, DeSantis was asked to respond to reports that state residents felt “intimidated” after police officers were instructed to show up at their homes to verify signatures collected supporting an amendment that would overturn Florida’s current six-week abortion ban.

Last week, DeSantis requested that election supervisors across several counties submit 36,000 signatures for state review after the Department of State claimed that it had “uncovered evidence of illegal conduct with fraudulent petitions.” One supervisor with 16 years of experience told the Tampa Bay Times that the state’s enormous, last-minute request was entirely unprecedented.

DeSantis has publicly opposed the amendment, and last week, Florida’s Agency for Health Care published an official website opposing the amendment. Still, DeSantis insisted that the state’s investigation was simply due diligence, and not part of a state campaign to undermine the publicly supported amendment with police force.

“Are you concerned at all about that?” one reporter asked DeSantis on Monday. “That this investigation could lead to supporters of that amendment feeling intimidated by law enforcement?”

“Anyone who submitted a petition, accurately, that’s a valid voter [who] is totally within their rights to do it. They’re not investigating that, what they are investigating is fraudulent petitions,” DeSantis replied.

DeSantis claimed that the group behind the petition, Floridians Protecting Freedom, had submitted petitions on behalf of the deceased. “Uh, I don’t know how you do that, I mean, I thought that was a Chicago thing!” DeSantis exclaimed. It was unclear whether DeSantis was referring to this petition or a previous petition, but this specific claim appears entirely unsubstantiated.

The governor said that the state was investigating cases “where the petition and the name does not match the signature that’s on file.”

“I do think that they’ve identified examples that are not valid. And, they absolutely need to be—anyone that is trying to commit fraud in this process absolutely should be held accountable, and what I’ve found is if people know that there’s accountability then it really deters others from wanting to do it,” DeSantis said, giving a nod to his own game of chilling speech.

DeSantis went on to spread claims of widespread voter fraud, which he admitted could be entirely innocent mistakes, and baselessly complained that Democrats were fighting for noncitizens to vote in local elections.

“You look at what’s happening in Ohio, where they brought in all these illegal immigrants from Haiti, and they have like tens of thousands now in this one little town in Ohio. It’s just overwhelming all these services,” DeSantis said, repeating false talking points from Donald Trump’s social media earlier that day. “So you’ve had a massive open border, and deliberately bringing people in and dropping them in certain communities, which, you just can’t handle that type of influx.”

“It’ll be interesting to see how Kamala [Harris] answers this in the debate tomorrow night, because I just think it’s indefensible having been the border czar,” DeSantis said, complaining about immigrants from the Middle East and China coming over the southern U.S. border. DeSantis also alleged that “training camps for terrorists” were training people to “infiltrate the country” and said that noncitizen voting was tantamount to “foreign interference.”

“If people signed petitions, and it looks, for whatever reason, if someone uh uh, is questioning that. If you signed it, you signed it. And you have a right to sign ’em,” DeSantis said, sounding overwhelmed after diverting into right-wing anti-immigrant talking points for several minutes straight.

Meanwhile, DeSantis has been accused of trying to thwart the petition. “These are petitions that were already approved, that were done properly,” said Florida congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz on Monday, according to the Independent. “This police intimidation tactic is clearly intended to chill the democratic process.”

In a recent gaffe-filled, nonsensical speech, 78-year-old Donald Trump seemed to imply that 80-year-olds are incapable of signing important documents.

Speaking in the battleground state of Wisconsin on Saturday, Trump suddenly poked fun at the elderly, during a rant about Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis.

“Great patriots have been indicted by Fani and her boyfriend, and it’s a disgrace. You had people that are in their eighties, ‘Uh would you sign here?’” said Trump, with no real explanation of how the two thoughts connected.

It’s unclear which 80-year-olds he is ridiculing: whether that be his great “innocent” patriots or some cabal of elderly people in cahoots with Willis. What is clear, however, is that Trump’s offhand comment only throws himself under the bus. In case Trump has forgotten, he will turn 80 in 2026. And he is running to serve a four-year term as president, during which he would presumably be signing documents” quite often.

Immediately following the comment about old people, Trump rattled off American historical figures who he said “did the same kind of things” as himself, such as Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton. Notably, Hamilton wouldn’t have tried to steal an election because he never ran for president.

Elsewhere in the speech, Trump called his friend Elon Musk “Leon” and warned his crowd that if “Comrade Kamala Harris gets four more years, you will be living a full-blown banana republic ruled by an anarchy and a tyranny.”

Now that Joe Biden is out of the race, Trump’s rapidly increasing cognitive decline is more and more on display. With each speech he gives us a new unintelligible moment, or several.

Senator Ted Cruz has joined the “Haitian immigrants are eating house cats” conspiracy theory, sharing a meme on X on Monday that he presumably thinks is funny.

But as the internet was quick to remind him, Cruz probably shouldn’t be getting involved in spreading any conspiracy theories involving pets. When he made his infamous trip to Cancún during Texas’s devastating 2021 snowstorm, he left behind his family’s pet dog, ironically named Snowflake, to be looked after by a security guard. The storm left millions of Texans without electricity, and Cruz’s house (without its normal occupants) was among them.

Several users on X were quick to remind Cruz about that embarrassing incident.

And others pointed out the bigotry behind the false rumor.

Ironically, Cruz is the son of an immigrant who successfully sought political asylum in the United States, making his post hypocritical in addition to xenophobic.

Cruz should probably be more worried about his upcoming election, as his lead over his Democratic challenger, Representative Colin Allred, is shrinking. He could also focus more on his Senate duties, instead of engaging in shouting matches or pushing a self-serving airport security bill that is another reminder of his Cancún trip. But it seems that he’s more interested in making racist jokes, engaging in political theater, and fawning over the man who famously insulted his wife and father, Donald Trump.

A secret network of influencers were paid big bucks to spread sexual rumors about Kamala Harris, according to a new Semafor investigation.

The investigation delves into a weird political network of posters, led by an unknown individual, who made it their mission to smear Kamala Harris about her sex life. One person made as much as $20,000 for being a part of the scheme.

While the group first organized around generic Republican talking points to support Donald Trump, after an emergency “War Room—Kamala Messaging” meeting following President Joe Biden’s choice to step aside, the network shifted gears to talk about Harris’s sexual activities. They compared Harris to Haliey Welch, the “Hawk Tuah girl” who went viral after discussing oral sex.

In August, Trump elevated similar attacks on Harris, reposting a meme on Truth Social featuring photos of Harris and Hillary Clinton alongside the comment: “Funny how blowjobs impacted both their careers differently …” Other conservative posters also emphasized Harris’s previous relationships with California politician Willie Brown and television host Montel Williams.

Meanwhile, the right-wing influencer group moved in secret. In Zoom meetings, they kept their cameras off and operated under aliases. But Semafor was able to ID one participant: former New York Representative George Santos. After the plan to sexually smear Harris materialized, the disgraced former congressman said he rejected the messaging and left the call, according to a participant who spoke to Semafor.

On July 24, less than 48 hours after the influencer call, Santos posted on X, criticizing “conservative influencers talking about Kamala’s sex life and race” rather than legitimate issues. “Please God make it stop.… I don’t pay my bills or fill up my car with this nonsense!”