On Tuesday, a judge in New York denied a motion filed by President-elect Donald Trump to stay the Jan. 10 sentencing in the New York v. Trump case.
Trump was found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records in the Manhattan case in May 2024.
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On Tuesday, Florida Judge Aileen Cannon temporarily blocked the Justice Department from releasing Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report on President-elect Trump’s two prosecutions.
The ruling from Cannon comes after Trump’s two co-defendants in the Mar-a-Lago documents case asked her to bar the release of both sections of Smith’s report, including that dealing with Trump’s election interference case.
It’s not clear the extent of Cannon’s purview over the case, as a prior ruling from her tossing the case has been appealed to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Cannon said her ruling blocking any transmittance of the report would remain in effect until three days after any appeals court ruling “unless the 11th Circuit rules otherwise.”
The Florida-based federal judge said the ruling would “preserve the status quo” and “prevent irreparable harm.”
Smith’s office declined to comment, but in earlier court filings said they would respond to the substance of Trump’s request by 7 p.m. on Tuesday.
Attached to the filings is a letter from Trump’s legal team to Attorney General Merrick Garland asking him to fire Smith and leave the decision of whether to release the report to a Trump-appointed attorney general.
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President-elect Trump repeated his warnings that “all hell will break loose” in the Middle East if hostages kidnapped from Israel and held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip are not released before his inauguration.
“It will not be good for Hamas, and it will not be good, frankly, for anyone,” Trump said during a press conference at his residence in Florida, Mar-A-Lago. “All hell will break out. I don’t have to say anymore, but that’s what it is.”
Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, said at the same press conference that there’s been a lot of progress on efforts to release about 100 hostages held in the Gaza Strip, saying he’s hopeful a deal is achieved ahead of the inauguration.
Witkoff said he had just returned from discussions in Doha, Qatar on the hostage release deal and was planning to head back to the region on Wednesday or Thursday.
“I believe we’ve been on the verge of it. I don’t want to discuss sort of what’s delayed it,” he said.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken had earlier said he hoped the Biden administration could conclude a hostage release and ceasefire deal before the end of President Biden’s term
President-elect Trump and his two co-defendants in the classified documents case are working to block special counsel Jack Smith from releasing his final report.
The motion filed late Monday, the fourth anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol asks Judge Aileen Cannon to bar Smith from his plans to release his two-volume report.
An accompanying letter from Trump’s legal team to Attorney General Merrick Garland reveals they have already reviewed a draft of the report, asking Garland to fire Smith and leave the decision of whether to release the report to the president-elect’s incoming attorney general.
Trump has nominated Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi for the role.
While Smith was responsible for the report, Attorney General Garland makes the final decision to release it to the public.
Attorneys for Trump’s two co-defendants in the Mar-a-Lago case, valet Walt Nauta and property manager Carlos de Oliveira, rely on a ruling from Cannon that found Smith was unlawfully appointed in asking her to block the report’s release.
Smith’s team responded with an early Tuesday morning filing.
The Hill reports:
“The Department can commit that the Attorney General will not release that volume to the public, if he does at all, before Friday, January 10, 2025, at 10:00 a.m.,” Smith’s team wrote, the same day Trump is set to be sentenced in his New York hush money case.
“The Draft Report violates fundamental norms regarding the presumption of innocence, including with respect to third parties unnecessarily impugned by Smith’s false claims. Releasing the report to the public without significant redactions (that would render its release meaningless) would violate prohibitions on extrajudicial statements by prosecutors,” Trump’s team wrote in the letter to Garland.
“This is particularly problematic with respect to ongoing proceedings relating to Waltine Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, as well as others who Smith and his staff falsely characterize as co-conspirators in the Draft Report,” they added.
The letter to Garland reveals a few details about Smith’s report, including that it contains information about “anticipated members of President Trump’s incoming administration,” something Trump’s team complains could hinder their confirmation process.
It otherwise appears to mirror language already included in Smith’s indictments of Trump.
“Volume I of the Draft Report falsely asserts, without any jury determination, that President Trump and others ‘engaged in an unprecedented criminal effort,’ was ‘the head of the criminal conspiracies,’ and harbored a ‘criminal design,’” Trump’s legal team wrote in the letter. “Likewise, Volume II asserts, without any supporting verdict, ‘that Mr. Trump violated multiple federal criminal laws,’ and that he and others engaged in ‘criminal conduct.’”
A new report Sunday revealed Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) has privately promised President-elect Donald Trump that Pete Hegseth has enough votes in the Senate to be confirmed to head the Department of Defense.
According to a report by CBS News, three sources have confirmed that Thune has assured Trump privately that his embattled defense secretary nominee will make it through the Senate confirmation process.
When asked to confirm the reporting, a spokesperson for Thune told CBS News, “Two things we don’t discuss publicly: Whip counts and private conversations with the president.”
The confirmation briefing for the former Fox News star will occur later this month on Jan. 14.
On Sunday, Thune told Face The Nation host Margaret Brennan that all of Trump’s nominees will “still have to make their case in front of the committee.”
A week after defeating Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump nominated Hegseth to lead the Department of Defense. However, Hegseth faces allegations of sexual misconduct after an anonymous woman accused him of sexual assault in a Monterey hotel room back in 2017.
Hegseth has also faced accusations of alcohol abuse.
On Friday, New York Judge Juan Merchan announced President-elect Trump’s criminal sentencing will occur Jan. 10, rejecting his demands to dismiss the case.
Judge Juan Merchan signaled he is inclined to impose no punishment for Trump’s 34-count felony conviction, given concerns about his immunity from criminal prosecution upon taking the oath of office.
Merchan said an unconditional discharge “appears to be the most viable solution.”
“While this Court as a matter of law must not make any determination on sentencing prior to giving the parties and Defendant an opportunity to be heard, it seems proper at this juncture to make known the Court’s inclination to not impose any sentence of incarceration, a sentence authorized by the conviction but one the People concede they no longer view as a practicable recommendation,” Merchan wrote.
The jury of 12 New Yorkers in May found Trump guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal a hush money payment his ex-fixer made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels
Judge Merchan’s decision keeps Trump’s criminal conviction on the books, meaning he would be the first felon to assume the presidency, though Trump can still appeal the jury’s verdict.
On Friday, Congressional lawmakers convened to elect the next Speaker of the House.
Mike Johnson (R-La.) will serve as Speaker of the House for the 119th Congress.
With the Republican majority at 219-215, Johnson could lose only one Republican vote to remain speaker.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) was reelected to the top post in the House in a stunning floor vote on the opening day of Congress on Friday, securing the gavel on the first ballot.
It appeared that he would fail on the first ballot as Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) and Keith Self (R-Texas) voted for other candidates. However, the chamber held the vote open as Johnson conferred with his opponents and Norman and Self switched their votes to applause in the chamber.
The vote came after President-elect Donald Trump issued his “total” endorsement of Mike Johnson (R-la.) earlier this week.
“Speaker Mike Johnson is a good, hard working, religious man. He will do the right thing, and we will continue to WIN. Mike has my Complete & Total Endorsement. MAGA!” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene also offered her endorsement of Johnson shortly before Friday’s vote.
Watch:
“Tomorrow we convene at noon in the House of Representatives, and our first order of business will be to vote for Speaker of the House. This is a historic vote, and it is the first order of business that we have to accomplish before we can even swear in as members of Congress,” began Greene. “Now, here’s how I feel about it. You all have seen may disagree with Mike Johnson at times. You’ve seen me fight against him at times. But you want to know something else? Here’s what I recognize: For the past four years, all of you and myself included, have put blood, sweat, and tears into electing President Trump. And when you want to talk about blood, President Trump himself actually was the one that shed blood after an assassin shot him in the face.”
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Former President Jimmy Carter (D) has passed away at 100 years old.
He had turned 100 in October, making him the longest-lived president in the nation’s history.
“My father was a hero, not only to me but to everyone who believes in peace, human rights, and unselfish love,” said Chip Carter, the former president’s son, in a Carter Center statement. “My brothers, sister, and I shared him with the rest of the world through these common beliefs. The world is our family because of the way he brought people together, and we thank you for honoring his memory by continuing to live these shared beliefs.”
Surviving the former president are his children Jack, Chip, Jeff and Amy; 11 grandchildren; and 14 great-grandchildren. His wife of 77 years, Rosalynn Smith Carter, died Nov. 19, 2023.
The Carter Center announced on Feb. 18, 2023, that the former president had begun receiving hospice care after a series of short hospital stays, choosing to “spend his remaining time at home with his family” instead of receiving additional medical intervention.
Former President Carter, a Democrat who was 52 when he entered the Oval Office.
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Things have gone from bad to worse for Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis.
A Georgia judge recently ruled that state lawmakers can subpoena Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis as part of an inquiry into whether she engaged in misconduct during her prosecution of President-elect Donald Trump.
In his Dec. 23 order, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Shukura Ingram gave Willis until Jan. 13 to file a list of claimed privileges and objections to anything that has been subpoenaed.
Willis plans to appeal the decision.
“We believe the ruling is wrong and will appeal,” former Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes, who is representing Willis in the case, wrote in an email to The Associated Press.
Earlier this month, an appeals court removed Willis from the Georgia election interference case against Trump and others, citing an “appearance of impropriety.” The panel also cited the romantic relationship between Willis and special prosecutor Nathan Wade.
“This is the rare case in which disqualification is mandated and no other remedy will suffice to restore public confidence in the integrity of these proceedings,” the court said.
At the time, Trump called the case a “disgrace to justice.”
“It was started by the Biden DOJ as an attack on his political opponent, Donald Trump,” he said, “They used anyone and anybody, and she has been disqualified, and her boyfriend has been disqualified, and they stole funds and went on trips.”
Willis has been evasive in questioning over her alleged misconduct in prosecuting the new President-elect.
Florida political journalist Marc Caputo reports that former congressman Matt Gaetz could still have a bright political future and may even succeed Ron DeSantis as governor of the Sunshine State two years from now.
Caputo reports for The Bulwark that Gaetz’s career in politics may not be over yet:
Gaetz has hinted that he’s not done with politics, even if politicians in D.C. want to be done with him. Just a day before the report’s release, the ex-congressman was met with applause at Turning Point USA’s America Fest in Phoenix, where he floated the idea of running for governor or Senate. And there’s a good chance Trump would endorse Gaetz, whom he nominated to be the next attorney general before his hasty withdrawal, should Gaetz choose to jump into either race.
“Matt never got a commitment from the big guy to endorse him in 2026; he probably knew it was too much of an ask,” said a Trump adviser familiar with the discussions between the two men when Gaetz withdrew his nomination. But, the adviser noted: “Could Donald Trump endorse Matt Gaetz? Definitely. Matt is loyal. Matt is MAGA. But he needs to earn it like everyone else.”
Florida pollster Kevin Wagner agreed.
“The short answer is I don’t know what happens to Matt Gaetz. The incoming president could endorse him in 2026, and in that case, I wouldn’t bet against him in Florida,” he told Caputo.
Caputo expanded further on Gaetz’s path forward:
Already, the groundwork is being laid to get Gaetz to run once more. On Monday, MAGA operatives were lashing out at the Ethics Committee report, treating it as a form of political propaganda engineered by establishment lawmakers to remove a perpetual thorn in their side. Steve Bannon, a Trump adviser and the host of the War Room podcast influential in MAGAville, urged Gaetz to “return to Congress on its first day next year and take a page from that old song the ‘Harper Valley P.T.A.’ and expose all the hypocrites in the House who have used tax money to cover up their sexual depravity.”
Bannon’s bet is that the no-apologies-no-fucks-given approach that Trump has perfected can be adopted by his acolytes, even if it hasn’t worked for others (see: Lake, Kari). Some fellow Republicans agree that negative saturation media coverage isn’t as deadly as it used to be, especially in GOP politics, and that politicians with their own standalone brands like Gaetz are better built than others to survive scandal when scandal no longer seems scandalous.
Gaetz, whose nomination to serve as President-elect Donald Trump’s attorney general quickly fell apart, was dealt another blow on Wednesday when the House Ethics Committee released a devastating report alleging severe sexual misconduct on his part.
