According to The Wall Street Journal, Trump is eyeing a number of high-profile Wall Street and Washington veterans as candidates for Treasury secretary if he wins another term in the White House.
The April 6 event in Palm Beach, Fla., is being hosted by billionaire hedge-fund manager John Paulson and co-chaired by investor Scott Bessent, both of whom have caught Trump’s eye as he weighs who he will nominate for key cabinet positions, according to people familiar with the matter.
Other people Trump’s allies have discussed for Treasury secretary include: Robert Lighthizer, the former president’s top trade adviser; former Trump administration Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Jay Clayton; and JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive Jamie Dimon.
The Trump campaign is also courting Blackstone CEO and former Trump donor Steve Schwarzman, who in 2022 broke with the former president, saying he planned to back “a new generation” of Republican leaders. Schwarzman hasn’t made a final decision but is considering supporting Trump’s re-election effort, according to people close to him. Some Trump advisers have also mentioned Schwarzman as a potential Treasury secretary.
Former Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg has been sentenced to five months in prison for perjury stemming from former President Trump’s civil fraud case.
Weisselberg pleaded guilty to two counts of felony perjury last month as part of a plea deal with the Manhattan district attorney’s office.
The charges stemmed from a 2020 deposition with the New York attorney general’s office as it built its civil fraud case against the Trump Organization.
BREAKING NOW: ⚠️ Former Trump organization CFO Allen Weisselberg sentenced to 5 MONTHS in Prison at Rikers island..
Weisselberg is 76 years old and was hired in 1973 by Donald Trump’s father Fred.. pic.twitter.com/INBYUMF3oe
In his July 17, 2020, deposition with the attorney general’s office, state lawyers questioned Weisselberg over the size of Trump’s Manhattan triplex apartment in Trump Tower. The property was listed on the former president’s financial statements as 30,000 square feet in size but is actually less than 11,000 square feet.
Weisselberg told state lawyers he “didn’t find out about the error” in the triplex’s listed size until Forbes reported it and that he was never present when Trump described the size of the property. He has now admitted that both remarks were untrue.
The inquiry into Weisselberg’s perjury was spurred by his October testimony in the civil fraud trial, in which he was also a defendant. Without pleading guilty to a specific charge, he admitted as part of his plea deal that he falsely testified he “never focused” on the triplex throughout the course of his work for the Trump Organization.
Prosecutors with the district attorney’s office said in charging documents that the Trump Tower triplex’s size was “material” to the attorney general’s investigation.
The civil fraud trial ended earlier this year with a New York judge ruling that Trump and top executives, including Weisselberg, conspired to alter the former president’s net worth for tax and insurance benefits.
Weisselberg was ordered to pay more than $1.1 million, plus interest, and barred for three years from serving in top leadership positions in any New York corporation or business entity. He was also barred for life from serving “in the financial control function” of any New York business.
Trump was ordered to pay $454 million, plus interest, and faced similar business-related penalties.
Weisselberg’s 5-month sentence marks his second stint in prison after the former CFO pleaded guilty in 2022 to evading nearly $2 million in taxes. He was sentenced to five months at the Rikers Island jail for tax evasion.
This is a breaking news story. Please check back for updates.
On Tuesday, MSNBC’s Ari Melber interviewed incarcerated convicted felon Michael Avenatti to get his thoughts on former President Donald Trump’s fast-approaching New York criminal hush money trial.
Avenatti, a disbarred attorney, is currently serving 19 years for extortion, fraud, obstruction, and identity theft. Some of those charges stem from his theft of proceeds from a book by his former client, Stormy Daniels.
The former president faces 34 charges linked to hush money payments made by his ex-fixer to porn actress Stormy Daniels to cover up an alleged affair ahead of the 2016 election. He has pleaded not guilty.
Trump is scheduled to head to trial in his New York criminal case on April 15.
“Michael, have you been in touch with D.A. Bragg’s office?” Melber asked. “And what specifically in evidence or logic do you think is wrong with this case?”
“I’m going to decline to answer as to whether I’ve been in touch with either the defense or the D.A.s office,” Avenatti replied. “But let me say this in response to the second part of your question. You know, I think the case has a lot of problems. Now that– I don’t mean to suggest that means that Trump will not be convicted because I think he will be convicted because number one, he’s a criminal defendant in our society. I don’t believe criminal defendants generally get a fair shake.”
Avenatti then echoed attorneys for Trump, who have unsuccessfully attempted to secure a change of venue. He said:
I don’t think that he can get a fair trial in New York. And to the people who claim that in fact, he can get a fair trial in New York with a New York jury, I would ask them, if they were to go to sleep tonight and wake up tomorrow and find out that the case had been moved to Mississippi or Alabama, would they still think the trial was going to be fair?
And I think if they were being honest, they would answer no. So, I don’t think he can get a fair trial in New York.
On Monday, a judge in New York denied a request for a delay in his hush money trial. Trump’s attorneys argued for the trial to be relocated from Manhattan and postponed as they pursue the matter.
Trump’s attorneys argued for the trial to be relocated from Manhattan and postponed as they pursue the matter. His attorneys argued that Manhattan, a well-known liberal bastion, was not an appropriate location for the Republican president’s case. They requested a change of venue to Staten Island, the only borough in New York City that Trump won in both 2016 and 2020.
Marine One lifts-off after returning President Donald J. Trump to Mar-a-Lago Friday, March 29, 2019, following his visit to the 143-mile Herbert Hoover Dike near Canal Point, Fla., that surrounds Lake Okeechobee. The visit was part of an infrastructure inspection of the dike, which is part of the Kissimmee-Okeechobee Everglades system, and reduces impacts of flooding for areas of south Florida. (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian) [Photo Credit: The White House from Washington, DC, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons]
On Monday, Former U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron met with former President Donald Trump in a surprise visit to Mar-a-Lago.
Cameron serves as the U.K. foreign secretary and is in the U.S. to urge lawmakers to back additional funding to Ukraine in its war against Russia.
A spokesperson for the British government’s Foreign Office described the Mar-A-Lago meeting as “standard practice” to meet with an opposition candidate, with Trump being the presumptive Republican nominee for this year’s presidential election.
It is unclear how the meeting went or what exactly was discussed. Trump has previously stated that he would end the war within 24 hours should he be reelected while he has also touted converting the cost of weapons transfers to Ukraine into a loan.
Cameron will meet Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday to discuss the $60 billion military aid package which he has held up for months, while the pair will also discuss the Israel-Gaza war.
Last week, Cameron called on Western leaders to put pressure on House Speaker Mike Johnson and Republicans in Congress to approve the additional aid for Ukraine, as Britain and the European Union have already done.
“Speaker Johnson can make it happen in Congress,” Cameron said in a video posted on social media platform X. “I’m going to go and see him next week and say, ‘Ukraine needs that money. It is American security, it’s European security, it’s Britain’s security that’s on the line in Ukraine, and they need our help.’”
On Tuesday the New York Appeals Court denied Donald Trump’s effort to delay his hush money criminal trial while he argues against a gag order the judge overseeing the case imposed.
Judge Juan Merchan’s gag order bars Trump from attacking witnesses, prosecutors, court staff, and the judge’s family.
During an emergency hearing Tuesday before Justice Cynthia Kern, Trump’s lawyers argued that banning public statements about those individuals is an unconstitutional prior restraint on his right to free speech while running for president and mounting his defense.
“The First Amendment harms arising from this gag order right now are irreparable,” said Trump lawyer Emil Bove, according to the Associated Press.
State prosecutors countered that Trump’s remarks threaten the “public interest in protecting the integrity of the trial.”
“This is not political debate. These are insults,” Steven Wu, appellate chief for the Manhattan district attorney’s office, said of Trump’s statements, according to the AP.
Trump is scheduled to head to trial in his New York criminal case on April 15.
The former president faces 34 charges linked to hush money payments made by his ex-fixer to porn actress Stormy Daniels to cover up an alleged affair ahead of the 2016 election. He has pleaded not guilty.
On Monday, a judge in New York denied a separate request for a delay in his hush money trial. Trump’s attorneys argued for the trial to be relocated from Manhattan and postponed as they pursue the matter.
This is a breaking news story. Please check back for updates.
On Monday, former President Donald Trump sued the New York judge presiding over his hush-money case over the gag order in an effort to delay the upcoming trial.
Judge Juan Merchan’s gag order bars Trump from attacking witnesses, prosecutors, court staff and the judge’s family.
The documents were placed under seal, though several outlets have reported that they pertain to the gag order. The Hill requested comment from Trump’s lawyers and his campaign regarding the lawsuit, which essentially functions as an appeal of the gag order.
Merchan cited Trump’s “uncontested record” of attacks on those involved in his legal matters in his original order curbing the former president’s speech. He originally refrained from gagging Trump, instead choosing to admonish him, but agreed to do so after Bragg’s office requested it last month.
Loren Merchan is also the subject of the former president’s efforts to recuse the judge from the case — an effort he has mounted twice. The most recent bid came Friday, when Trump asked the judge to recuse because his daughter has a “direct financial interest” in the former president’s case, given the firm’s work for his 2024 presidential election opponents.
The eleventh-hour lawsuit against Merchan comes just a week before Trump is scheduled to head to trial in his New York criminal case on April 15.
The former president faces 34 charges linked to hush money payments made by his ex-fixer to porn actress Stormy Daniels to cover up an alleged affair ahead of the 2016 election. He has pleaded not guilty.
On Monday, a judge in New York denied a separate request for a delay in his hush money trial. Trump’s attorneys argued for the trial to be relocated from Manhattan and postponed as they pursue the matter.
Trump’s attorneys argued for the trial to be relocated from Manhattan and postponed as they pursue the matter. His attorneys argued that Manhattan, a well-known liberal bastion, was not an appropriate location for the Republican president’s case. They requested a change of venue to Staten Island, the only borough in New York City that Trump won in both 2016 and 2020.
On Sunday, Virginia Rep. Gerry Connolly defended his proposal saying he thinks it’s “only fitting” to name a federal prison after former President Trump
“Well, there’s a nice federal penitentiary right near Mar-a-Lago. And I just thought for a guy who’s now got 88 criminal indictments pending, criminal — plus two major civil penalty trials that have already been resolved, costing him about a half a billion dollars,” Connolly told MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart.
“I think it’s only fitting that if Republicans really want to honor Donald Trump, the most appropriate way to do that is to name a federal prison he might be visiting soon, after Donald J. Trump,” Connolly added.
Connolly was one of three Democrats to introduce a bill Friday to change the name of the Miami Federal Correctional Institution in Florida to “Donald J. Trump Federal Correctional Institution.”
Connolly was joined by Reps. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) and John Garamendi (D-Calif.).
The proposal came in response to a Republican push to rename Washington Dulles International Airport after Trump.
Washington D.C., USA - January 22, 2015; A Pro-Life woman clashes with a group of Pro-Choice demonstrators at the U.S. Supreme Court.
On Monday, presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump made his stance on abortion clearer by stating he believes abortion laws should be decided by the states.
In an announcement on Truth Social on Monday, Trump said he was proud to be the president responsible for overturning Roe v. Wade.
“My view is now that we have abortion where everybody wanted it from a legal standpoint, the states will determine by vote or legislation or perhaps both, and whatever they decide must be the law of the land,” Trump said. “In this case, the law of the state.”
“Many states will be different. Many will have a different number of weeks, or some will have more conservative than others, and that’s what they will be,” Trump said.
However, Trump stopped short of providing any specifics of at what point abortion should be banned. Last week, he was pressured to give his opinion on a six-week abortion ban set to go into effect in Florida.
Trump called Florida’s ban a “terrible thing and a terrible mistake” but did not go into specifics.
“President Trump supports preserving life but has also made clear that he supports states’ rights because he supports the voters’ right to make decisions for themselves,” said Brian Hughes, senior adviser to the Trump campaign. “Where President Trump thinks voters should have the last word, Biden and many Democrats want to allow abortion up until the moment of birth and force taxpayers to pay for it.”
Trump’s position drew fire from the anti-abortion heavyweight group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.
“We are deeply disappointed in President Trump’s position. Unborn children and their mothers deserve national protections and national advocacy from the brutality of the abortion industry. The Dobbs decision clearly allows both states and Congress to act,” SBA President Marjorie Dannenfelser said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “Saying the issue is ‘back to the states’ cedes the national debate to the Democrats who are working relentlessly to enact legislation mandating abortion throughout all nine months of pregnancy. If successful, they will wipe out states’ rights.”
ANALYSIS – Trump lovers and haters are having quite the ride as Trump’s net worth seems to be on a rollercoaster.
The Wall Street debut of Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) – whose flagship product is the social media platform “Truth Social” – boosted Donald Trump’s stock on paper, but the value of his shares has since plummeted. (RELATED: Truth Social Co-Founders Sue Donald Trump)
Will Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign help boost his worth again?
As I recently wrote about, Trump’s net worth soared to at least $6.4 billion – up nearly $4 billion – last week after investors approved his social media company’s merger with Digital World. Tuesday, March 27, was its first day as an independently traded public company.
This briefly made the former president one of the 450 richest people in the world.
Even though Trump Media, which trades under the ticker DJT (Trump’s initials) is losing money and generating scant revenue, Wall Street had valued the company at as much as $11 billion based on the stock’s closing price Friday, according to Renaissance Capital.
By Monday afternoon that valuation tumbled to about $8.8 billion.
It closed at $48.66 per share, a 26.5% drop from its $66.22. The plunge came after Trump Media unveiled its 2023 results for the first time, revealing full-year revenues of $4.1 million on a net loss of $58.2 million.
Trump’s company has said it expects to continue losing money for a while, and at least one expert says it’s likely worth far less than the stock market suggests.
Trump, who owns 78.5 million shares in Trump Media, about 57% of all shares, saw his stake in the social media business fall in value by $1.4 billion. At Monday afternoon’s prices, that stake is now worth approximately about $3.8 billion. (RELATED: Wall Street Journal Rips Into Biden for Now-Infamous Tweet)
Trump’s nearly 79 million shares of Trump Media & Technology Group are now – by far – his largest asset, worth nearly twice as much as all his real estate, resort and cash holdings combined.
Meanwhile, CNN reported: “The problem for Trump Media is its main product — Truth Social — is shrinking.” It added “Monthly active US users on iOS and Android plunged in February to 494,000, down 51% year-over-year.”
“By comparison,” CNN noted, “X has 75 million monthly active US users. Even Threads has more than 10 times as many users as Truth Social.”
CNN continued:
While Trump Media made just $4.1 million in revenue in 2023, rival X (formerly known as Twitter) raked in more than 100 times that much — $665 million — in 2013, ahead of its initial public offering in November 2013. Twitter also generated just over $5 billion in revenue in the final year before it was taken private by Elon Musk.
In fact, Truth Social’s financials are comparable to that of The Messenger, the upstart digital news outlet that imploded earlier this year. Citing an investor deck, CNBC reported in January that The Messenger posted 2023 revenue of $3.8 million and a net loss of $43 million.
But this year may decide the future of Trump’s net worth, at least related to his media company. Matthew Kennedy, senior IPO strategist at Renaissance Capital said, according to CNN:
2024 is the make-or-break year for this company. For TMTG the thing that matters now is getting in front of the cash cannon that is the 2024 presidential election. And the company does have one notable advantage. Trump-backed super PACs have raised millions. Where do you think they’ll spend their digital ad buckets?
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
Despite voting to proceed with its bid to shake up the 2024 presidential election, the centrist group No Labels announced Thursday that it is scrapping its plans to field a third-party candidate this year.
“Americans remain more open to an independent presidential run, and hungrier for unifying national leadership, than ever before,” stated the organization. “But No Labels has always said we would only offer our ballot line to a ticket if we could identify candidates with a credible path to winning the White House. No such candidates emerged, so the responsible course of action is for us to stand down.” (RELATED: Popular Dem Strategist Blames ‘Preachy Females’ For Disappointing Polls)
Last month, 800 delegates from all 50 states convened for a private meeting to approve the organization’s increasingly desperate plan to push an independent ticket.
In a press release, No Labels National Convention Chair Mike Rawlings asserted that voters remained extremely dissatisfied with Joe Biden and Donald Trump, making a case for a third-party candidacy.
The group indicated that they were open to both Democrats and Republicans and would ideally serve as a “unity” option for anyone disillusioned by partisan politics.
“It was an honor to be approached, and I am grateful to all those who are engaged in good-faith efforts to offer Americans a better choice than the Trump vs. Biden re-match,” Duncan said in a statement.
Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) has chosen to run for the U.S. Senate as a Republican instead of launching a third-party bid for the White House. Additionally, former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley (S.C.), Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman (R) all made clear they were not interested in running.
Article Published With The Permission of American Liberty News
