This Week: Trump Continues Fighting Multiple Lawsuits While Voting Rights Face MAGA Attacks in the States
This week, after a New York judge ruled that former President Donald Trump and his businesses committed fraud by overvaluing their assets to obtain “favorable loans and insurance arrangements,” the trial began to determine the penalties against them. The judge has “imposed a limited gag order” after Trump “publicly maligned a key court staffer” on social media.
In the federal case against Trump for allegedly leading a coup attempt after losing the 2020 presidential election, the judge declined the request from Trump to recuse herself, while, in the federal case stemming from whether Trump obstructed justice and willfully retained national security secrets at Mar-a-Lago, Trump and his co-defendants are trying to drag the case out with procedural delays.
In the Fulton County case against Trump for allegedly leading a vast multistate criminal enterprise to overturn the 2020 presidential election in seven states, including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, one of Trump’s 18 co-defendants pleaded guilty as part of a plea deal.
In Georgia, a “judge rejected a request by four district attorneys to block” a newly-created commission with the power to remove elected prosecutors from office. MAGA supporters have encouraged the commission to investigate Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, which could derail the case against Trump and his co-conspirators.
The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the “$187,000 financial sanction imposed” on two MAGA-allied lawyers who launched a “‘frivolous’ 2020 presidential election rigging suit” against numerous defendants, including the governors of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
According to a report released this week, top election officials in 80 percent of Arizona counties and almost two-thirds of Nevada counties “have chosen to retire or quit” in the wake of “harassment and death threats” by MAGA extremists after the 2020 presidential election.
In North Carolina, Governor Roy Cooper vetoed legislation supported by MAGA legislators to let the state legislature step in to overturn election results.
In Michigan, pro-MAGA legislators filed a lawsuit to “roll back voting rights measures passed by voters in 2018 and 2022,” including guaranteed same-day voter registration, early voting, and no-excuse absentee voting.
Trump and his supporters attacked Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro for rolling out an automatic voter registration system in which eligible voters will be registered to vote when they get a new or renewed driver’s license, unless they opt out.
