This Week: Trump’s Legal Troubles Continue as His Supporters in the States Threaten Free and Fair Elections
This week, in the New York case in which a judge ruled that former President Donald Trump and his businesses committed fraud by overvaluing their assets to obtain “favorable loans and insurance arrangements,” the Trump Organization’s longtime finance chief gave testimony admitting that “assets were overvalued.”
In the federal case stemming from whether Trump obstructed justice and willfully retained national security secrets, the federal government is preparing a secure room in Florida where “Trump’s lawyers can review the classified documents he allegedly kept at his Mar-a-Lago estate.” Prosecutors said in a court filing that they plan to prove Trump’s “intent for taking and keeping classified documents.”
In the federal case against Trump for allegedly leading a coup attempt after losing the 2020 presidential election, the judge placed a “narrow gag order” on Trump that prohibits him from making threatening statements against prosecutors, witnesses, court staff, and their families, while in the Fulton County case against Trump co-conspirators for allegedly participating in a vast multistate criminal enterprise to overturn the 2020 presidential election in seven states, including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, the judge ordered MAGA “conspiracy theorist Alex Jones” to testify.
In Georgia, pro-MAGA state senators asked a newly created commission with the power to remove elected prosecutors from office to investigate the elected district attorney prosecuting Trump and his co-conspirators in Fulton County. Also in Georgia, a federal judge left in place rules that limit drop boxes, restrict absentee voting, and “ban volunteers from distributing food and water to voters” waiting in line to vote. These rules were imposed “in the wake of Trump’s 2020 loss, which he falsely blamed on voter fraud.”
This week, the U.S. Supreme Court “rejected a case from Republican commissioners in Fulton County, Pennsylvania,” challenging sanctions imposed “for having third parties breach and inspect Dominion voting systems used by the county in the 2020 election.”
In Arizona, a federal appeals court dismissed a lawsuit by failed election-denying candidates Mark Finchem and Kari Lake that sought to ban electronic tabulating machines in the 2022 general election.
In North Carolina, a lawsuit was filed to challenge new provisions to make same-day voter registration more onerous immediately after pro-MAGA legislators overrode a veto of legislation to make the provisions law.
Wisconsin has one of the most gerrymandered state legislatures in the country, but this week the state Supreme Court agreed to hear a case challenging the district maps.
