Prosecutors with the Manhattan district attorney's office say former President Trump has violated a gag order 10 times since it was imposed April 1.

The order bars him from attacking witnesses, prosecutors, court staff and the judge's family in his hush money case, in which he stands accused of paying off a porn actor ahead of the 2016 election to prevent the public from learning of an alleged affair, then writing down the payment as a legal expense.

During a hearing on Tuesday, prosecutors asked the court to order Trump to take down 10 posts — eight from his social media account and two from his campaign website — on the grounds they violate the gag order. Prosecutors are also seeking to fine Trump $1,000 for each post.

A number of these posts include attacks on Michael Cohen, Trump's former attorney and fixer, and Stormy Daniels, who Cohen paid off on Trump's behalf to keep quiet about an alleged affair.

While the hearing on the gag order concluded Tuesday morning, Judge Juan Merchan, who is presiding over the case in Manhattan, has yet to hand down a ruling.

These are the 10 posts in question.

Michael Cohen, Stormy Daniels media appearances

"Thank you to Michael Avenatti — for revealing the truth about two sleaze bags who have, with their lies and misrepresentations, cost our Country dearly," Trump posted on April 10, in response to a post from imprisoned attorney Michael Avenatti.

The April 2 post from Avenatti on the social platform X read: "We can’t be hypocrites when it comes to the 1st Amendment. It is outrageous that Cohen and Daniels can do countless TV interviews, post on social, & make $$ on bogus documentaries - all by talking shit about Trump - but he’s gagged and threatened with jail if he responds."

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/112247309823361972

Daniels's 2018 statement denying relationship with Trump

"LOOK WHAT WAS JUST FOUND," the former President posted on the morning of April 10, above a photo of a 2018 statement from Daniels denying her relationship with Trump. "WILL THE FAKE NEWS REPORT IT?"

Daniels has since renounced the statement denying her relationship with Trump.

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/112247471112784333

'Disgraced attorney and felon' Michael Cohen

"Has Mark POMERANTZ been prosecuted for his terrible acts in and out of the D.A.'s Office," Trump said in a Truth Social post on April 13, referring to one of the senior Manhattan prosecutors who investigated the former president and resigned in February 2023.

"Has disgraced attorney and felon Michael Cohen been prosecuted for LYING," Trump continued. "Only TRUMP people get prosecuted by this Judge and these thugs! A dark day for our Country. MAGA 2024!!!"

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/112264962642942105

Jonathan Turley's 'serial perjurer' article for the New York Post

"A serial perjurer will try to prove an old misdemeanor against Trump in an embarrassment for the New York legal system," Trump quoted in a post on April 15, attaching a link to legal scholar Jonathan Turley's article with the same headline for the New York Post.

The Hill has previously published op-eds written by Turley.

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/112275405545650590

Repost on Truth Social: Turley's 'serial perjurer' article

Trump reposted the same link and quote to Turley's article slightly more than an hour after he made the first post on April 15.

"Making this assorted business even more repellant will be the appearance of Cohen himself on the stand," Turley wrote.

"Cohen was recently denounced by a judge as a serial perjurer who is continuing to game the system."

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/112275696246863613

Repost on Trump's campaign website: Turley's 'serial perjurer' article

The former president also linked to Turley's article on his 2024 campaign website.

The page's title reads, "ICYMI: 'A serial perjurer will try to prove an old misdemeanor against Trump in an embarrassment for the New York Legal system.'"

Second Truth Social repost: Turley's 'serial perjurer' article

Trump simply linked the URL for the New York Post article from Turley a day after his initial post on Truth Social.

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/112282163636037050

National Review article on Cohen guilty plea

The former president shared a screenshot of a full article in the National Review from Andrew McCarthy, titled "No, Cohen's Guilty Plea Does Not Prove Trump Committed Campaign-Finance Crimes," in a Truth Social post April 16.

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/112283417331198737

Second repost on Trump's campaign website: Turley's 'serial perjurer' article

The Trump campaign's website linked to the article again the day after it was first shared on the website.

“A serial perjurer will try to prove an old misdemeanor against Trump in an embarrassment for the New York legal system."

"Read the full article by Jonathan Turley for the NY Post here,” the page read.

Jesse Watters quote slamming prospective jurors

"They are catching undercover Liberal Activists lying to the Judge in order to get on the Trump Jury," Trump shared April 17 on Truth Social, quoting Fox News anchor Jesse Watters.

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/112288751107447732

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MSNBC legal analyst Danny Cevallos predicted there is a “decent chance” that former President Trump will testify during his hush money trial that kicked off in Manhattan last week.

“I happen to think, and I'm sure I'm in the minority, there is a decent chance that Donald Trump will testify,” Cevallos told MSNBC’s Jose Diaz-Balart on Monday. “Number one, yes, he believes he is smarter than anyone in the world.”

Cevallos also said that clients in white-collar crime cases tend to believe “they have an explanation for absolutely everything.”

"They believe the prosecution is a big misunderstanding. And if they can just take the stand, they can clear up all of the misunderstanding. It is a dangerous way of thinking, and arguably it's a way of thinking that made them white collar criminal defendants in the first place,” Cevallos said.

“So, because Donald Trump has an absolute right to testify, and because he may view this as a lost cause anyway, and he may use it more as a pulpit for a broader audience than the jury, we might see Donald Trump testify," he added.

It’s not clear yet whether Trump will testify in the hush money trial. He has signaled that he would be open to testifying, but it would be a rare step for a criminal defendant to do so.

Judge Juan Merchan ruled Monday that Manhattan prosecutors can cross-examine Trump about several civil lawsuits he has also been involved in if the former president chooses to testify. Trump is not required to take the stand and jurors are not able to hold it against him if he chooses not to.

The first witness was called to the stand during the hush money trial Monday after prosecutors and Trump attorneys delivered their opening statements. Former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker returned to the stand Tuesday to resume his testimony in the case.

Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection with reimbursements made to his ex-fixer, Michael Cohen, for a payment made to adult film star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election to stay quiet about an alleged affair with the former president.

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Two lawyers. A teacher and a speech therapist. An Irish foreperson.

Seven men and five women heard opening statements Monday in former President Trump’s hush money case, the first-ever criminal trial of a former U.S. president.

The jury, selected from hundreds of New Yorkers, is charged with determining Trump's guilt or innocence as the trial unfolds in the coming weeks. Here’s what we know about each juror and what they said about Trump:

Foreperson: ‘I’ve heard some’ of Trump’s other cases

A man from Ireland was the first juror selected, automatically making him the foreperson of the jury in Trump’s case.

The man, who is married but has no kids, works in sales and enjoys spending time outdoors. He said he gets his news from the New York Times, the Daily Mail, Fox News and MSNBC.

When asked if he’s heard of Trump’s other criminal cases, the man responded, “I’ve heard some of them.”

Second juror: ‘I’ll try to keep an open mind’

The second juror is a married man who works in investment banking.

His hobbies include hiking, music and concerts, and he said he reads “basically everything” — including Trump’s Truth Social posts through an account that reposts them on the social platform X.

The man also said he follows Michael Cohen, Trump’s ex-fixer who made the hush money payment at the center of the case, on X, but he assured Trump’s attorney he would be able to put aside any opinions about Cohen.

“I’ll try to keep an open mind,” the man told prosecutors during questioning.

Third juror: I'm 'not super familiar' with Trump's other charges

To secure a conviction, prosecutors will need to convince all 12 jurors that Trump had an intent to defraud when he allegedly falsified business records.

The third juror, an unmarried man originally from Oregon who works as a corporate attorney, was asked if he could make such a conclusion without getting into Trump’s mind.

“I don’t think I need to read someone’s mind to determine their intent or at least make a guess,” he responded.

The man said he looks at the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and Google, but not often.

"I am actually not super familiar with the other charges. I don't really follow the news that closely — a little embarrassing to say,” he said.

Fourth juror: ‘No’ concerns about returning a guilty verdict

The fourth juror is a security engineer originally from California. He graduated from high school and has some college education.

The man is married with kids, and he served on a criminal jury a long time ago. He said he is not on social media but gets his news from a variety of different outlets.

When asked by prosecutors if he’d have any concerns returning a guilty verdict if the district attorney’s office clears its burden, he responded, “No.”

Fifth juror: ‘President Trump speaks his mind’

The fifth juror is an English teacher who has a master’s degree in education and is not married.

Notably, the woman indicated she did not know Trump was facing other criminal cases until the lawyers brought it up during the jury selection process.

She said as a person of color, she has friends who have strong opinions about the former president, but she tries to avoid political conversations.

“President Trump speaks his mind, and I’d rather that than someone who's in office who you don’t know what they’re thinking,” she said.

Sixth juror: Can look at Trump like any other person on trial

The sixth juror is a woman with a bachelor’s degree who works as a software engineer at a major media company.

The woman said she can look at Trump like any other person on trial.

She is not married and indicated she enjoys spending time with family and friends, going to restaurants, dancing and watching television. She gets her news from the New York Times and TikTok.

Seventh juror: ‘Not sure I know anything’ about Trump’s character

The second attorney selected, the seventh juror gave assurances to both prosecutor Susan Hoffinger and Todd Blanche, Trump’s attorney, that he could follow the judge’s legal instructions despite any opinions he may hold.

The man noted he is a civil litigator who knows “virtually nothing” about criminal law.

As for Trump, he said the former president has done some things he liked and other things he didn’t like.

“I'm not sure I know anything about his character,” the man said.

The man is married with kids and is originally from North Carolina. He said he gets his news from the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, the Washington Post, WNYC and listens to podcasts “SmartLess” and “Car Talk.”

Eighth juror: 'No,' won't be unfair despite strong opinions

Originally from Lebanon, the eighth juror is a man who has lived in New York for decades.

He previously worked as a wealth manager but is now retired, though he still consults with some former clients. The man has a Master of Business Administration, is married with kids and said he does meditation yoga every morning.

He gets his news from the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNBC and BBC.

When asked if he had strong opinions about Trump, the man initially answered yes.

“Do you have any opinions or beliefs that would prevent you from being impartial?” the judge stopped him.

“No,” the man responded.

Ninth juror: ‘I do not agree with a lot of his politics’

The ninth juror is an unmarried woman who was born and raised in New Jersey before moving to New York.

She has a master’s degree and works as a speech therapist. She has TikTok, Instagram and Facebook accounts and also reads CNN’s 5 Things newsletter and The Morning newsletter published by the New York Times.

The woman repeatedly indicated she disagrees with many of Trump’s policies as president but that she “tries to stay away from politics.”

“I do not agree with a lot of his politics and his decisions as a president, but I have really taken the past two days to reflect and make sure that I could leave that at the door and be a totally impartial juror, and I feel like I can,” the woman told the judge.

10th juror: ‘I don't have a strong opinion about Mr. Trump'

A man born and raised in Ohio was selected as the 10th juror.

He is unmarried, without any kids and works in e-commerce. The man enjoys spending time outdoors and with animals.

He indicated he doesn't "really follow the news,” but if he does, it’s the New York Times.

“No, I don't have a strong opinion about Mr. Trump, but politically I have a similar answer: For some things I am in favor, for things I am not in favor,” the man said.

11th juror: Trump is ‘very selfish and self-serving’

The 11th juror is a woman who works for a multinational company and is originally from California.

The woman is unmarried, has no kids and lives alone. She indicated she just watches late night news, though she pays attention to fashion publications for her job.

During her questioning about Trump, she said, “I don’t like his persona.”

“He just seems very selfish and self-serving, so I don't really appreciate that in any public servant,” the woman said of Trump. “So I don't, I mean I don't know him as a person, so I don't know how he is in terms of his integrity or anything in his personal life.”

“But how he is in public and how he himself portrays himself in public, it just seems to me it is not my cup of tea.”

12th juror: No opinions until ‘I am presented’ the evidence

The final juror, a woman who has previously lived in multiple states before moving to the Upper East Side, holds a doctorate degree and is a physical therapist.

She is married without any children and enjoys hiking and paddleboarding. She gets her news from the New York Times, USA Today, CNN as well as sports and faith-based podcasts.

“As an eligible voter, I feel like it’s my responsibility in regards to elections to establish an educated decision so that I can vote,” the woman said. “In regards to this court case and the defendant in the room, I have no opinions until I am presented the information in the courtroom.”

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The Supreme Court will hear the Biden administration’s appeal of a ruling that would invalidate its “ghost gun” regulations, setting the stage for a major showdown on firearms next term.

After previously intervening in the dispute twice on an emergency basis, the justices in a brief order Monday agreed to take up the case on the merits.

Their decision comes two years after President Biden announced a crackdown on the devices, referring to firearms that are sold as do-it-yourself kits and are generally hard to trace.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the regulation unlawful, siding with two firearm owners, two gun rights advocacy organizations and five entities that manufacture or distribute guns that challenged the crackdown.

The Justice Department then urged the Supreme Court to take up the case, warning that letting that lower ruling stand would have deadly consequences.

“Under the Fifth Circuit’s interpretation, anyone could buy a kit online and assemble a fully functional gun in minutes — no background check, records, or serial number required,” U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote in court papers on behalf of the government.

“The result would be a flood of untraceable ghost guns into our Nation’s communities, endangering the public and thwarting law-enforcement efforts to solve violent crimes.”

The Supreme Court has twice intervened in favor of the Biden administration on the court’s emergency docket: Justices voted 5-4 the first time, while there were no public dissents on the second occasion.

But neither of those decisions were a final ruling on the merits of the administration’s regulation.

The case, Garland v. VanDerStok, does not implicate the Second Amendment but instead weighs whether a long-standing federal gun law provides the administration with authority to regulate ghost guns.

In the wake of Biden’s announcement, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) issued a rule expanding the administration’s interpretation of two provisions of the law.

The first clarifies that the federal definition of a “firearm” includes certain parts kits, and the second defines “frame or receiver” to include disassembled parts that can be readily converted into a functional gun.

Together, the rule expands federal serial number, record-keeping and background-check requirements to ghost guns.

Both groups of challengers agreed with the Justice Department that the Supreme Court should take up the case, but they urged the justices to affirm the lower ruling.

“This expanded definition upsets the delicate balance struck by Congress between the commercial production and sale of firearms and the non-commercial making of firearms by law-abiding citizens, and the Fifth Circuit properly held it to be unlawful,” one group of challengers wrote in court papers.

The other group of challengers called the rule “unprecedented.”

“It criminalizes for the first time ever wide swaths of traditional gunmaking activities,” their attorneys wrote to the justices.

The case adds to two major gun disputes being heard this term at the Supreme Court. The justices are weighing a challenge to a federal ban on domestic abusers possessing guns and a separate challenge to the Trump-era ban on bump stocks.

Updated at 9:47 a.m. ET

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An Ohio judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked the state’s ban on gender-affirming health care from taking effect, handing a preliminary victory to transgender minors seeking care in the state.

Franklin County Court of Common Pleas Judge Michael Holbrook, a Republican, granted a request for a temporary restraining order against House Bill 68, which bars minors from accessing treatments including puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgery. A “grandfather clause” allows transgender children and teens receiving care prior to the law’s effective date to continue treatment.

Ohio’s Republican Gov. Mike DeWine vetoed the bill in December, telling reporters at a press conference that the consequences of such a law for transgender children and their families “could not be more profound.” GOP lawmakers voted to override DeWine’s veto the following month.

The law, which also prevents transgender women and girls from competing on female school sports teams, was slated to take effect April 24. Tuesday’s restraining order will expire in two weeks, with an option for renewal.

Attorney General Dave Yost (R) responded to Tuesday's ruling by saying he was "confident" the law would be upheld.

“This is just the first page of the book," Yost said. "We will fight vigorously to defend this properly enacted statute, which protects our children from irrevocable adult decisions."

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the ACLU of Ohio and the law firm Goodwin sued Ohio in March on behalf of two transgender minors and their families. They argued that House Bill 68 violates the Ohio constitution’s equal protection clause and a rule preventing laws from covering more than one subject.

Ohio lawmakers in June combined House Bill 68, also known as the Save Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act, with a separate measure to bar transgender student-athletes from competing on sports teams consistent with their gender identity.

“It is not lost upon this Court that the General Assembly was unable to pass the SAFE portion of the Act separately, and it was only upon logrolling in the Saving Women’s Sports provisions that it was able to pass,” Holbrook wrote in his opinion.

Holbrook added that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed in arguing that the law violates their constitutional rights.

“There is little doubt as to the irreparable nature of the actual physical injury to plaintiffs upon the enforcement of the Act,” he wrote.

In a statement, ACLU staff attorney Harper Seldin said Holbrook’s ruling is a “victory for transgender Ohioans and their families” but added that the group is prepared to fight the law until it is permanently overturned.

Including Ohio, 24 states since 2021 have passed laws that heavily restrict or ban gender-affirming health care for transgender youth, despite statements from major medical organizations that such treatments are safe and medically necessary.

Legal challenges to state laws banning gender-affirming care have yielded mixed results, and federal appeals courts have split on whether the bans are constitutional.

The Supreme Court on Monday allowed Idaho’s ban to take effect after it was blocked by a district court in December. The court did not weigh in on whether the law is constitutional.

This story was updated at 7:02 p.m.

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At a long-awaited civil trial in Virginia, a former Iraqi detainee described being tortured by the U.S. military and civilian contractors at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison, while a retired major general testified that his investigation into the detention site found widespread abuse.

The case of Al Shimari et al v. CACI Premier Technology, first filed in 2008, finally went to trial this week at the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., with Tuesday seeing the first day of witness testimony.

Plaintiffs in the case seek to win compensation from CACI, a technology company and contractor for the U.S. military that had employed civilian interrogators in the early 2000s. The U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 amid the war on terrorism and completed a withdrawal in 2011.

The plaintiffs accuse CACI contractors of responsibility for the torture and abuse of detainees at the prison in Iraq in the early 2000s.

Asa’ad Hamza Hanfoosh Al-Zuba'e testified that he was first detained by U.S. forces on Nov. 1, 2003, and interrogated four times at Abu Ghraib, where he was held for two months before being transferred.

Al-Zuba'e, who spoke through a translator during the trial, said he was held in a cell and at one point was deprived of a mattress, blankets and even his clothes, leaving him entirely naked for three days inside the cellroom.

“I couldn’t sleep,” he said. “It was very cold. ... My feet were swollen, I was crying, screaming, and nothing was provided.”

Al-Zuba'e claimed that guards placed a hood over his head and took him to the interrogations, which sometimes took place in a “cold” and “windy” location outdoors.

When he was interrogated, he said there were civilians carrying out the interrogation process, and they at one point threatened to rape his wife and harm his children.

He also testified he was hit against a wall and twice mistreated by combat dogs, who bit him on his arms and legs.

“I was in fear, crying, screaming,” he said at trial, saying he was handcuffed to a cell door while the dogs barked at him.

Al-Zuba'e said he saw other detainees being mistreated, including naked prisoners piled “on top of each other."

The plaintiff legal team at the trial showed photos of a pile of naked prisoners forced to clump together and of dogs intimidating detainees.

The former detainee said he still suffers mentally and physically from his time at Abu Ghraib.

“My arm is still swollen,” he said. “I go through nightmares [and ...] my interaction with my family is hard. ... I start screaming and breaking stuff.”

The defense team for CACI questioned Al-Zuba'e’s testimony and how he could be sure whether civilians or soldiers were torturing him. They also questioned if military guards acted on their own accord without instruction from a contractor.

Al-Zuba'e said he understood the interrogators spoke with the guards before the interrogations, though he often had a hood over his head and has never identified anyone except for the guards directly around his cell. He was unaware of what CACI was at the time of his detention.

Abu Ghraib, also called the Baghdad Central Confinement Facility, shut down in 2014 after years of accusations about the torture and abuse within its walls.

It has become a familiar name for those outraged by the U.S. military’s detention practices during the war on terror, along with the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba, which has released hundreds of prisoners over the years but still holds 34 detainees today.

The accusations of torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib became a scandal in 2004 after photos and videos of the alleged abuse were circulated. The U.S. military reviewed the prison site and found there was mistreatment there.

Retired Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who was in charge of an investigation that began in January 2004 into Abu Ghraib, testified on Tuesday that he found the claims from Al-Zuba'e and other detainees to be credible.

Abu Ghraib, which was overseen by the 800th Military Police Brigade, the 320th Military Police Battalion and the 372nd Military Police Company, was managed poorly, Taguba testified, with poor communication and coordination and little oversight.

Taguba found that civilian contractors were not properly supervised at the detention site. His report at the time found “numerous incidents of blatant, wanton criminal abuses,” including the punching and kicking of prisoners and threats with 9mm pistols.

Prisoners were also beaten with broom handles and chairs, threatened with rape, arranged in sexually explicit positions and photographed while they were naked, according to the report. Dogs were also used to frighten them.

Taguba testified that guards were “abusing” and “mistreating” the prisoners.

“They were not following proper procedure,” he said, adding it was a “sad situation of having seen videos and photographs tantamount to illegal operations.”

In the lawsuit against CACI, Al-Zuba'e is joined by two other plaintiffs, Suhail Najim Abdullah Al Shimari and Salah Hasan Nusaif Al-Ejaili.

All three Iraqi civilians, who were eventually released without ever being charged with a crime, are represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Most of the worst alleged abuses at Abu Ghraib occurred from October to December 2003.

Ivan Frederick, a former military police officer and army reserve staff sergeant, was among 11 officers convicted and court-martialed for their role in the Abu Ghraib scandal.

Frederick testified in a video deposition shown at the trial that he worked at the facility, including the "hard site," a secure place for high-level targets. He oversaw a small team of military police along with around 1,000 prisoners.

He said civilian interrogators asked military police at Abu Ghraib, including a CACI official known as Steven Stefanowicz, or "Big Steve" as his nickname, to "soften up detainees" before interrogation.

"Treat them a little more harshly," he described what the interrogators would say, or "withdraw food."

Military police would strip the clothes from prisoners, force them into stress positions or play loud music for disruption. Some detainees were also forced to wear female clothes, including women's underwear.

Frederick said at the time, the U.S. was trying to find the bodies of five Americans.

"We were led to believe we were doing the right thing," he said. "We were led to believe we were saving America."

While Frederick could not recall specific instructions from civilian interrogators in most instances, he did testify that one civilian contractor asked him to use pressure points on an individual.

Under cross-examination from the defense team, Frederick said some of the practices captured in infamous photos that leaked out of Abu Ghraib – including those of detainees stripped naked and forced to form a pyramid – were not carried out at the direction of civilian contractors.

Two additional former military police guards also testified in 2013 depositions that they had worked with civilian contractors to torture prisoners or that the contractors were present at the time of the abuse.

This story was updated at 7:13 p.m.

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The former chief financial officer of the Trump Organization was sentenced to five months in prison Wednesday for perjury stemming from former President Trump’s civil fraud case.

Allen Weisselberg, Trump’s longtime financial gatekeeper, pleaded guilty to two counts of felony perjury last month as part of a 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 sprawling civil fraud case against the Trump Organization, but as part of the deal, he also admitted to lying during his trial testimony and another deposition last year.

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 it 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.

In a statement, Weisselberg lawyer Seth Rosenberg said the ex-CFO accepted responsibility for his conduct and "now looks forward to the end of this life-altering experience and to returning to his family and his retirement."

Trump was ordered to pay $454 million, plus interest, and faced similar business-related penalties. All penalties are paused for the time being, while the defendants appeal, after they posted a $175 million bond in the case.

Weisselberg’s five-month sentence marks his second stint in prison, after the former CFO pleaded guilty in 2022 to evading nearly $2 million in taxes over a decade through back-channel compensation from the Trump Organization. He was sentenced to five months at the Rikers Island jail for the tax evasion and served nearly 100 days there.

The longtime Trump ally's plea deal does not require him to testify in Trump's hush money trial, which is scheduled to begin Monday. Trump faces 34 counts of falsifying business records and has pleaded not guilty.

The Associated Press contributed.

Updated at 11:09 a.m.

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More than 50 advocacy organizations fighting for a variety of issues are endorsing legislation that would enact term limits for Supreme Court judges.

The group of 56 organizations announced their endorsement of the TERM Act — which was originally introduced in 2022 by Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), was floated again last year and would create 18-year terms for current and future justices — in a press release Tuesday, first shared with The Hill.

“Extremists on the Supreme Court have undermined our democracy and fundamental freedoms by gutting voting rights, opening the floodgates to unlimited corporate money in our elections, and reversing 50 years of precedent by overturning Roe v. Wade,” Christina Harvey, executive director of Stand Up America, said in a statement.

Johnson’s bill, titled the Supreme Court Tenure Establishment and Retirement Modernization Act, garnered 28 co-sponsors in Congress last year. The groups now endorsing it range from Accountable.US to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington to Voices for Progress.

Johnson, the ranking member of the House Judiciary subcommittee on courts, said in 2022 the high court's bench “is increasingly facing a legitimacy crisis.”

His bill would allow the president to nominate a justice to the Supreme Court every two years — in the first and third years following a presidential election. The longest-serving judges would achieve senior status first.

“The TERM Act is necessary because lifetime tenure on the United States Supreme Court leads to a Court that is insulated from, and unaccountable to, the American people, which is bad for democracy,” Johnson said when reintroducing the bill in September 2023.

When it was introduced in 2022, Johnson’s bill died in committee. When reintroducing his legislation in 2023, Johnson pointed to polling from the Pew Research Center showing the court’s favorability declining.

“No one deserves power for life,” Harvey said in a statement. “That’s why 49 out of 50 states have either term limits, elections, or age limits for their highest courts."

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Artificial intelligence (AI) is playing an expanding — and often invisible — role in America’s legal system. While AI tools are being used to inform criminal investigations, there is often no way for defendants to challenge their digital accuser or even know what role it played in the case.

"Under current law in most jurisdictions, [prosecutors] don't have to disclose artificial intelligence use to the judge or defense counsel,” Rebecca Wexler, professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley, told The Hill.

AI and machine learning tools are being deployed by police and prosecutors to identify faces, weapons, license plates and objects at crime scenes, survey live feeds for suspicious behavior, enhance DNA analysis, direct police to gunshots, determine how likely a defendant is to skip bail, forecast crime and process evidence, according to the National Institute of Justice.

But trade secrets laws are blocking public scrutiny of how these tools work, creating a “black box” in the criminal justice system, with no guardrails for how AI can be used and when it must be disclosed.

“There’s no standard at any level,” said Brandon Garrett of Duke University School of Law. “The big picture point is that just like there need to be standards for the product, there needs to be standards on how and when they're used."

Concerns about AI in the criminal justice system are compounded by research showing how tools like facial recognition are prone to bias — for example, misidentifying people of color because it was trained on mostly white faces.

For the past three congresses, Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.), joined twice by Rep. Dwight Evans (D-Pa.), has introduced legislation that addresses issues of testing and transparency in criminal justice, so far failing to garner enough traction to pass the bill.

“Nobody had really addressed this particular issue of black box technologies that are being marketed to prosecutors, police and law enforcement folks on the basis of their alleged efficacy,” Takano said in an interview with The Hill.

“Every American wants to feel that they can get a fair trial if they are accused of something wrong — that’s one of the hallmarks of being an American,” he added. “But what do you do when the witness and evidence brought against you is a machine protected as a trade secret, how do you contend with that?”

Trust but can’t verify

The term artificial intelligence refers to the broad discipline of making machines that learn from experience and mimic humanlike intelligence in making predictions. Unlike other forensic technologies law enforcement uses, AI is responsive to its environment and sensitive to its users, meaning it can produce different outcomes throughout its life cycle.

Without testing and transparency, these nuances are lost and the likelihood of error isn’t accounted for, Garrett said.

Currently, public officials are essentially taking private firms at their word that their technologies are as robust or nuanced as advertised, despite expanding research exposing the potential pitfalls of this approach.

Take one of its most common use cases: facial recognition.

Clearview AI, one of the leading contractors for law enforcement, has scraped billions of publicly available social media posts of Americans’ faces to train its AI, for example.

This initial training teaches an AI program a set of patterns and rules that will guide its predictions. Developers tweak the program by instructing it to consider some factors more than others. Theoretically, the AI becomes an expert at matching human faces — at a speed that far outpaces human capacity.

But when the machine goes out into the field, it may see a population that looks different from its training set. Individual facial recognition algorithms generate notably different findings from their peer products, a 2019 National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) report found.

Researchers have found that facial recognition AI has concerning failure rates when handling images of Black Americans, especially Black women, either failing to identify a person at all or making an inaccurate match.

The Gender Shades project from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab found consistently high error rates, as high as 33 percent, across AI recognition of females with darker skin tones.

Products from Amazon, IBM and Microsoft each exhibited this problem in the study, and some of their products have since been taken off the market. Multiple academic institutions — George Mason University, the University of Texas at Dallas, and New York University (NYU) — have corroborated persistent demographic disparities in facial identification rates.

But studies like the Gender Shades project test facial recognition accuracy on comparatively ideal image quality.

Footage used by police is not often ideal, and a selling point of AI to law enforcement is that it can make use of poor-quality data previously useless to human investigators or traditional forensic algorithms.

To account for the possibility of faulty matches, police commonly treat facial recognition matches as a tip for further investigation and not evidence against the person identified.

But tips still narrow law enforcement’s focus in an investigation, said Wexler at Berkeley. If supporting evidence against a suspect is found, that becomes the basis for an indictment while the use of AI is never disclosed.

That means neither the defense, the prosecution nor the judge often know that police have used AI to guide an investigation, and they never get the chance to interrogate its findings.

“At no point, from pretrial investigations through to conviction, does law enforcement have any constitutional, legal, or formal ethical obligation to affirmatively investigate evidence of innocence,” Wexler said at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in January.

Catch-22 in court

Creators of the forensic machine learning models have defended the opaqueness of their products by arguing that disclosure will effectively require revealing trade secrets to competitors in their industry.

However, the companies have been largely supportive of government regulation of its use in criminal justice settings.

Amazon’s Rekognition software “should only be used to narrow the field of potential matches,” according to its site.

Matt Wood, vice president of product at Amazon Web Services, is quoted by the company as saying it’s a “very reasonable idea for the government to weigh in and specify what temperature (or confidence levels) it wants law enforcement agencies to meet.”

IBM sunsetted its AI facial recognition products shortly after the Gender Shades study, and IBM CEO Arvind Krishna wrote a letter to Congress calling for “precision regulation” of the tech.

Microsoft discontinued sale of facial recognition AI to police departments in 2020, saying it wouldn’t budge “until strong regulation [on facial recognition AI], grounded in human rights, has been enacted.”

In March, Clearview AI obtained “awardable” status from the Department of Defense’s Tradewinds Solutions Marketplace, a vetting body that creates a suite of technologies ready for “rapid acquisition.”

In a statement to The Hill, Clearview AI CEO Hoan Ton-That said his product survived testing from NIST with higher than a 99 percent accuracy rate “across all demographics.”

“As a person of mixed race, having non-biased technology is important to me,” he said.

“According to the Innocence Project, 70% of wrongful convictions come from eyewitness lineups. Technology like Clearview AI is much more accurate than the human eye, and can be used to exonerate people and eliminate bias from the criminal justice system,” he added.

Still, defense counsel faces a high bar to prove errors in an AI lead. They often must show that AI source code was likely to be “necessary” for a criminal case, a higher standard than for most subpoenas in search of evidence.

“The reason that is so troubling is that it creates a Catch-22. It may be impossible to prove that information you've never seen is necessary to a case,” Wexler said.

Defense attorneys have already lost major cases seeking disclosure of non-AI algorithm source code. And in addition to fighting the “necessary” standard, defense counsel often meets resistance from the state, said Mitha Nandagopalan, staff attorney at the Innocence Project.

“In pretty much any case I’ve touched that has involved a request for underlying source code or machine learning model, prosecution has opposed it,” Nandagopalan told The Hill.

Judges frequently don’t see the relevance if AI-generated leads are not considered evidence, she said. And in her work as a defense attorney in Albuquerque, N.M., Nandagopalan said police often fail to disclose it.

“In a lot of cases, we got police reports that said, ‘We looked at the surveillance footage from the store, and using state mugshot databases or other databases, we found a match,’” she said. “Nowhere in their report did it say, ‘We used AI recognition software to identify the suspect.’"

Those concerns extend well beyond facial recognition, encompassing the risk of “dirty data” perpetuating injustices in various uses of AI tools.

The potential for biased AI predictions informed by dirty data is “enormous,” said Vincent Southerland, director of the Center for Race, Inequality and the law at NYU, in an article for the American Civil Liberties Union.

Southerland cited police behavior in Ferguson, Mo.; Newark, N.J.; Baltimore; and New York City as examples of biased policing that would give AI “a distorted picture” in its handling of risk assessments or crime forecasting, for example.

Crime forecasting refers to AI that takes historical crime data in a community and makes predictions of where future criminal behavior will take place, allowing police, theoretically, to efficiently allocate scarce resources.

Risk assessments broadly refer to AI’s assignment of a risk score to a person based on factors like their criminal history. These scores inform decisions on worthiness for bail, parole and even the severity of sentences.

“The failure to adequately interrogate and reform police data creation and collection practices elevates the risks of skewing predictive policing systems and creating lasting consequences that will permeate throughout the criminal justice system and society more widely,” an NYU Law Review case study said.

Setting standards

Ideally, government users of AI would take an informed approach to AI’s conclusions that accounts for its specific features and limitations, Karen Howard, director of science, technology and analytics assessment at the Government Accountability Office, told The Hill.

But that’s often not possible as long as AI remains in a “black box,” she said, as public officials can’t even confirm the tools are reliable and unbiased in the first place.

Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee in January, Howard said any AI program in use by law enforcement without independent review “should set off alarms.”

“The riskiest AI tool would be one where the training data set is not understood, not representative and it’s being handled by somebody who really doesn’t understand what the technology is and isn’t telling them,” she said.

The Biden administration has announced a series of efforts to ensure AI tools aren’t hurting Americans, both in the legal system and elsewhere.

The National Institute for Standards and Technology released an AI Risk Management Framework in January 2023.

“Without proper controls, AI systems can amplify, perpetuate, or exacerbate inequitable or undesirable outcomes for individuals and communities,” it said. “With proper controls, AI systems can mitigate and manage inequitable outcomes.”

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy also released the Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights in October 2022, which includes “algorithmic discrimination protections.”

However, these measures do not have the force of law, and they place no binding mandate for testing or transparency on AI products the government uses in the criminal justice system.

The legislation sponsored by Takano and Evans would prohibit the use of trade secret privilege to deny cross-examination of forensic AI to defense attorneys, direct NIST to establish a testing program for forensic algorithms adopted by law enforcement and mandate vetting before use.

“AI would be another layer of source code that would be required to be open under my bill,” Takano said. “That technology is not infallible, that technology should be subjected to tests of reliability and fairness.”

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When the federal government locks migrants up, it’s responsible for them — regardless of whether they’ve been formally processed, a federal judge found Wednesday.

As migrant crossings over the border between Mexico and Southern California have overwhelmed local detention facilities, thousands of people have been left to camp in the desert, often for days.

In the case under dispute, Flores v. Garland, civil rights groups sued on behalf of migrant children living in the camps, who they argued were being housed in "inhumane" conditions.

The U.S. Border Patrol largely didn't challenge the idea that the conditions weren't adequate. Instead, it argued the court didn’t have jurisdiction over the agency on this issue because the agency had not formally taken on responsibility for the children by processing them.

Judge Dolly Gee of the U.S. District Court of Central California roundly rejected that idea.

The agency may not have intended for temporary camping sites to become polluted open air detention sites “collectively holding thousands of migrants,” Gee conceded.

But she added the situation has “evolved such that the minors held there” are in the agency’s legal custody — and therefore it is responsible to care for them.

At the core of the present case is the 27-year-old decision in Flores v. Sessions, which established that the Department of Homeland Security is responsible for providing housing to “all minors who are detained in the legal custody” of the agency.

Gee determined it didn’t matter that the children had not been formally processed: They were held in a fenced area to which they were forcibly returned if they tried to leave, by an agency with “decision-making authority over [their] health and welfare,” she wrote in the ruling.

The court found that Customers and Border Protection (CBP), for example, “largely controls the provision” of necessities like drinking water and handwashing stations at the camping sites — as well as portable toilets and dumpsters, the last of which Gee noted were “quickly filled and infrequently serviced.”

Volunteers reported to the court that the water and handwashing stations were also poorly maintained — on a recent inspection, “the handwashing stations have been filled with trash and the spigots to the waters stations [were] dirty,” Gee wrote.

That overloaded infrastructure is part of generally grim conditions. The camps themselves are an archipelago of rocky, barren quadrangle encircled by the border wall, train tracks, desert and mountains.

In the dry air, temperatures can be above 110 degrees in the summer and below 20 degrees in the winter, with little shelter, save for “various forms of brush that the migrants try to burn to keep warm at night,” Gee wrote.

While volunteer groups try to supply people in the open air detention site with food, clothing and sanitation services, “the need outpaces their ability to provide this assistance,” the court found.

National standards for migrant detention require kids to get a meal every six hours, and two hot meals per day; generally, migrants in the detention sites get “one bottle of water and one pack of crackers” each day, according to the court.

Also, the insufficiently abundant and infrequently cleaned dumpsters and portable toilets “are unflowing and unusable,” Gee found.

“This means that the [open-air detention sites] not only have a foul smell, but also that trash is strewn about, and [migrants] are forced to relieve themselves outdoors.”

All of this, Gee found, violated immigration authorities' responsibility under the 1997 Flores decree to hold “minors in facilities that are safe and sanitary.”

The mere fact that CBP had provided services — or that those services were inadequate for need — would not imply that they had the minors in “custody,” except for the crucial fact that the migrants can’t leave, Gee wrote in the ruling.

On their arrival, migrants are given a wristband marked with a date; when they ask CBP officers if they can leave to get told food and water, they are told no, she noted in the decision. And “if an individual does leave [the site], Border Patrol brings them back.”

Having established that the children at these camping sites are in U.S. custody, the court found “abundant evidence” that the care they were receiving “is not adequate for minors.”

Finally, the court found that CBP “had not been processing [migrants] as expeditiously as possible,” though Gee declined to give the agency a hard limit for the time they could take to process them.

But she warned that the agency’s “failure to process minors in a reasonably expedition manner” would lead to “further remedial measures” by the court.

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The Supreme Court’s approval rating is on the rise, according to a new poll.

The Marquette University Law School poll, released Wednesday, found that 47 percent of Americans said they either “strongly” or “somewhat" approve of “the way the Supreme Court is handling its job” in March, up from 40 percent the previous month.

The upward tick in approval for the nation’s highest court comes despite it tackling controversial issues, including access to abortion pills and presidential immunity.

In late February, the Supreme Court decided to take on the question of whether former President Trump can be criminally prosecuted for efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

In the new Marquette Law School poll, 56 percent of Americans said they believe the former president should not be immune from criminal prosecution due to official acts.

The court also heard arguments late in March about whether federal regulators overstepped their authority by loosening restrictions to make mifepristone, one of the two pills used in the most common type of abortion in the nation, easier to access.

Sixty percent of participants in the poll said the court should overturn a lower court's ruling and maintain the current level of access to mifepristone.

Despite the rise in job approval for the Supreme Court, only about 30 percent of Americans surveyed in the poll said they had a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the court. Thirty-seven percent said they had “some” confidence in it, while 23 percent said they had “very little” and 10 percent said they had “none at all.”

The Supreme Court has also recently faced controversy following reports of undisclosed luxury trips and gifts involving multiple justices, raising interest in congressional oversight of justices' behavior.

Two of the most notable reports, both from ProPublica, reported that Justice Clarence Thomas failed to disclose travel and other financial ties with wealthy conservative donors and that Justice Samuel Alito accepted a flight on the private jet of billionaire Paul Singer, also without reporting the trip on his financial disclosures.

The Marquette poll was conducted between March 18-28 with 1,000 adults. It had a margin of error of 4 percentage points.

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A host of Democratic legislators have filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in opposition to subjecting unhoused people to criminal penalties.

Led by Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.), 18 Democrats argue that arresting or fining people who have no other choice than sleeping outside is unconstitutional and will trap unhoused people in a cycle of poverty.

“Punishing poverty traps people in cycles of debt, unemployment, and hopelessness, increasing the likelihood someone will become chronically homeless, which makes the problem worse for everyone and therefore serves no legitimate penological purpose,” the brief says.

“While the members of Congress signing here agree that the political branches have at least partially failed homeless Americans by turning away from their historical role in ensuring broad access to affordable housing, this Court has never permitted a local government to inflict pain on its own innocent residents for the deliberate purpose of running them off and making them someone else’s burden.”

The brief comes ahead of the case of Johnson v. City of Grants Pass, which would determine if local governments can make it a crime to live outside and unsheltered when adequate shelter is unavailable.

The Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit previously ruled that local governments are not allowed to fine or arrest people for sleeping outside if no indoor space is available, based on the Eighth Amendment’s protection against cruel and unusual punishment.

But local officials in Grants Pass, Oregon, are seeking the right to arrest and jail unhoused people, citing potential consequences of letting the 9th Circuit's decision stand, including crime, fires, drug overdoses and deaths.

“(The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals’) decisions are legally wrong and have tied the hands of local governments as they work to address the urgent homelessness crisis,” Theane Evangelis, a lawyer for Grants Pass, said in a statement earlier this year when the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. “The tragedy is that these decisions are actually harming the very people they purport to protect.”

Officials in San Francisco and Phoenix, as well as California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and 20 Republican state attorneys general backed Grants Pass's request for the Supreme Court to take the case, saying current law ties their hands.

But the Democratic lawmakers argue in their brief that houselessness began soaring in the 1980s following housing disinvestment that has since worsened. The lawmakers also argue that criminalizing homelessness will disproportionately impact unhoused people who are Black and brown, youth, disabled, elderly, and/or LGBTQ+.

The brief highlights that 37 percent of the adult houseless population is Black, 28 percent is Hispanic, 4 percent is Native American, and 2 percent is Asian. Up to 40 percent of the 4.2 million youth experiencing homelessness identify as LGBTQ+. The brief adds that Black and Hispanic individuals are far more likely to receive citations than white people.

The lawmakers instead call for investment in solutions dedicated to ending poverty and homelessness for good.

The brief is signed by Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Democratic Reps. Gwen Moore (Wis.), Rashida Tlaib (Mich.), Shri Thanedar (Mich.), Barbara Lee (Calif.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Nydia Velazquez (N.Y.), Andre Carson (Ind.), Ayanna Pressley (Mass.), Jamaal Bowman (N.Y.), Pramila Jayapal (Wash.), Sylvia Garcia (Texas), Summer Lee (Pa.), Delia Ramirez (Ill.), Linda Sanchez (Calif.), and Ro Khanna (Calif.).

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More than half of Americans believe former President Trump should not be immune from prosecution for alleged crimes committed while he was in office, according to a new poll.

In the survey, published Wednesday by Marquette Law School, 56 percent of participants said they believe Trump should not have immunity from criminal prosecution for his official acts, while 62 percent said the same about "former presidents" in general.

When surveying participants, pollsters pointed to Trump's immunity claim in special counsel Jack Smith's case over the former president's alleged actions during the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection. Prosecutors allege Trump was involved in a conspiracy to defraud the U.S. and stood at the center of a campaign to block the certification of votes for President Biden that day.

The former president and his legal team have repeatedly argued his actions leading up to and surrounding the insurrection are protected by presidential immunity.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to take up the issue, with oral arguments set to begin on April 22 on an expedited schedule. The landmark decision is likely to be handed down by the end of June or sooner.

Americans' views on Trump's immunity argument varied across party lines, pollsters noted, with the wide majority of Democrats rejecting the former president's claim.

About 89 percent of Democrats rejected the immunity argument, while only 4 percent agreed with it and 7 percent said they did not know.

More than half of Republicans — 55 percent — said Trump should be immune from prosecution for official acts, while 27 percent said he should not and 18 percent did not know. About 32 percent supported the immunity claim in the broader context of "former presidents," while 49 percent rejected it.

“The striking finding is that Republicans reverse themselves when asked about Trump rather than ‘former presidents,’” Charles Franklin, a professor of law and public policy and the director of the Marquette Law School poll, told CNN.

“One implication is that Republicans are not paying enough attention to Trump’s Supreme Court appeal to realize without prompting that the immunity case is about Trump,” he continued. “Only when the question directly says, ‘This is about Trump’ do they swing sharply, reversing what they would think about ‘former presidents’ in general.”

Independents fell somewhere in the middle between Democrats and Republicans, with 44 percent rejecting the immunity argument for Trump in particular, 11 percent supporting it and 45 percent saying they did not know.

The poll was conducted March 18-28 through interviews with 1,000 adults nationwide. It has a margin of sampling error of 4 percentage points.

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Special counsel Jack Smith aired frustration at U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, arguing she is giving credence to a "fundamentally flawed legal premise" from former President Trump that the classified documents recovered from his Florida home were his personal property.

The filing Tuesday night comes as Cannon has asked both sides to propose jury instructions that would take into account Trump’s view of the Presidential Records Act (PRA), which dictates how records created during a president’s term must be handled and later archived.

The law does allow for some records to be considered personal property of the president, but legal experts have rebuffed Trump’s argument that the more than 300 highly classified records recovered from his property could in any way be considered personal.

Smith’s team argued that accepting Trump’s theory “would distort the trial.”

“The PRA’s distinction between personal and presidential records has no bearing on whether a former President’s possession of documents containing national defense information is authorized under the Espionage Act, and the PRA should play no role in the jury instructions,” prosecutors wrote.

“Indeed, based on the current record, the PRA should not play any role at trial at all.”

“It would be pure fiction to suggest that highly classified documents created by members of the intelligence community and military and presented to the President of the United States during his term in office were ‘purely private,’” prosecutors added later.

Trump is largely being prosecuted under the Espionage Act, which prohibits the willful retention of national defense information. He is also charged with obstruction of justice for seeking to conceal the records from authorities after they demanded their return.

Special counsel Jack Smith speaks to the media about an indictment of former President Donald Trump, Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2023, at an office of the Department of Justice in Washington. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Legal observers were baffled by Cannon’s recent instructions, asking both sides to weigh two scenarios that largely embraced Trump’s view of the PRA despite having failed to consider an earlier motion from him seeking to toss the case on those grounds.

The indecision on that matter and numerous other motions have created a backlog of issues in the case, including Cannon’s consideration of a new trial date.

“It is purely a question of law that must be decided promptly. If the Court were to defer a decision on that fundamental legal question it would inject substantial delay into the trial,” prosecutors wrote of Cannon’s need to rule on the underlying PRA motion before leapfrogging to jury instructions based on the matter.

It’s unusual for prosecutors to be so direct in countering a judge’s directions, but numerous lines in the filing suggested impatience with the slow pace of the proceedings.

At another point in the filing, Smith called it “vitally important” that Cannon “promptly decide” the matter, noting their ability to pursue a future appeal of erroneous jury instructions.

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Smith’s team also spent ample time undercutting Trump’s claims that the records could be his personal property, noting he has yet to provide any evidence he sought to designate them as such, even as he’s mounted a legal defense based on that argument.

“The Court should be aware at the outset that Trump’s entire effort to rely on the PRA is not based on any facts. It is a post hoc justification that was concocted more than a year after he left the White House, and his invocation in this Court of the PRA is not grounded in any decision he actually made during his presidency to designate as personal any of the records charged,” prosecutors wrote.

“Importantly, Trump has never represented to this Court that he in fact designated the classified documents as personal. He made no such claim in his motion to dismiss, in his reply, or at the hearing on March 14, 2024, despite every opportunity and every incentive to do so. As discussed below, the reason is simple: he never did so. Instead, he has attempted to fashion out of whole cloth a legal presumption that would operate untethered to any facts.”

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A federal judge has issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting New Jersey from using its “county line” ballot, a ruling that could significantly reshape the state’s political system.

U.S. District Judge Zahid Quraishi issued the order Friday, ruling that Rep. Andy Kim's (D-N.J.) lawsuit, in which he argues the system used in 19 of New Jersey’s 21 counties to decide where a candidate’s name is placed on a ballot is undemocratic and unconstitutional, is likely to succeed on its merits.

The order will require a different structure to be used for the ballot in the state’s June 4 primary, after decades of party bosses having significant influence in deciding nominees.

The ruling is a big win for Kim, who has sought to buck the establishment as he runs for Senate.

For years, New Jersey has designed its ballot unlike any other state in the country. The ballot is set up as a grid, with the rows being for different offices like president and U.S. Senate, and candidates’ names placed in different columns from left to right.

A candidate’s placement on the ballot had varied by county based on who received the coveted county line, usually the first column on the left side of the ballot. A county party would award the spot in the line to a candidate that it endorses.

The county line is the most optimal position for a candidate to be in, because they would be in the same column as other major candidates for other offices. A voter could then go right down the county line to vote for all the candidates that the county party endorsed without straying to another column where an opposing candidate’s name is placed.

Candidates who do not receive the county endorsement would be placed one or more columns away, in a spot known as “ballot Siberia” because it can be far away from the county line.

Kim, who is running for the Senate seat currently held by Sen. Bob Menendez (D), filed the lawsuit along with House candidates Sarah Schoengood and Carolyn Rush, arguing that the county line leaves other candidates at an unfair disadvantage.

In his preliminary order, Quraishi agreed, finding that testimony from experts at a hearing last week demonstrated that candidates on the county line “receive a distinct advantage.”

Quraishi said in his conclusion that he understands the “magnitude” of the ruling but believes it necessary.

“The integrity of the democratic process for a primary election is at stake and the remedy Plaintiffs are seeking is extraordinary. Mandatory injunctive relief is reserved only for the most unusual cases. Plaintiffs’ burden on this Motion is therefore particularly heavy,” the ruling says. “Nevertheless, the Court finds, based on this record, that Plaintiffs have met their burden and that this is the rare instance when mandatory relief is warranted.”

The ruling does not permanently settle the issue of whether county lines can be used in the future. The judge’s decision blocks the system for this year's primary, but it is not his final ruling in the case, which will dictate the future of the county lines beyond this year.

The order only affects the state’s primaries this year in June, and county clerks named in the lawsuit reportedly plan to appeal the order.

But the ruling would be a landmark change in how New Jersey runs its elections if it holds.

Kim celebrated the ruling in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, tweeting, “YES! For the people!”

The issue of county lines particularly became a focus as Kim opposed New Jersey first lady Tammy Murphy for the seat held by Menendez, who has been indicted on a wide range of charges and declined to run in the Democratic primary for his seat this year.

Kim and Murphy battled over the past month for county endorsements, and Kim was able to hold his own in them despite Murphy’s ties to the top Democrat in the state — her husband, Gov. Phil Murphy — and top party bosses. The two candidates split the county endorsements roughly evenly, though Murphy won in the more populous counties, potentially giving her an advantage.

The primary appeared likely to be intense and difficult, but Murphy surprised observers Sunday when she announced she was dropping out of the race. Murphy called for unity in her speech announcing the decision, saying she did not want to “waste resources tearing down a fellow Democrat.”

Her departure left Kim as the only major Democrat in the race, putting him on a clear path to the Senate seat. He faces two relatively minor challengers.

Kim said following Murphy’s decision that he would continue his lawsuit and maintained that the system was unfair, even though several of the county parties switched their endorsement to him after Murphy left the race.

Quraishi ultimately agreed that the county line system likely violated the Constitution’s First Amendment protection of freedom of association with other candidates or not by forcing them to run in the same column as others for different offices. He also found that it likely violates the Constitution’s Elections Clause, which restricts state regulation of federal elections.

Updated at 1:51 p.m. ET

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