Special Master calls Trump’s bluff over alleged leaked documents – watch live

New York’s attorney general says her three-year investigation into former President Donald Trump has uncovered potential wrongdoing in the way he ran his real estate empire, including allegations of bank and insurance fraud. So why isn’t Trump on trial?

State law is complicated. Letitia James, the attorney general, is bound by limits on what criminal investigations she can actually launch on her own without partnering with local prosecutors. And those investigations have yet to yield results against Mr. Trump himself, although his chief financial officer, Alan Weiselberg, pleaded guilty to felony charges last month.

Read more about the ins and outs of investigations in New York at The Independent:

Videos of Donald Trump throwing paper towels into a crowd of Puerto Ricans in October 2017 have resurfaced on social media as President Joe Biden pledged full support for the island, which has yet again been hit by a natural disaster.

Read the full story by Gustav Kilander here:

Ginny Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, is set to give unprecedented testimony before the commission on Jan. 6 about her role in efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Her involvement in the pro-Trump scheme cast a huge shadow over the work of the Supreme Court, which already faced historic concerns about its legitimacy from the American public.

There are several questions that Ms. Thomas is in a unique position to answer, both regarding her own activities and those of White House staff in the weeks leading up to the attack and on the day of January 6 itself. .

Read more from John Bowden:

Donald Trump’s growing storm of legal battles illustrates just how much protection he was afforded as president — and how it all ended.

Mr Trump’s own lawyers have illustrated this fact by refusing to support their own client’s argument that any of the documents seized by FBI agents have been declassified (until now).

Read more at The Independent on the evolving nature of Donald Trump’s post-presidency legal defense:

As New York’s attorney general announces a sweeping civil lawsuit aimed at holding Donald Trump accountable for alleged fraudulent business practices, the spotlight is returning to Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her questioning of a former Trump ally that led to the news of this week.

In 2019, Mr. Cohen testified against his former boss before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. At the time, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez raised questions about whether Mr. Trump had ever provided inflated assets to an insurance company.

Letitia James acknowledged Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s role this week, saying: “I will remind everyone that this investigation only began after Michael Cohen, his former lawyer, his former lawyer, testified before Congress and shed light on this misconduct .”

Read more at The Independent:

Alex Jones’ second defamation trial got off to a rocky start this week as the embattled Infowars host continues to face compensation for years of inciting right-wing harassment of the families of slain elementary school students.

A Connecticut courtroom descended into chaos Thursday as a far-right conspiracy theorist took the stand in his defamation lawsuit and refused to admit any responsibility for inflicting a decade of harassment on the victims’ families.

“I’ve already said I’m sorry hundreds of times. And I’m done apologizing,” he shouted across the courtroom.

Read more from Rachel Sharp:

Amid a flurry of criminal investigations and lawsuits accusing him of fraudulent business practices, Donald Trump is trying to drum up support for the 2024 election.

That’s how the former president spent his day Thursday, taking to his Truth Social platform to spread the word to his closest fans.

In a pair of posts, Mr Trump linked to an article on the American Thinker website with the headline “Donald Trump should be the 2024 Republican nominee”, before linking to a CNN report stating that “Trump is making calls from Republican allies to speed up 2024 bid after FBI crackdown”.

Read more from Gustav Kilander:

Mike Lindell’s efforts to help Donald Trump and the 2020 nullification campaign may have finally hit him hard.

NBC News reported Wednesday that the hybrid pillow salesman and political operative is under federal investigation for a number of serious crimes related to his efforts to prove that widespread voter fraud or other election-related manipulation cost Donald Trump the election last year. 2020

Read more from John Bowden:

The Brooklyn federal judge in charge of reviewing 11,000 documents the FBI seized from former President Donald Trump’s home during an Aug. 8 search has ordered the former president’s legal team to declare one way or another whether they believe agents have planted evidence to incriminate a former president.

The baseless accusations have been floating around for weeks, shared by the president himself and his closest allies. They sparked conspiracies among his fans of an FBI-led political campaign to destroy Mr. Trump and led to an increase in threats of violence directed at the agency.

In an order issued Thursday, the special master summoned by Mr. Trump’s team gave those lawyers until Sept. 30 to say whether any of the items on the 11-page list provided by the department were misstated.

Read more at The Independent:

Donald Trump will host a fundraiser next month for Dan Cox, the Republican candidate for governor of Maryland, at his Mar-a-Lago estate.

Mr. Cox went along with the former president’s lies about the 2020 election and was not endorsed for the nomination (or, for now, for the job) by the incumbent, retired GOP governor of Maryland, Larry Hogan. His victory in the GOP primary was one of the instances in which Democrats successfully bolstered, through tactical campaign spending, an electoral denier against a more moderate opponent in a Republican-versus-Republican matchup.

Read more at The hill by Julia Manchester.