TV News LIES

An accounting expert who came to Donald Trump’s defense in his $250m fraud has racked up nearly $900,000 in fees for his testimony, a court heard on Friday.

New York University Stern School of Business research professor Eli Bartov testified on Thursday that he had found “no evidence here of concealment” in his review of the financial statements at the heart of the case.

On Friday, Bartov was asked about how much he had been paid for his services. Bartov is a leading accountancy expert and it is standard practice in the US legal system for expert witnesses to be paid.

In a deposition taken in July, Bartov disclosed that he was being paid $1,350 an hour to work on the case. In court, he said he had now worked about 650 hours on the case, which would total $877,500.

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When will it end? Some ask that question in despair, willing an end to the pictures of crushed buildings and destroyed lives, the succession of bleak images that come out of Gaza every day. Some ask the question to exert pressure, with the UN security council debating a call for a ceasefire today. Others wonder if the answer rests on Washington, detecting a new urgency in secretary of state Antony Blinken’s repeated call for Israel to close the “gap” between its declared intention to protect civilians and “the actual results that we’re seeing on the ground”.

Put the question to senior military figures, Israeli and American, as I’ve done this week, and you hear a variety of responses. Some predict an end to the current intensity of bombardment in days, others talk in weeks. But the more fruitful question might not be when, but why. Why is the fighting still going on, even now, more than two months after the 7 October massacre of 1,200 Israelis by Hamas? As those demanding an immediate ceasefire might put it, surely Israel has hit back hard enough now? Surely it has made its point?

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A pregnant woman in Kentucky filed a lawsuit on Friday demanding the right to an abortion, the second legal challenge in days to sweeping abortion bans that have taken hold in more than a dozen US states since Roe v Wade was overturned last year.

The suit, filed in state court in Louisville, says Kentucky’s near-total prohibition against abortion violates the plaintiff’s rights to privacy and self-determination under the state constitution.

The plaintiff, identified as Jane Doe, is about eight weeks pregnant and she wants to have an abortion in Kentucky but cannot legally do so because of the state’s ban, the suit said. She is seeking class-action status to include other Kentuckians who are or will become pregnant and want to have an abortion.

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The United States vetoed a United Nations resolution Friday backed by almost all other Security Council members and many other nations demanding an immediate humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza. Supporters called it a terrible day and warned of more civilian deaths and destruction as the war goes into its third month.

Researchers on Tuesday will tell the Education Department’s student loan forgiveness committee to cancel all student debt for borrowers with household incomes below $71,000.

Their new findings, shared first with USA TODAY, recommend lowering many Americans' student debt-to-income ratios, while honing in on a question that has plagued the panel since it first started meeting this fall: What types of financial “hardships” keep borrowers from paying back their loans?

Low credit scores are a useful metric for what ails borrowers, the researchers suggest in the report, which was published Friday by the University of California’s Student Loan Law Initiative and the Student Borrower Protection Center.

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Donald Trump will be prohibited from making public statements about witness participation in his federal election interference case after an appeals court largely upheld a gag order against him on Friday.

The gag order from U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan applied to Trump, his lawyers, and prosecutors in the criminal case, which is slated for trial in March. Trump argued the order violated his First Amendment free speech rights.

The original gag order restrained Trump, his lawyers, and the prosecution from making public statements that targeted parties, lawyers, court and legal staff, and any reasonably foreseeable witness or the substance of their testimony.

The D.C. appeals court gave Trump some additional leeway by allowing him and his lawyers to publicly target special counsel Jack Smith. However, it said Trump, his lawyers, and the prosecution won't be allowed to make public statements about witness participation in the case.

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