TV News LIES

The judge in Donald Trump’s hush money trial in New York City has agreed to tighten his gag order due to his “vitriolic” attacks on the judge’s family.

In an order on Monday evening, New York Supreme Court judge Juan Merchan said that Mr Trump’s statements represented a “very real” threat to the integrity of the trial.

Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg had earlier asked the judge to extend his gag order to cover court officers’ families due to Mr Trump’s “extreme and deliberate provocations”.

Several social media posts cited by Mr Bragg appeared to have been deleted on Monday evening.

“The average observer must now, after hearing defendant’s recent attacks, draw the conclusion that if they become involved in these proceedings, even tangentially, they should worry not only for themselves but for their loved ones as well,” Judge Merchan wrote.

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Former President Donald Trump and several co-defendants in a New York civil fraud case posted $175 million bond Monday after an appeals court ruled they didn't have to come up with $464 million in order to block New York Attorney General Letitia James from seizing their assets.

The pressure had been heating up over the past month for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee to come up with cash or find a bonding company willing to cover the approximately $454 million judgment that Trump and several of his business entities face.

Judge Arthur F. Engoron imposed the judgment, which includes interest, after concluding Trump got better loan and insurance terms by fraudulently inflating the value of his assets over several years. Trump sons Eric and Don Jr. also face judgments totaling more than $9 million and former Trump Organization executive Allen Weisselberg was ordered to pay over $1 million.

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Voters in the north-west Oklahoma city of Enid are being asked to decide whether a councilmember who attended the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 should be removed from his post.

Iraq war veteran Judd Blevins, 42, was elected to Enid’s city council to be the commissioner of its first ward last year. He soon faced an effort by the Enid social justice committee, which claimed Blevins “embraces the same Nazi ideology [the US] defeated almost 80 years ago” during the second world war.

Two days after former President Donald Trump targeted the daughter of the judge overseeing his New York hush money case on social media, lawyers for the Manhattan district attorney have asked Judge Juan Merchan to clarify the case's limited gag order and "direct that defendant immediately desist from attacks on family members," according to a letter sent to the judge.

"[T]his Court should make abundantly clear that the March 26 Order protects family members of the Court, the District Attorney, and all other individuals mentioned in the Order," said the letter, which was sent to the judge Thursday.

"Furthermore, the Court should warn defendant that his recent conduct is contumacious" -- i.e., stubbornly or willfully disobedient -- "and direct him to immediately desist," the letter said.

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Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump drew criticism Friday for posting a video on social media that contains the image of a hog-tied President Joe Biden painted on the tailgate of a passing truck.

A judge has found Georgia Republican Party official Brian Pritchard guilty of illegally voting nine times over several years. Pritchard has falsely asserted Democrats had stolen the 2020 election through fraud.

Administrative Law Judge Lisa Boggs wrote in her Wednesday decision that Pritchard, the Georgia GOP’s first vice chairman, violated state election laws by voting while on probation for forgery and other felonies, and that his explanations were neither "credible or convincing."

Pritchard must pay a $5,000 fine and $375.14 in investigative costs incurred by the court. Boggs also ordered that Pritchard “be publicly reprimanded for his conduct” by the State Election Board, which sought the sanctions against him.

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