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New York prosecutors and Donald Trump’s lawyers are set to make their closing arguments at his hush money trial today in a final bid to influence the 12 jurors who decide whether he will become the first U.S. president past or present convicted of a crime, report Jack Queen, Luc Cohen and Andy Sullivan.
After six weeks of trial, prosecutors will argue that Trump, 77, illegally falsified business documents to cover up evidence of a payment that bought the silence of porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 presidential election.
Trump has pleaded not guilty and denies wrongdoing. His lawyers have said he agreed to buy her silence for $130,000 to prevent embarrassing his family, not to protect his White House bid.
In their closings, Trump’s defense team will try to convince jurors he is not guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt.” His attorneys have tried to raise doubts about the credibility of prosecution witnesses, most notably Michael Cohen, who testified that as Trump’s fixer he handled the payment to Daniels and that Trump approved the coverup. Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche told jurors that Cohen had previously lied to Congress and to the DOJ, and had lied in court as well.
If found guilty, Trump faces up to four years in prison, although imprisonment is unlikely for a first-time felon convicted of such a crime. A conviction will not prevent Trump from trying to take back the White House from Democratic President Joe Biden as the Republican candidate in the Nov. 5 election, and it would not prevent him from taking office if he won.
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- President Joe Biden nominated NLRB Chair Lauren McFerran for a third term, a move that could cement Democratic control of the agency even if Biden is unseated by Republican challenger Donald Trump in November. Biden also nominated Joshua Ditelberg, a partner at Seyfarth Shaw in Chicago, to fill a Republican seat on the board.
- An internal watchdog investigating workplace culture at the FDIC was not informed promptly of misconduct allegations involving senior agency officials, the agency said in a memo. FDIC Chair Martin Gruenberg last week offered to step down under pressure from lawmakers who cited the results of an independent investigation into sexual harassment and other misconduct.
- Baker McKenzie hired the leader of O’Melveny’s U.S. M&A and private equity practice, amid mixed signs of a dealmaking resurgence. The first quarter of 2024 represented the strongest start for U.S. dealmaking in three years, according to LSEG.
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That is how much in damages a consumer class action against Live Nation and its Ticketmaster unit seeks on behalf of potentially millions of ticket purchasers. The class action, filed by law firms Robbins Geller and Israel David, is the first in a likely wave of new consumer antitrust lawsuits after the U.S. government and states sued to break up the two companies last week. Crowell & Moring’s Eric Enson, an antitrust lawyer who is not involved in the lawsuit, said the government’s case raised thorny “legal and factual questions about whether a breakup is a legally permissible remedy.”
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“Any judge with reasonable ethical instincts would have realized immediately that flying the flag then and in that way was improper. And dumb.”
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—Senior U.S. District Judge Michael Ponsor of Massachusetts, who, in a rare move by a sitting lower-court judge, publicly criticized Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s approach to ethics after he allowed provocative flags to fly outside his houses. Ponsor wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times after it ran a pair of reports about Alito’s Virginia residence and New Jersey vacation home having displayed flags like those carried by some of Republican former President Donald Trump’s supporters during the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot.
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- Today, Ryan Salame, the former co-chief executive of FTX’s Bahamian subsidiary and a top lieutenant to the cryptocurrency exchange’s convicted founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, will be sentenced after pleading guilty last year to making tens of millions of dollars in unlawful campaign donations to boost causes supported by his onetime boss. The sentencing is before U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan federal court. Prosecutors have recommended a sentence of five to seven years in prison, and Salame’s Mayer Brown attorneys want a term of no more than 18 months behind bars.
- On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Sean Jordan in Plano, Texas, federal court will hold a status conference in the Texas-led lawsuit accusing Google of violating its digital ads market power. Google’s lawyers, including teams from Freshfields and Yetter Coleman, have denied the allegations. Jordan has scheduled a trial for March 2025. The case is among several from government or private plaintiffs challenging Google’s core business practices.
- On Thursday, Harvard University’s attorneys at Wilmer Hale and King & Spalding will urge a federal judge in Boston to dismiss a lawsuit by Jewish students filed in January accusing the school of allowing its campus to become a bastion of rampant antisemitism. In a filing, Harvard told U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns that the alleged conduct “is not just unacceptable but antithetical to Harvard’s foundational values.” But Harvard said the lawsuit is “neither an effective nor legally appropriate vehicle to address antisemitism at Harvard.”
- On Friday, U.S. District Judge Daniel Crabtree in Kansas will hear a bid by a group of Republican-led states to challenge a new Biden administration student loan repayment program that aims to provide debt relief to millions of people. The DOJ told the court in seeking dismissal that the states “clearly have policy and legal disagreements with the secretary’s approach to student loans, but their standing theories give them no basis to air those grievances in federal court.”
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Court calendars are subject to last-minute docket changes.
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- The 8th Circuit revived a lawsuit accusing the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota of illegally firing five employees who refused on religious grounds to receive the COVID-19 vaccine or be regularly tested for the virus. A unanimous three-judge panel said in a decision the judge who tossed out the consolidated lawsuits last year wrongly ruled that the workers had not connected their objections to Mayo’s COVID-19 policies with sincere Christian religious beliefs.
- A 5th Circuit panel reversed a National Labor Relations Board ruling that significantly expanded the limited financial remedies available to workers who are fired or laid off in violation of federal labor law. The court panel’s decision said the board was wrong to rule that Thryv violated labor law by laying off six sales workers without bargaining with their union.
- Two chemical and plastics industry groups filed lawsuits against California Attorney General Rob Bonta, seeking to block his attempt to force them to hand over documents as part of an ongoing probe into the plastic waste crisis. The American Chemistry Council and Plastics Industry Association claim California’s demands have chilled their constitutional right to free speech, among other things.
- Ohio’s top court ruled that the brother of a woman who froze to death after her gas service was cut off by a utility now owned by Enbridge must pursue wrongful death claims before the state’s utility commission, not a trial court. The Ohio Supreme Court held that the case over 81-year-old Virginia Vigrass’ 2022 death must first go before the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio since it relates to actions that are normally authorized as a part of ordinary utility services.
- CBS Studios told a federal judge that its free speech right to creative expression bars a white writer’s lawsuit claiming the network denied him a staff position on the show “SEAL Team” as part of its diversity efforts. CBS and parent Paramount Global moved to dismiss the February lawsuit in Los Angeles federal court by Brian Beneker, saying the 1st Amendment shields them from his race and sex bias claims.
- Indian generic drugmaker Emcure and U.S. biopharma company HDT have settled allegations that Emcure stole HDT trade secrets during their joint work on a COVID-19 vaccine. The companies said they signed a long-term agreement to continue collaborating on the development of mRNA-based vaccines and a license that allows Emcure to use HDT’s mRNA technology, ending a lawsuit in the U.S. and arbitration in the U.K.
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