Fact check: Trump’s false courthouse claims about his trial
CNN
Former President Donald Trump delivered a barrage of false claims to media cameras this week as he entered and exited the Manhattan courtroom where he is on trial on charges of falsifying business records in relation to a hush money scheme during the 2016 presidential election.
Former President Donald Trump delivered a barrage of false claims to media cameras this week as he entered and exited the Manhattan courtroom where he is on trial on charges of falsifying business records in relation to a hush money scheme during the 2016 presidential election. Here’s a fact check of four of the claims he made about the trial. (For this particular article, we’ll leave aside the false claims he made in the courthouse about a variety of other subjects.) Courthouse security After The New York Times published a story that said Trump was unhappy with the meager crowd he saw when he arrived at the courthouse for opening statements on Monday, Trump told reporters inside the courthouse on Tuesday: “For blocks you can’t get near this courthouse.” He added on social media on Tuesday: “Thousands of people were turned away from the Courthouse in Lower Manhattan by steel stanchions and police, literally blocks from the tiny side door from where I enter and leave. It is an armed camp to keep people away.” And he said in comments inside the courthouse on Thursday: “This courthouse is locked down; there’s not a person within five blocks.” Facts First: Trump’s claims are all false. The police have not turned away “thousands of people” from the courthouse. And while there are various security measures in place in the area, including some street closures enforced by police officers and barricades, it’s not true that “this courthouse is locked down,” that “for blocks you can’t get near this courthouse” or that “there’s not a person within five blocks.” In reality, there is a designated protest zone for the trial at a park directly across the street from the courthouse – and people are permitted to drive right up to the front of the courthouse and walk into the building, which remains open to the public. If people show up early enough in the morning, they can even get into the trial courtroom itself or the overflow room that shows near-live video of the proceedings.
As Chad Curry busily ferries his teenage children through the streets of their Chicago neighborhood of West Ridge, he eyes passing vehicles with a skepticism he didn’t have just a few months ago.
Speaker Mike Johnson is a political survivor, weathering crisis after crisis since his unlikely ascent two years ago.
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Elena Kagan are well matched, rhetorically forceful opposites. And they have been clashing for more than a decade over an increasingly relevant question of presidential power: How easy should it be for the president to fire the heads of independent agencies?
The Army gynecologist described in a recent lawsuit as a “predator in uniform” is now being held in the Bell County Jail in Texas, “after apparently violating conditions of liberty imposed by his commander,” according to an Army spokesperson.
Brian Walshe on Thursday came face-to-face for the first time with the man who had been having an affair with his wife before her death, as he took the stand to testify in Walshe’s murder trial.
The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed Texas to use a congressional map that will boost President Donald Trump’s effort to keep Republicans in control of Congress, blocking a lower court decision that found the new boundaries were likely unconstitutional because they were drawn based on race.
The US military carried out a strike Thursday on a suspected drug boat in the Eastern Pacific, killing four people on board, according to a social media post from US Southern Command.
A grand jury voted against indicting New York Attorney General Letitia James after being asked to look at the mortgage fraud case against her a second time, according to multiple people familiar with the development Thursday.
National Guard troops deployed to Washington, DC, can remain there for now, after a federal appeals court on Thursday temporarily froze a judge’s ruling that would have soon required them to leave the city’s streets.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s bad week just got worse. That’s after the long-awaited release Thursday of an inspector general’s report on his sharing of highly sensitive military attack plans on the unclassified app Signal earlier this year.
President Donald Trump has hired a new architect for the White House ballroom amid disputes between the president and his architect originally contracted to complete the project, several sources have told CNN.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth risked compromising sensitive military information that could have endangered US troops through his use of Signal to discuss attack plans, a Pentagon watchdog said in an unclassified report released Thursday. It also details how Hegseth declined to cooperate with the probe.
If nothing else, the controversy over the Trump administration’s second strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean has surfaced a long-overdue debate about its already legally dubious first strikes.