Takeaways from Day 10 of the Donald Trump hush money trial
CNN
Donald Trump’s attorneys on Thursday sought to paint one of the witnesses at the heart of the hush money deal with Stormy Daniels as someone with a long history of extracting money from celebrities while going “up to the line without committing extortion.”
Donald Trump’s attorneys on Thursday sought to paint one of the witnesses at the heart of the hush money deal with Stormy Daniels as someone with a long history of extracting money from celebrities while going “up to the line without committing extortion.” Trump attorney Emil Bove raised a host of celebrities Keith Davidson has dealt with – Hulk Hogan, Lindsay Lohan, Charlie Sheen and Tila Tequila – seeking both to undercut Davidson’s credibility as a witness and to argue that the deals he cut involving the former president followed a long-running pattern. Davidson was evasive responding to the battery of questions about his prior celebrity dealings, in testimony that got heated at times. Trump’s attorney also used recordings Michael Cohen secretly taped of his conversations with Davidson against the witness, including from 2018 of the two talking about the “leverage” of the Daniels story. Before the testimony began, Judge Juan Merchan held a second hearing on Trump’s alleged violations of his gag order where prosecutors raised four more statements Trump had made that they say violated the judge’s gag order barring discussion of witnesses and the jury. Trump has already been fined $9,000 for nine violations earlier this week. After Davidson left the stand, prosecutors called a digital evidence expert from their own office to enter evidence into records, continuing to move forward with their hush money case against Trump. Here are the top takeaways from Day 10 of the Trump hush money 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.
Two top House lawmakers emerged divided along party lines after a private briefing with the military official who oversaw September’s attack on an alleged drug vessel that included a so-called double-tap strike that killed surviving crew members, with a top Democrat calling video of the incident that was shared as part of the briefing “one of the most troubling things” he has seen as a lawmaker.
Authorities in Colombia are dealing with increasingly sophisticated criminals, who use advanced tech to produce and conceal the drugs they hope to export around the world. But police and the military are fighting back, using AI to flag suspicious passengers, cargo and mail - alongside more conventional air and sea patrols. CNN’s Isa Soares gets an inside look at Bogotá’s war on drugs.
Young Americans are “a generation under profound strain” with little confidence in institutions and widespread economic concerns, according to a Harvard Institute of Politics survey of adults younger than 30 released Thursday.
As lawmakers demand answers over reports that the US military carried out a follow-up strike that killed survivors during an attacked on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean, a career Navy SEAL who has spent most of his 30 years of military experience in special operations will be responsible for providing them.
The murder trial of Brian Walshe, who is accused of killing and dismembering his wife in 2023 continues. Follow for live updates.