What the Biden campaign thinks the Trump verdict means
CNN
Well before the Manhattan jury finished deliberating on Thursday, most of President Joe Biden’s advisers concluded that a guilty verdict wouldn’t drastically alter their 2024 election strategy.
Well before the Manhattan jury finished deliberating on Thursday, most of President Joe Biden’s advisers concluded that a guilty verdict wouldn’t drastically alter their 2024 election strategy. But it has stoked some hopes among supporters of the president that if 12 people who focused on Trump voted to find him guilty, there might actually be enough undecided voters who, if the Biden campaign can figure out how to get them to focus on Trump, will vote to keep him from returning to the White House. Aides have discussed among themselves whether the Biden campaign would use the term “criminal” to describe the likely Republican nominee in their messaging, even as they acknowledge the former president’s legal issues are largely baked in and voters care about other issues more. Still, a guilty verdict is a guilty verdict, and 34 of them hardly makes for bad news for Biden’s campaign five months before Election Day. The convictions might not move the needle in a major way in the election, those close to the Biden reelection effort told CNN, but an acquittal could have really helped Trump – and that makes Thursday’s historic decision a win for the Biden campaign, if only because it is not a loss. A sense of despondency had started to creep in from top supporters and donors in recent weeks, as more moments that reelection campaign strategists had projected would shift the race – the beginning of the 2024 calendar year, the end of the Republican primaries, the coming of spring when they figured more people would pay attention to Trump’s record—have come and gone without any notable movement in the polls or overall dynamics. So much frustration built inside the Wilmington headquarters that on Tuesday – with attention locked on the Manhattan courtroom – they sent out Robert DeNiro to shout at the crowd, and at the reporters. But the conviction on 34 counts has reassured some of their mantra that the more people focus on Trump and the choice ahead of them, the better Biden’s November is going to be – and to push back on the “nothing matters” sensibility that has helped power Trump through so many other dark moments over his last nine years in politics.
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.
The FBI arrested a person Thursday who investigators believe planted pipe bombs near the Republican and Democratic National Committee headquarters the night before the 2021 US Capitol riot.
Lawyers for the New York attorney general’s office are expected to appear in federal court in Albany on Thursday to try to disqualify a US attorney from investigating the state’s civil case against President Donald Trump.