Trump tests gag order by again attacking daughter of hush money trial judge: Live

The New York Times reports that Donald Trump is planning to attend services this week honoring New York City police officer Jonathan Diller, who was killed in a traffic stop in Queens on Monday evening. The outlet cited three people familiar with his plans.

On Thursday, the former president is expected to appear at the wake for Officer Diller, a three-year veteran of the New York Police Department.

Mr Diller was shot in the Far Rockaway neighborhood of the city just before 6pm on Monday. He was 31 and the father of a one-year-old.

Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign’s national press secretary, told the Times that Mr Trump “is moved by the invitation to join NYPD Officer Jonathan Diller’s family and colleagues as they deal with his senseless and tragic death”.

On Tuesday, the former president posted on Truth Social:

Our heartfelt prayers go out to the family of highly decorated NYPD officer Jonathan Diller, whose life was taken by a murderous career criminal yesterday during a traffic stop in Queens. The “thug” in question has 21 prior arrests and just recently got out of prison – he should NEVER have been let back out on the streets. To Officer Diller’s family, and all of the other brave men and women of law enforcement who put your lives on the line every day, we love you, we appreciate you, and we will always stand with you!

Mr Trump held up the brown leather tome — this time right-side up — in an ad he shared on his Truth Social account on Tuesday.

Graig Graziosi reports on the ridiculous yet unsurprising new gig for the former president:

Last week, Ohio Republican voters nominated Bernie Moreno to run against Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown. As Ohio has moved from being a swing state to a solidly pro-Donald Trump Republican outpost in the Midwest, Brown remains the only statewide elected Democrat there.

Democrats will need to spend mountains of cash to help his campaign in a state Trump won twice. But Brown has also received some additional help in the form of the two spending bills that passed this month, thanks to “earmarks”.

She told Garrett Haake that she believes the party is “past” litigating the 2020 election but Donald Trump, the former president and Ms Trump’s father-in-law, will soon be facing two juries on charges that he tried to overturn the results while he runs for re-election.

“I think we’re past that. I think that’s in the past,” Lara Trump told NBC News when she was asked whether it will be the RNC’s position that the 2020 election was not fairly decided.

“The past is the past, and unfortunately, we had to learn a couple of hard lessons in 2020,” she continued. “Believe me, we are applying them all across this country in every single state, and we want to ensure that, indeed, every single legal vote is counted.”

Meanwhile, Mr Trump continues to say that the election was rigged, that he should still be president, and that it was stolen from him partly because of mail-in voting — something that the RNC wants to encourage even as their candidate rails against it.

Asked about those comments, she told Haake:

“Well, I actually think if you talk to him right now, you will see that he is very much embracing early voting,” she said.

“I think that the message that the people of this country have sent to Donald Trump, and you saw it in the primaries, is that they want to get out and they want to vote for him as soon as they possibly can,” she continued . “And if that means Day 1 of early voting for people, he’s very happy for them to go out and do it.”

Ms Trump also said that the party will not directly fund her father-in-law’s legal costs directly despite previously having told Newsmax that “every single penny will go to the number one and the only job of the RNC — that is electing Donald J Trump ,” adding that Republican voters would be interested in paying the former president’s mounting legal bills.

Asked to assure people how their money would be spent if they donated to the RNC, she told NBC News:

“Trust me, I am the daughter-in-law of Donald Trump. I will ensure that every penny of every dollar is going to causes that Republican voters care about.”

“Well, the No. 1 job of the RNC is to, of course, support the Republican candidate for president. That is Donald Trump. But of course, we are paying attention to all about down-ballot races, as well,” she said.

“The truth is, it’s great if we win the presidency, and I think that’s imperative, but we also want to expand our lead in the House. We want to take back the Senate. So we are paying very close attention to all those races We will be supporting [them] in a very big way.”

The former president’s New York fraud case has been branded as an incident with no victims, particularly by commentators on Fox News.

The Shark Tank judge Kevin O’Leary even declared that everything Mr Trump was found liable for in the civil fraud case “is done by every real estate developer everywhere on Earth in every city. This has never ever been prosecuted.”

“Leave it to Kevin O’Leary to be unaware enough to say the quiet part out loud,” Stewart responded incredulously on The Daily Show.

Amelia Neath reports on what else Stewart had to say:

Donald Trump is furious at NBC News for terminating a contract with Ronna McDaniel after just a couple of days following a furious reaction from on-air talent to the hiring of the former chair of the RNC who helped perpetuate the former president’s lies about the 2020 election .

Ms McDaniel — whom Mr Trump refers to as Ronna Romney (she is the niece of Trump foe Mitt Romney) — resigned from the RNC in February at the behest of the former president.

Here’s what he had to say this afternoon:

MSDNC FAKE ANCHORS HAVE TAKEN OVER NBC FROM CHAIRMAN BRIAN ROBERTS, AND HE DOESN’T KNOW WHAT TO DO! THEIR RATINGS SUCK, FIRE THEM, AND START ALL OVER AGAIN. WHO WOULD HAVE EVER THOUGHT THAT FAILED HOST, SLEEPY EYES CHUCK TODD, WOULD HAVE THE AUDACITY TO REPRIMAND BRIAN ROBERTS CONCERNING THE HIRING OF RONNA ROMNEY. THEY SHOULD FIRE HIM IMMEDIATELY, AND NEVER LOOK BACK. MAGA2024!

And here’s our reporting on the end of Ms McDaniel’s short career at NBC:

Mike Roman, Donald Trump’s former campaign aide and one of the 18 co-defendants in his sprawling racketeering case in Georgia, has been subpoenaed by Arizona officials as part of their criminal investigation into the alleged plot to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 win in the state.

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes has been overseeing the inquiry into the so-called “fake electors” scheme, which, had it not been foiled, would have seen groups of illegitimate state electors submitting false voting certificates to Congress and the National Archives declaring Mr Trump , not Mr. Biden, as the election winner.

Joe Sommerlad has the details:

Attorneys for Donald Trump failed to convince a judge that the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office mishandled potential evidence in his criminal case stemming from an alleged hush money scheme to bury embarrassing stories of his affairs.

The former president arrived inside a 15th floor criminal courtroom in Manhattan on Monday morning for yet another pretrial hearing in the case, what was supposed to be the first day of jury selection for the first-ever criminal trial against a president.

Alex Woodward filed this report from the court in Lower Manhattan:

Ms Willis spoke to a CNN reporter on Saturday and said that while outside forces were working to slow the case down, her office had continued working on the case throughout the recent proceedings determining whether there was a conflict of interest on Ms Willis’s part given a romantic relationship she engaged in with a prosecutor on her team.

The Independent‘s Andrew Feinberg duck Eric Garcia report on how the Trump and Biden campaigns plan to respond to polling data that suggest almost 25 per cent of Black voters would back the former president — mostly Black men.