Attention to the Unseen

David Corn writes: Since the beginning of Donald Trump’s indictment-o-rama, the politerati have considered the criminal case filed in New York City against the former president by District Attorney Alvin Bragg to be a sideshow. Though this case has key elements of a bona fide scandal—porn star! hush money! alleged extramarital affair!—pundits and politicos have struck a dismissive attitude toward Trump’s Stormy Daniels mess and the legal peril it poses him. Perhaps because it’s not as weighty a matter as…

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NBC News reports: The controversy over special counsel Robert Hur’s characterization of President Joe Biden’s memory has obscured one of the most surprising findings in his report: evidence that Biden knowingly kept classified materials at home for years and failed to turn them in. After a yearlong investigation, Hur found that the evidence of “willful retention” — the language in the criminal statute — wasn’t strong enough to justify a prosecution. And he explained in detail why the criminal charges…

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The New York Times reports: Allies of former President Donald J. Trump and officials who served in his administration are planning ways to restrict abortion rights if he returns to power that would go far beyond proposals for a national ban or the laws enacted in conservative states across the country. Behind the scenes, specific anti-abortion plans being proposed by Mr. Trump’s allies are sweeping and legally sophisticated. Some of their proposals would rely on enforcing the Comstock Act, a…

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Politico reports: A seven-figure verdict, an eight-figure verdict and, now, a nine-figure verdict. Donald Trump has been hit with all three in the past nine months, with Friday’s $354 million penalty for New York business fraud by far the most massive. He is now on the hook for over $440 million in civil judgments as he heads toward the Republican nomination — and as he prepares for one or more criminal trials this year. Those criminal cases could put him…

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Vox reports: Two recent verdicts have now left Donald Trump on the hook for nearly half a billion dollars. On Friday, a New York judge handed the former president a $355 million penalty, and banned him from serving in a leadership position in any business in New York for three years, for fraudulently inflating his net worth to lenders in order to receive more favorable loan agreements. And in January, a Manhattan jury ordered Trump to pay the writer E….

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