After years of exaggerating his business assets, Trump confronts them in court

After years of exaggerating his business assets, Trump confronts them in court

The Washington Post reports: When Donald Trump needed to value his Trump Tower apartment for homeowner’s insurance in 2010, he personally showed an appraiser around the unit for 15 minutes but ushered him out before the expert could take any measurements. Trump’s company then declared that the 11,000-square-foot unit measured 30,000 square feet, nearly three times its actual size. A few years later, expert appraisers told Trump his 70-story office building at 40 Wall Street in Manhattan, steps from the…

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A tantalizing detail in a new Trump legal filing

A tantalizing detail in a new Trump legal filing

Aaron Blake writes: Donald Trump’s many legal problems have led to a veritable fire hose of often-mundane, procedural court filings. But occasionally, there’s a nugget that catches your eye. Such was the case Monday, in the government’s latest filing in Trump’s classified documents case. While arguing against the motion by Trump’s lawyers to delay the May 20 trial, special counsel Jack Smith’s lawyers assured they’re ready to go and that such a delay isn’t necessary, unsurprisingly. But they also said…

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In times of crisis, Israelis rally around their leaders. This time is different

In times of crisis, Israelis rally around their leaders. This time is different

Janine Zacharia writes: I started hearing from friends in Israel on Saturday that the number of partygoers murdered at an all-night rave near the Gaza border was much higher than authorities were disclosing. Soon after, distraught relatives began appearing outside hospitals, recounting on live TV their final conversations with their missing loved ones. “Nissim, I am dying,” one grief-stricken man recalled his brother saying before he lost contact with him. Many said they then heard conversations in Arabic before lines…

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IDF sees no evidence of Iranian involvement in the attack that it saw no evidence of coming

IDF sees no evidence of Iranian involvement in the attack that it saw no evidence of coming

The Israeli military affairs journalist, Yossi Melman: IDF spokeperson Brig-General Danny Hagari said that there is no indication of an Iranian involvement in the war in Gaza. — Yossi Melman (@yossi_melman) October 9, 2023 Israeli researcher in Iranian studies, Raz Zimmt: My two (or more) cents about Iran's involvement in recent developments in Southern Israel. In my opinion, two crucial distinctions are required. First, it is necessary to distinguish between Iranian support to Hamas, as well as the ongoing coordination…

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Intelligence failures are often the result of hubris

Intelligence failures are often the result of hubris

David Ignatius writes: Israel seemed to be coming apart in the months before Hamas fighters broke through the Gaza cage. Thousands of Israelis were marching in the streets of Tel Aviv to protest Netanyahu’s attempt to alter what they saw as the fundamental character of the state. Did that political chaos contribute to the Gaza attacks? I don’t know. But, surely, the domestic feuds of the past few months might have led Hamas and its backers in Tehran to believe…

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‘People are fearful of what’s to come’: Gaza civilians flee waves of Israeli strikes

‘People are fearful of what’s to come’: Gaza civilians flee waves of Israeli strikes

The Guardian reports: Palestinians across the besieged Gaza Strip have described their terror and confusion, as thousands fled a wave of Israeli airstrikes after Hamas’s unprecedented cross-border incursion. “When we began asking about the situation inside the hospitals we work with, one person described it as a slaughterhouse,” said Mahmoud Shalabi of Medical Aid for Palestinians, who is overseeing support to hospitals across the Gaza Strip. “There were bodies laying on the ground, there wasn’t enough space in the emergency…

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Gaza residents horrified by Hamas’ ‘ISIS-style’ threat to kill hostages on camera

Gaza residents horrified by Hamas’ ‘ISIS-style’ threat to kill hostages on camera

The Daily Beast reports: Gaza residents suffering wave after wave of Israeli bombing on Monday reacted with horror, as Hamas threatened to start executing Israeli hostages on camera each time a civilian is killed in an airstrike without warning. Abu Ubaida, a spokesman for the armed wing of Hamas, made the blood-chilling threat after a day of heavy bombing across the Gaza Strip in response to the militants’ raid on Israel over the weekend, which killed at least 700 people…

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‘Rudderless and leaderless’: House GOP lurches forward after Israel attacks

‘Rudderless and leaderless’: House GOP lurches forward after Israel attacks

Politico reports: Hamas’ deadly attack on Israel has prompted a wave of speculation about whether the House is capable of responding — including whether Acting Speaker Pro Tempore Patrick McHenry needs to be given more authority to move legislation. Were Rep. Kevin McCarthy still leading right now, there’s no doubt that he would quickly call up a vote reaffirming U.S. support for its closest ally in the Middle East. It would also attempt to split Democrats, whose ranks include Israel…

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Team Trump is using ‘Fyre Festival strategies’ in N.Y. fraud case

Team Trump is using ‘Fyre Festival strategies’ in N.Y. fraud case

Rolling Stone reports: In the weeks leading up to the start of his $250 million civil fraud trial in New York, Donald Trump and his attorneys privately discussed how they believed defeat in this trial was preordained. Their best chance — and it wasn’t much, according to two sources familiar with the matter and another two people briefed on internal deliberations — would be to fight the case on appeal. This belief led to the development of an approach to…

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After hoping RFK Jr would peel support from Biden, GOP now sees him as a threat to Trump

After hoping RFK Jr would peel support from Biden, GOP now sees him as a threat to Trump

The Washington Post reports: Attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s pivot Monday to an independent run for president met immediate resistance from Republican leaders, who have concluded that his new effort threatens to cannibalize their vote share next year, helping to reelect President Biden. Keeping up with politics is easy with The 5-Minute Fix Newsletter, in your inbox weekdays. The Republican National Committee greeted his announcement with a press release that described Kennedy as “just another radical, far-left Democrat,” with a…

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Netanyahu bears responsibility for this Israel-Gaza war

Netanyahu bears responsibility for this Israel-Gaza war

The lead editorial at Haaretz says: The disaster that befell Israel on the holiday of Simchat Torah is the clear responsibility of one person: Benjamin Netanyahu. The prime minister, who has prided himself on his vast political experience and irreplaceable wisdom in security matters, completely failed to identify the dangers he was consciously leading Israel into when establishing a government of annexation and dispossession, when appointing Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir to key positions, while embracing a foreign policy that…

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The IDF seemed to evaporate in Israel’s moment of desperate need

The IDF seemed to evaporate in Israel’s moment of desperate need

Haviv Rettig Gur writes: It was a horror, interminable, impossible. Hour after hour, families sat huddled in their homes awaiting rescue from the Hamas gunmen streaming through their towns and villages. Families were butchered in cold blood. In one home, a terrorist shot the parents dead, took a child’s cellphone and started broadcasting it all in a livestream on their Facebook account. Grandmothers were pulled in wheelchairs to waiting vehicles ready to carry them as hostages into Gaza. Then came…

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Tehran’s hostile takeover of the Palestinian cause

Tehran’s hostile takeover of the Palestinian cause

Michael Young writes: The surprise offensive by Hamas on October 7 has launched a thousand morsels of speculation. There is indeed much that can be concluded from the organization’s attacks against Israeli towns, its random killing of Israelis, its abduction of Israeli military personnel and civilians, and its firing of thousands of rockets against Israeli towns and cities. But one thing that is undeniable is that what we saw, and are continuing to see, in Gaza is Iran’s hostile takeover…

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The attack on Israel was a message from Iran

The attack on Israel was a message from Iran

Kim Ghattas writes: The Hamas attack against Israel is not only a massive Israeli intelligence and military (as well as a U.S. intelligence) failure, but also a dramatic success for Iran’s axis of resistance from Yemen to Gaza. The highly choreographed, multipronged, day-long operation and incursion into Israel itself, involving the use of motorized paragliders and drones and the taking of hostages, required months of planning and training that only Iran and Hezbollah could have provided. Late yesterday, a Hamas…

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This Gaza war didn’t come out of nowhere

This Gaza war didn’t come out of nowhere

Jonathan Guyer writes: It took Hamas’s deadly attack today to remind Israel, the United States, and the world that Palestine still matters. The militant group based in occupied Gaza launched aerial attacks and broke through the heavily secured fence into the State of Israel. Hundreds of Israelis have been killed, a historic scale of violence for the country. The Israeli counterattack will inevitably lead to more death and destruction for Palestinians and a tightened occupation. It comes after nearly two decades of…

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