Are years of shenanigans starting to stick to Teflon Don?
DONALD Trump’s legal team have pulled more tricks than Paul Daniels managed over his entire career.
But, while they performed a miracle over the penalty handed down in his civil fraud case, they failed to pull a rabbit out of the hat when it came to allegations that he paid porn star Stormy Daniels.
Next month, the former president will become the first-ever former US leader to face criminal charges. It is alleged that he paid the adult actress to keep schtum about their alleged 2006 affair before he was elected to the Oval Office.
The charges are among the 88 he faces in various cases, which have left his lawyers engaged in a frantic game of legal whack-a-mole, desperately trying to shield him from being held accountable for what feels like aeons of alleged shenanigans.
Team Trump won a small victory in a New York court, which he quickly gloated about, allowing him to post a reduced bond of $175m to delay enforcement of a $464m fraud penalty.
This follows a court case earlier this year when Justice Arthur Engoron’s gavel came down hard, condemning Trump and his clan for pulling off some spectacularly audacious fraud.
According to his ruling, they inflated property values to score sweeter loan deals. Trump’s penalty with interest was a staggering
$464 million (£367 million).
Despite his boasts about being a multibillionaire, Trump could not pony up the cash, with his lawyers telling the courts he would miss the Monday deadline to pay.
If that deadline had passed without Trump posting a bond and without any intervention from the
appeals court, it would have paved the way for New York Attorney General Letitia James, who brought the fraud case, to begin freezing his bank accounts and seizing his properties.
However, in a stunning turn of events, an appeals court granted Trump and his cohorts an 11thhour lifeline, reducing the bond to a mere $175 million (£138 million), which he has to pay by Wednesday,
But if the Teflon Don had a vision of popping Champagne, his plans had to be quickly placed on ice.
Despite his team’s efforts at a pre-trial hearing this week to have his hush-money case dismissed, the judge was not having any of it.
The judge, Juan Merchan, refused to dismiss the case against Trump for alleged prosecutorial misconduct because federal prosecutors did not turn over some evidence to that team.
He also took the Trump legal team to task for suggesting that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office engaged in improper conduct and that Judge Merchan was somehow complicit in it.
Trump and his lawyers look like they may have played their final hands in the last-chance saloon, and the scales of justice could be finally about to weigh in on his chequered life.
But despite all that he faces, half this crazy country wants him back in the White House. Don’t be surprised if one day we see a felon as the leader of the free world.
In a world where basic human decency seems to be an increasingly rare commodity, it’s no surprise that we find ourselves shaking our heads in disbelief, yet again.
FOLLOWING the decision by the Princess of Wales to go public with her cancer diagnosis, the spotlight fell on those who had trolled the royal while she had been out of the public eye. Chief among those was the US’s queen of self-promotion, Kim Kardashian.
After Kate revealed what she had been through, I wrote to the reality star’s team asking if she wanted to apologise.
A week earlier, she had poked fun at the royal by posting a picture on her Instagram of herself with the caption: “On my way to go find Kate”.
My email to Kim’s people failed to gain a response.
What makes Kardashian’s failure to apologise even more egregious is that several of the others who similarly poked fun have now said sorry.
She chose to remain silent, cementing her reputation as self-absorbed and insensitive.
Half this crazy country wants him back in the White House. Don’t be surprised if one day we see a felon as the leader of the free world.