Trump pays $110,000 fine to NY AG’S office over subpoenaed files
NEW YORK — Former President Donald Trump has paid the $110,000 in fines he racked up after being held in contempt of court for being slow to respond to a civil subpoena issued by New York’s attorney general.
Trump paid the fine Thursday but must still submit additional paperwork in order to have the contempt order lifted, the office of Attorney General Letitia James said Friday.
A Manhattan judge declared Trump in contempt of court April 25 and fined him $10,000 per day for not complying with a subpoena in James’ long-running investigation into his business practices.
Judge Arthur Engoron agreed May 11 to lift the contempt order if, by Friday, Trump paid the fines and submitted affidavits detailing efforts to search for the subpoenaed records and explaining his and his company’s document retention policies.
Engoron also required a company hired by Trump to aid in the search, Haystackid, finish going through 17 boxes kept in off-site storage, and for that company to report its findings and turn over any relevant documents. That process was completed Thursday, James’ office said.
Engoron told Trump to pay the money directly to James’ office and for the attorney general to hold the money in an escrow account while Trump’s legal team appeals the judge’s original contempt finding.
Engoron stopped the fine from accruing May 6, when Trump’s lawyers submitted 66 pages of court documents detailing the efforts by him and his lawyers to locate the subpoenaed records. He warned that he could reinstate it, retroactive to May 7, if his conditions weren’t met.
James, a Democrat, has said her three-year investigation uncovered evidence that Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, misstated the value of assets on financial statements for over a decade.
Trump denies the allegations. He has called James’ investigation “racist” and a politically motivated “witch hunt.” James is Black.
Trump is also suing James in federal court, seeking to shut down her probe.
Asylum ruling: Pandemicrelated restrictions on migrants seeking asylum on the southern border must continue, a judge ruled Friday in an order blocking the Biden administration’s plan to lift them early next week.
The ruling is just the latest instance of a court derailing the president’s proposed immigration policies along the U.S. border with Mexico.
While the administration can appeal, the ruling sharply increases the odds that restrictions will not end as planned Monday.
Migrants have been expelled more than 1.9 million times since March 2020 under Title 42, a public health provision that denies them a chance to request asylum under U.S. law and international treaty on grounds of preventing the spread of COVID-19.
U.S. District Judge Robert Summerhays in Lafayette, Louisiana, ordered that the restrictions stay in place while a lawsuit led by Arizona and Louisiana — and now joined by 22 other states — plays out in court.
Americas summit: President Joe Biden is considering inviting a Cuban
representative to the Summit of the Americas, a U.S. official said Friday, as his administration tries to salvage an event that risks collapsing over disagreements about the guest list.
It’s unclear if Cuba would accept the invitation, the U.S. official said, which would be extended to someone in the foreign ministry to join as an observer — but not the foreign minister himself, and not as a full participant.
The Summit of the Americas involves countries across the Americas, from Canada to Chile. It is scheduled to begin June 6 in Los Angeles.
But the planning has been marred by confusion, with key leaders such as Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador threatening to skip because Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua weren’t expected to be invited.
US terror blacklist: The United States has removed five extremist groups, all believed to be defunct, from its list of foreign terrorist
organizations. In notices published in the Federal Register on Friday, the State Department said it had removed the groups after a mandatory five-year review of their designations.
Al-qaida, which was also up for review, was kept on the list, which was created under the federal Immigration and Nationality Act, or INA.
The organizations removed are the Basque separatist group ETA, the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo, the radical Jewish group Kahane Kach and two Islamic groups that have been active in Israel, the Palestinian territories and Egypt.
Puerto Rico statehood:
A group of mostly Democratic congress members, including House Majority Leader Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, on Thursday proposed a binding plebiscite to decide whether Puerto Rico should become a state or gain some sort of
independence.
The draft proposal unveiled at an online news conference would commit Congress to accepting Puerto Rico into the United States if voters on the island approve it. But even if the plan were to pass the Democratic-led House, the proposal appears to have little chance in the Senate, where Republicans have long opposed statehood.
Voters also could choose independence or independence with free association, whose terms would be defined following negotiations over foreign affairs, U.S. citizenship and use of the U.S. dollar, said Rep. Darren Soto of Florida.
The measure, not yet introduced, follows months of negotiations between federal lawmakers who have long disagreed on what Puerto Rico’s political status should be.
Avenatti apology: Convicted California lawyer Michael Avenatti, 51, wants leniency
at sentencing for defrauding former client Stormy Daniels of hundreds of thousands of dollars, his lawyers say, citing a letter in which he told Daniels: “I am truly sorry.”
The emailed letter, dated May 13, was included in a submission his lawyers made late Thursday in Manhattan federal court in advance of a June 2 sentencing.
Last year, Avenatti was sentenced to 2 ½ years in prison for trying to extort up to $25 million from Nike by threatening to tarnish its reputation with claims that the sportswear giant was immersed in a college basketball recruiting scandal in which cash payouts were used to steer top-tier athletes to the best programs. Then he was convicted by a jury this year for pocketing up to $300,000 of an $800,000 payout to Daniels for her autobiography, spending some money on his firm’s payroll and personal expenses.