Trump keeps fighting bond requirement in $454M fraud appeal
NEW YORK — Former President Donald Trump’s lawyers kept pressing an appellate court Thursday to excuse him from covering a $454 million fraud lawsuit judgment for now, saying he’d suffer “irreparable harm” before his appeal is decided.
The financial requirement is “patently unjust, unreasonable and unconstitutional,” one of the presumptive GOP presidential nominee’s lawyers, Clifford Robert, wrote in a letter to a New York appeals court.
It’s the latest in a flurry of arguments and counterarguments that Trump’s attorneys and New York state lawyers are making ahead of Monday, when state Attorney General Letitia James can start taking steps to collect the massive sum — unless the appeals court intervenes.
James, a Democrat, said last month that she was prepared to seek to seize some of Trump’s assets if he can’t pay, although it wasn’t clear how quickly she had in mind.
A message was sent to James’ office Thursday seeking comment on its plans.
Trump’s lawyers want the court to hold off collection, without requiring him to post a bond or otherwise cover the nine-figure judgment, while he appeals the outcome of his recent civil business fraud trial.
Appealing doesn’t, in itself, halt collection. But Trump would automatically get such a reprieve if he puts up money, assets or an appeal bond covering what he owes.
Ex-officers sentenced: A federal judge handed down prison terms Thursday to the last of six white former Mississippi law enforcement officers who pleaded guilty to breaking into a home without a warrant and torturing two Black men in an hourslong attack that included beatings and repeated uses of stun guns before one was shot in the mouth.
U.S. District Judge Tom Lee called the culprits’ actions “egregious and despicable” and gave sentences near the top of federal guidelines to five of the six men who attacked Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker.
The exception was for former police officer Joshua Hartfield, 32, who received a 10-year sentence. Lee said Hartfield did not have a history of using excessive force and was roped into the brutal episode, but he failed to intervene in the violence and participated in a cover-up.
Brett Mcalpin, 53, the fourth-highest-ranking officer in the Rankin County Sheriff ’s Office, received a sentence of about 27 years. Mcalpin nodded to his family in the courtroom and offered an apology before the judge sentenced him.
In March 2023, months before federal prosecutors announced charges in August, an investigation by The Associated Press linked some of the deputies to at least four violent encounters with Black men since 2019 that left two dead and another with lasting injuries.
New claims of phone
Prince Harry, seeking tapping: to expand his privacyinvasion lawsuit against News Group Newspapers, alleged Thursday that the publisher of The Sun tabloid unlawfully intercepted phone calls of his parents.
The Duke of Sussex is seeking permission during a three-day hearing in the High Court to allow the new claims to be added to his ongoing litigation after evidence surfaced largely through materials turned over by NGN, a subsidiary of the media empire built by Rupert Murdoch, his lawyer said.
Attorney David Sherborne said the eavesdropping on Princess Diana; her then-estranged husband, Charles, Prince of Wales; and his then-paramour, Camilla Parker Bowles, inevitably revealed private information about Harry as early as age 9.
Harry is one of 45 claimants, including actor Hugh Grant and filmmaker Guy Ritchie, who say that between 1994 and 2016 News Group journalists violated their privacy through widespread unlawful activity that included intercepting voicemails, tapping phones, bugging cars and using deception to access confidential information.
Liftoff aborted: Russia aborted the launch of three crew members to the International Space Station 20 seconds before they were scheduled to lift off Thursday, but the crew was safe, officials said.
The Russian Soyuz rocket was to carry NASA astronaut Tracy Dyson, Oleg Novitsky of Roscosmos and Marina Vasilevskaya of Belarus from the Russian-leased Baikonur launch facility in Kazakhstan.
The launch was aborted by an automatic safety system. The next launch attempt is set for Saturday.
Roscosmos chief Yuri Borisov told reporters that experts quickly pinpointed the cause of the launch abort, saying it was triggered by a voltage drop in a power source.
Inmate, accomplice captured: A white supremacist Idaho prison gang member and an accomplice are in custody after a brazen attack to free the inmate as he was being transported from a Boise hospital, with investigators looking into whether they committed two killings while on the run.
Skylar Meade, the escaped inmate, and Nicholas Umphenour, the man who police say shot two Idaho corrections officers early Wednesday to break Meade out of custody, were arrested during a traffic stop Thursday in Twin Falls, about 130 miles from where they escaped.
Authorities said during they were investigating two homicides in Nez Perce and Clearwater counties, where the 2020 Honda Civic the men were seen fleeing in was later found. Police found shackles at the scene of one of the killings.
Pearl Harbor survivor dies: Richard C. “Dick” Higgins, one of the few remaining survivors of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, has died, a family member said Wednesday. He was 102.
Higgins died of natural causes Tuesday at home in Bend, Oregon, granddaughter Angela Norton said.
Higgins was a radioman assigned to a patrol squadron of seaplanes based at the Hawaii naval base when Japanese planes began dropping bombs on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941.