NATION IN BRIEF

NYC Judge Engoron says Trump blew chance, can’t personally deliver closing arguments at fraud trial

NEW YORK — Donald Trump can’t personally deliver closing arguments at his New York fraud trial because he refused to abide by “reasonable, lawful limits” set by the court, Manhattan Judge Arthur Engoron told his lawyers on Wednesday.

After making the highly unusual request last week, the former president blew multiple chances to assure the court he’d play fair, thereby forfeiting the opportunity to speak himself, Engoron said in a string of emails to Trump’s defense team included in court documents.

“Not having heard from you by the third extended deadline (noon today), I assume that

Mr. Trump will not agree to the reasonable, lawful limits I have imposed as a precondition to giving a closing statement above and beyond those given by his attorneys, and that, therefore, he will not be speaking in court tomorrow,” Engoron wrote Wednesday.

Trump lawyer Chris Kise wrote Engoron and lawyers for the New York attorney general on Jan. 4 to say the current Republican frontrunner in the presidential race planned to deliver part of the defense’s summation in the case threatening his family real estate empire. AG Letitia James opposed the unheard-of request, but Engoron said he would allow Trump to say his piece if he promised not to veer outside of issues relevant to the case.

“He may not seek to introduce new evidence. He may not ‘testify.’ He may not comment on irrelevant matters. In particular, and without limitation, he may not deliver a campaign speech, and he may not impugn myself, my staff, plaintiff, plaintiff’s staff, or the New York State court system, none of which is relevant to this case,” the judge said in a Jan. 5 email.

Hunter Biden should be held in contempt, House panel recommends

WASHINGTON — Two

U.S. House committees recommended Wednesday that Hunter Biden be held in criminal contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a subpoena in the impeachment inquiry into his father,

President Joe Biden.

The votes, 23-14 in the Judiciary Committee and 2521 in the Oversight Committee, came after Hunter Biden made an unannounced appearance on the U.S. Capitol grounds to attend the proceedings.

Once approved, the measures will go to the full House to vote on whether to ask the Justice Department to prosecute the younger Biden for defying his congressional subpoena.

The most dramatic moment of the day came early on when the president’s son, accompanied by his lawyer Abbe Lowell, entered the Oversight hearing room.

The move, which caught Republican lawmakers off guard, highlighted Hunter Biden’s aggressive tactics to counter House investigations into his business practices.

With the president’s son sitting in a chair typically reserved for the public, Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina asked

“Who bribed Hunter Biden to be here today?” She called Biden’s appearance “the epitome of White privilege” and questioned his manhood for refusing to testify to the panel behind closed doors.

The two committees last month subpoenaed Hunter Biden to appear for a closeddoor deposition. He came to Capitol Hill that time as well but said he would only testify in public.

“I think that Hunter Biden should be arrested right here, right now, and go straight to jail,” Mace said.

Democrats, and some Republicans, urged calm as Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer struggled to regain control of the hearing. Representative Andy Biggs, an Arizona Republican, called for “decorum and courtesy” and said people in the room should not “act like a bunch of nimrods.”

Representative Jared Moskowitz of Florida, a Democrat, responded by asking Republicans if they would allow Biden to speak publicly at the hearing. He received a chilly reception from GOP lawmakers when he asked them to raise their hands if they supported the idea.

Chris Christie drops from 2024 presidential race

Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor, dropped from the Republican race for president on Wednesday, capping a long-shot, sevenmonth bid centered on antagonizing Donald Trump.

Christie, who has taunted Trump more than any other candidate in the crowded

GOP primary field, failed to gain traction in a party that remains largely loyal to the 45th president. In one debate, Christie called Trump “Donald Duck.”

In remarks at a town hall in Windham, New Hampshire, on Wednesday night — the same night as a scheduled debate at which he wasn’t expected to appear — Christie said that he had run because a “case had to be made against” Trump.

But the one-time New Jersey leader acknowledged he had no route to victory.

“It’s clear to me tonight that there isn’t a path for me to win the nomination, which is why I’m suspending my campaign,” he said.

Christie, who could have split the vote of anti-trump Republicans, said the decision was based on one overriding aim: “I am going to make sure that in no way do I enable Donald Trump to ever be president of the United States again.”

“That’s more important than my own personal ambitions,” he added.

Georgia GOP legal fees top $1.3 million in 2023 due to Trump court fight

With help from Republican presidential candidates, the state GOP wound up spending more than $1.3 million on legal fees in 2023, most of it to represent electors for former President Donald Trump, three of whom were indicted in August.

That’s 15 times what the Republican Party spent on legal fees in 2021.

About $150,000 of what the party raised during the final six months of 2023 to help defray the cost of defending the

Trump electors in the Fulton County election interference case came from Republican presidential candidates, according to a review by the Atlanta Journal-constitution.

Before he left office as chairman of the state GOP in 2023, David Shafer, pledged the party’s help in defraying the legal costs of the 16 electors who met in mid December 2020 to cast votes as if Trump had won Georgia during his failed re-election bid.

He didn’t, losing to Democrat Joe Biden in Georgia by about 12,000 votes. Democrats were meeting at the Capitol the same day to cast legitimate electoral votes for Biden.

The GOP electors submitted to state and federal authorities documents that claimed they were the “duly elected” electors from the state, which they said Trump won.

At least eight of the 2020 Trump electors accepted immunity deals with the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office in exchange for their testimony, according to the lawyer representing the group.

Shafer, state Sen. Shawn

Still, and onetime Coffee

County Republican Party chairwoman Cathy Latham were indicted in the Trump election interference case. The three tried unsuccessfully to have their case transferred from state court to federal court, driving up the legal costs. They have since appealed to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Newly filed campaign disclosures show that the Georgia Republican Party raised $530,000 during the final six months of 2023, and spent $1.34 million. Of that, about $850,000 went for legal fees, on top of $520,000 in the first half of the year.

Source: Tribune News Service