Trump news today: Trump lawyers ask hush money trial judge to drop gag order blocking attacks on witnesses and jurors

50 Cent has hit out at Donald Trump, declaring that the “world is almost over” as Trump received millions from his supporters after being found guilty of 34 felonies.

Trump has reportedly raised $200m since being found guilty last week, according to his son Eric Trump, who told Fox News that the information came from his wife, Lara Trump, the Republican National Committee (RNC) co-chair.

The number is said to be partly made up of $70m in small-donor fundraising.

Since then, 50 Cent has taken to social media to share a screenshot of a news story featuring the headline: “BREAKING: Trump campaign has received over $200 million in total donations since the guilty verdict in New York.”

The rapper, real name Curtis Jackson III, captioned the post: “SMH don’t worry the world’s almost over just enjoy the moment and be happy.”

Leading MAGA figure Steve Bannon has suggested Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who brought the hush money charges against Donald Trump, should be jailed.

“Of course [Bragg] should be — and will be — jailed,” Steve Bannon, one of the top voices of the MAGA movement, told Axios.

Bannon added that Bragg could be targeted using the 14th Amendment, which guarantees equal rights, and the Fourth Amendment, which outlaws unreasonable searches and seizures by the government, “plus scores of other” laws.

He went on to say that he wants “investigations to include [Democrats’] media allies.”

It comes as MAGA allies are pushing Trump to investigate, prosecute — and even try to imprison —those involved in bringing four criminal cases against him.

House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan on Monday told Fox News that he’s preparing an appropriations package that would “defund the lawfare activities” of state and federal prosecutors leading “politically sensitive investigations,” including Bragg, special counsel Jack Smith and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. He added that he is going to “look at Special Counsel Jack Smith,” who is prosecuting Trump for his alleged mishandling of classified documents. “We have the funding streams. We have mechanisms to try to get control of that,” he said.

Jordan called last week for Bragg and one of his courtroom prosecutors, Matthew Colangelo, to testify on 13 June before the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.

Meanwhile, Speaker Mike Johnson said this weekend on Fox News Sunday that the hearing’s purpose “is to investigate what these prosecutors are doing at the state and federal level to use … political retribution in the court system to go after political opponents, federal officials like Donald Trump.”

Vice President Kamala Harris chimed in on Donald Trump’s criminal conviction on Tuesday night, telling Jimmy Kimmel that “cheaters don’t like getting caught and being held accountable.”

“A jury of 12 people, peers, over the course of six weeks, deliberated on the evidence and facts and unanimously determined guilt on 34 felony counts. There was a defense attorney who actively participated in selecting that jury, who actively made decisions about witnesses to call, witnesses to cross examine,” she said in an interview on Jimmy Kimmel Live.

“And the jury made their decision and you know, I think that the reality is, cheaters don’t like getting caught and being held accountable.”

She added: “The reality is, let’s just fast forward again to November. I think the American people want to know that there is a president who is accountable to the people.”

He has not yet been sentenced. A sentencing hearing is tentatively scheduled for July 11.

Donald Trump’s attorneys are asking the judge overseeing his hush money trial to lift the trial’s gag order, “now that the trial has concluded.”

“The concerns articulated by the government and the Court do not justify continued restrictions on the First Amendment rights of President Trump – who remains the leading candidate in the 2024 presidential election – and the American people,” according to Monday’s letter from Trump attorney Todd Blanche to Justice Juan Merchan.

He has not yet been sentenced. A sentencing hearing is tentatively scheduled for July 11.

A gag order prevents Trump from publicly attacking witnesses, jurors, prosecutors and court staff and their families, with the exception of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and the judge himself.

Trump was fined $10,000 for 10 statements directed at witnesses and the jury, and Judge Merchan threatened him with jail if he continued to violate the terms of the gag.

He evaded scrutiny from prosecution in the trial’s final weeks of the trial while a parade of his so-called “surrogates” lashed out at witnesses and the judge’s daughter, and as Trump himself took aim at the prosecution’s star witness Michael Cohen.

Blanche now argues that the basis for the gag order no longer exists, and that recent statements from President Joe Biden, Cohen and Stormy Daniels entitle him to a response. He also argued the gag order should be lifted ahead of a June 27 presidential debate.

Phone numbers and home addresses belonging to Michael Cohen’s wife and children were leaked online after Donald Trump’s conviction in New York.

Personal information for Cohen’s family members wound up on a site “known for doxxing”, according to Daniel J Jones, the president of nonprofit research group Advance Democracy.

Trump endorsed MAGA candidate Serrano Glassner is set to lose the GOP nomination for the New Jersey Senate race, according to a projection from Decision Desk HQ, in another blow for the former president.

Real estate developer Curtis Bashaw is predicted to secure the nomination, meaning he will compete for the seat which has been held by Democratic Senator Bob Menendez, who is embroiled in a federal corruption case in which he is facing charges of bribery and other offenses.

The incumbent chose not to run for the Democratic nomination following the indictment against him and widespread calls within his party to resign, but he officially launched an independent bid for the seat on Monday.

Republicans hope Menendez’s candidacy could split the vote in the solidly blue state, putting the seat more in play despite no Republican being elected to the Senate from New Jersey in more than 50 years.

Despite having institutional support from the state Republican party, Trump dismissed Bashaw as “a Christie person,” referencing New Jersey’s unpopular former Governor, Chris Christie. The former president instead opted to endorse Glassner at a rally on 11 May, reshaping the race. Glassner’s husband, Michael Glassner, is a longtime Trump campaign aide.

“I want to thank all those New Jerseyans who voted for me and supported me throughout this primary campaign. While we did not achieve the outcome we had sought, I am grateful to those who joined me on this journey and who are ready for commonsense solutions to save America. I look forward to supporting President Trump and America First candidates in the election this November and ensuring that we elect officials with integrity who stand for the hard-working men and women of New Jersey,” Glassner said following her defeat.

Donald Trump has claimed “it’s very possible” that his political opponents may face prosecution after he became the first US president to be criminally convicted last week.

The former president made the comments during an interview with the conservative outlet Newsmax.

“So, you know, it’s a terrible, terrible path that they’re leading us to, and it’s very possible that it’s going to have to happen to them,” Trump said when discussing his guilty verdict,” he said.

“Does that mean the next president does it to them? That’s really the question,” he added.

It is not the first time Trump has floated prosecuting his political opponents.

At the start of his re-election campaign, Trump frequently raised prosecuting President Joe Biden.

“I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of America, Joe Biden, and go after the Biden crime family,” Trump said in June at his Bedminster, New Jersey, residence, just hours after being arraigned at a federal courthouse in Miami on charges related to his handling of classified documents after he left the White House.

Meanwhile, “Lock her up” was a frequent chant at Trump’s campaign rallies in 2016 when he ran against Hilary Clinton.

However, Trump credited himself for not going after Clinton, saying it would have been “a terrible precedent for our country.”

“Some people said I should have done it, but, you know, could have, would have been very easy to do it, but I thought it would be a terrible precedent for our country,” Trump said. “And now, whoever it may be, you’re going to have to view it very much differently. This is a bad, bad road that they’re leading us down to as a country.”

Trump was found guilty last week of falsifying business records in a five-week trial in New York.

Despite suggesting he was going to, Donald Trump did not take the stand in his own defense during his hush money trial.

Michael Cohen, the prosecution’s star witness, claims that Trump didn’t testify because he was “scared s***less”.

“’Were you in the room in August 2015 with Michael Cohen and David Pecker?’ Right? ‘Did you hatch the scheme within which to catch and kill stories, whatever you want to call it, right, that would harm you and to plant stories that would be beneficial to you and detrimental to your opportunities? Did you do all of this stuff?’ You can’t ask these questions of somebody like Trump.”

Cohen derided Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche as “the stupidest lawyer of all time” who “should have said, ‘There’s no way that we can allow Donald Trump to take the stand. It would actually be legal malpractice for us not to say to him, Don’t take the stand.”