Former U.S. Capitol Police officers Michael Fanone and Harry Dunn, who were overwhelmed by the mob at the Capitol on Jan. 6, are interviewed during former President Donald Trump’s hush money trial in Manhattan Criminal Court on May 28, 2024 in New York City. Closing arguments were under way. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

WASHINGTON — Closing arguments in the first-ever criminal trial of a former U.S. president concluded Tuesday, leaving the jury to now decide if Donald Trump is guilty of faking reimbursement to his personal lawyer for hush money paid to a porn star just before the 2016 presidential election.

Just outside the Lower Manhattan courthouse during summations, the campaign to reelect President Joe Biden  held a press conference featuring actor Robert DeNiro and two former U.S. Capitol Police officers who were overwhelmed by the angry mob of Trump supporters who stormed the building on Jan. 6, 2021.

DeNiro bickered with a heckler and the Trump campaign then followed with its own press conference.

The trial’s final day of arguments wrapped up after nearly eight hours of closing arguments, during which the defense portrayed Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen as the “M.V.P. of liars” and Trump as a victim of extortion and too busy a leader in 2017 to understand the payments to Cohen.

Meanwhile, the prosecution walked jurors through excruciating details of events and witness testimony to show that Trump’s objective, along with those in his orbit, was to “hoodwink the American voter” leading up to the 2016 election, according to reporters at the courthouse.

New York does not allow recording in the courtroom but provides public transcripts of the proceedings. States Newsroom covered the trial in person on May 20.

Trump, the presumed 2024 Republican presidential nominee, is charged with 34 felonies, one for each of the 11 invoices, 11 checks, and 12 ledger entries that New York state prosecutors allege were cooked-up as routine “legal expenses,” hiding what were really reimbursements to Cohen for paying off adult film actress Stormy Daniels.

Daniels, also an adult film director, testified in early May to a 2006 sexual encounter at a Lake Tahoe golf tournament with Trump, which he maintains never happened.

Cohen, the prosecution’s key witness, later told the jurors that he wired Daniels $130,000 to secure her signature on a nondisclosure agreement in late October 2016, and that Trump was aware.

Cohen’s payment swiftly followed the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape, in which Trump was recorded telling a TV host that his fame allows him to grab women by the genitals.

The revelation spun Trump’s campaign into a frenzy over possibly losing women voters, additional witnesses testified.

Further, Cohen testified that Trump was present during conversations to hatch a plan with the Trump Organization’s longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, to repay Cohen under the guise of “legal expenses.” Cohen would eventually receive a grossed-up sum of $420,000 to account for a bonus and taxes.

The hush money trial, which began in mid-April, is likely the only one to occur prior to the November election. Three other criminal cases against the former president, two federal and one in Georgia, remain stalled.

Throughout the six-week trial, jurors heard from nearly two dozen witnesses called by the prosecution to establish Trump’s history of working to suppress negative stories.

David Pecker, former National Enquirer publisher, testified to coordinating with Trump and Cohen earlier in 2016 to pay off former Playboy model Karen McDougal and bury her story of an alleged affair with Trump.

In his closing statements, Trump attorney Todd Blanche addressed the jury for nearly three hours, arguing that Trump made no such effort to influence the 2016 election by “unlawful means.”

Blanche told the jurors to put the idea of a conspiracy aside, emphasizing that the existence of a nondisclosure agreement is “not a crime.” Working with editors to buy sources’ silence and bury stories was routine, Blanche said.

“Every campaign in this country is a conspiracy,” he told the jurors, according to reporters at the courthouse.

While no hard contract existed between Trump and Cohen at the time, Blanche argued that the two had entered into an “oral” retainer agreement, and that Cohen was lying about how much work he was actually doing for Trump.

By the time Trump reached the Oval Office and personally signed nine of the 11 checks for Cohen, the then-president was too busy “running the country” to realize what he was signing, Blanche said.

As for the classification of the payments on the ledger, Blanche argued that the Trump Organization’s software featured limited dropdown menu categories, and that “legal expenses” was one of the options.

Blanche’s closing statements were largely dominated by his effort to persuade jurors that Cohen’s testimony could not be trusted.

“There is no way that you can find that President Trump knew about this payment at the time it was made without believing the words of Michael Cohen — period,” Blanche told the jurors, according to reporters in the courtroom.

Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 for lying to Congress.

Using another sports metaphor, Blanche told jurors that Cohen is the “G.L.O.A.T.”

“He’s literally the greatest liar of all time,” Blanche said.

He closed by urging the jurors to not send Trump “to prison” based on Cohen’s testimony.

Justice Juan Merchan admonished Blanche for mentioning prison, pointing out that a guilty verdict does not necessarily mean prison time. Merchan told the jurors to disregard that “improper” comment, according to reporters at the courthouse.

‘The only one who’s paid the price’

For just under five hours, prosecutor Joshua Steinglass led jurors through his closing argument, clocking the longest day of the trial.

Steinglass started off by telling them the prosecution only needs to prove the following: There were false business records used as part of the conspiracy and that Trump knew about them.

Steinglass reviewed earlier evidence presented to the jury — phone records, handwritten notes, recorded phone conversations and checks bearing Trump’s own signature. He also recalled the damning testimony of several Trump allies, including Pecker, the publisher.

“The conspiracy to unlawfully influence the 2016 election — you don’t need Michael Cohen to prove that one bit,” Steinglass said, according to reporters at the courthouse.

Steinglass leaned into Cohen’s seedy past, including his lying to Congress and his jail time for campaign finance violations related to hush money payments to women who alleged extramarital affairs with Trump.

These actions, he said, were taken on Trump’s behalf to defend and shield him; the irony, Steinglass said, is now they are being used against Cohen, again, to protect Trump.

Cohen transformed from a loyal Trump ally into a bitter foe who has published books titled “Disloyal” and “Revenge,” and produces a podcast called “Mea Culpa” on which he regularly lambastes Trump.

Cohen is “understandably angry that to date, he’s the only one who’s paid the price for his role in this conspiracy,” Blanche told the jurors, according to reporters, who noted Trump was shaking his head.

Steinglass attempted to humanize Cohen for the jurors, telling them one can “hardly blame” the former fixer — who now has a criminal record and no law license — for selling merchandise including t-shirts depicting Trump in an orange prison jumpsuit.

Steinglass also refuted the defense’s argument that Trump’s actions ahead of the 2016 were routine, describing the National Enquirer as “a covert arm” of the Trump campaign and “the very antithesis of a normal legitimate press function.”

“Everything Mr. Trump and his cohorts did in this case was cloaked in lies,” Steinglass said nearing the end of his closing statement. “The name of the game was concealment, and all roads lead to the man who benefited the most, Donald Trump.”

On the sidewalk just outside the New York County Supreme Court, the Biden campaign deployed DeNiro, the voice of the latest campaign ad, and former U.S. Capitol Police officers Harry Dunn and Michael Fanone. The officers are campaigning for Biden in battleground states, the campaign said in a press release.

The campaign’s Michael Tyler, communications director, introduced the trio and said they were not in Manhattan because of the trial proceedings, but rather because that’s where the media is concentrated.

Loud protesters, whom DeNiro called “crazy,” competed with the speakers.

“Donald Trump has created this,” DeNiro said, pointing to the demonstrators. “He wants to sow total chaos, which he’s succeeding in some areas … I love this city, and I don’t want to destroy it. Donald Trump wants to destroy, not only this city, but the country, and eventually he could destroy the world.”

“These guys are the true heroes,” De Niro said, pointing to Dunn and Fanone behind him. “They stood and put their lives on the line for these low lives, for Trump.”

A protester then interrupted DeNiro to call the officers “traitors.”

“I don’t even know how to deal with you, my friend,” DeNiro snapped back during the livestreamed event.

Both Dunn and Fanone testified two years ago before lawmakers investigating the violent mob that overran the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 as Congress gathered for a joint session to certify Biden’s 2020 presidential election victory. Trump still falsely claims he won the election.

Trump’s campaign immediately followed with its own press conference.

Jason Miller, senior adviser to Trump, held up Tuesday’s copy of the New York Post bearing the headline “Nothing to Bragg About,” a play on Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s name.

“Everybody knows this case is complete garbage,” Miller said. “President Trump did nothing wrong. This is all politics.”

On Trump’s social media platform Truth Social, the former president posted “BORING!” in all capital letters during a break in the Steinglass summation.

Late Monday, Trump posted in all caps a complaint about the order in which closing arguments would occur — a routine, well-established series of remarks in trials.

“WHY IS THE CORRUPT GOVERNMENT ALLOWED TO MAKE THE FINAL ARGUMENT IN THE CASE AGAINST ME? WHY CAN’T THE DEFENSE GO LAST? BIG ADVANTAGE, VERY UNFAIR. WITCH HUNT!” he wrote.

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Former President Donald Trump sits in court during the final day of testimony in his New York trial. Trump, the first former U.S. president to face trial on criminal charges, is accused of falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments. (Photo by Justin Lane-Pool/Getty Images)

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

WASHINGTON — The end of the first criminal trial of a former U.S. president is in sight as Donald Trump’s defense team rested its case Tuesday in Manhattan, where jurors have heard weeks of testimony from nearly two dozen witnesses about Trump’s alleged reimbursement of hush money meant to silence a porn star before the 2016 presidential election.

Trump did not take the stand after his team called just two witnesses.

The former president is accused of 34 felonies for falsifying business records. New York prosecutors allege that Trump covered up reimbursing his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen for paying hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels just before Election Day in 2016 to silence her about a tryst with Trump.

Trump, the presumptive 2024 Republican candidate for president, denies the affair and maintains that he was paying Cohen for routine legal work.

The case will not resume until after the Memorial Day holiday, when closing arguments are expected.

A back channel to Trump

Trump’s defense team’s second and final witness, former federal prosecutor and longtime New York-based attorney Robert Costello, stepped down from the witness stand Tuesday morning. His brief but tense appearance began Monday afternoon and included an admonishment from Justice Juan Merchan for “contemptuous” conduct.

Costello testified to meeting a panicked and “suicidal” Cohen in April 2018 after the FBI had raided Cohen’s New York City hotel room as part of an investigation of his $130,000 payment to Daniels just before the 2016 presidential election.

After Merchan sustained a series of objections from the prosecution Monday, Costello exclaimed, “jeez” and “ridiculous” on the mic and at one point rolled his eyes at Merchan. Merchan cleared the courtroom, including the press, to address Costello and Trump’s defense team.

Costello’s testimony confirmed that he offered a back channel for Cohen to communicate with then-President Trump through Costello’s close contact and Trump’s former legal counsel Rudy Giuliani as Cohen was under investigation, according to reporters at the courthouse.

New York does not allow recording in the courtroom but provides public transcripts of the proceedings.

During cross examination, prosecutor Susan Hoffinger showed a series of Costello’s emails in an attempt to convince jurors that Costello was actively working to assure Trump that Cohen would not turn against him during the federal investigation.

In one email between Costello and his law partner, he asks, “What should I say to this (expletive)? He is playing with the most powerful man on the planet,” according to reporters at the courthouse.

Hoffinger also established from Costello during her final series of questions that Cohen never officially retained him for legal help — reinforcing that Costello showed up in Cohen’s life only after the FBI raid.

Trump’s multiple indictments

Costello has been publicly critical of the hush money trial against Trump, and of Cohen, as recently as May 15, when he testified before the GOP-led U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary’s Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.

There, Costello told lawmakers that the cases brought against Trump during this election year are “politically motivated.”

Trump, who faces dozens of criminal charges in four separate cases, was indicted in New York in April 2023.

Three other criminal cases were also brought against Trump in 2023. They all remain on hold.

• The former president was indicted by a federal grand jury in Florida in June 2023 on charges related to the mishandling of classified information. Federal District Judge Aileen Cannon indefinitely postponed proceedings, making a trial before the November election unlikely.

• Trump was indicted by a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., in August 2023. A four-count indictment accused him of knowingly spreading falsehoods about the 2020 presidential election results and scheming to overturn them. Trump claimed presidential immunity from the criminal charges in October 2023, which both the federal trial and appeals courts denied. Trump is awaiting a decision from the U.S. Supreme Court.

• Weeks after the federal election interference indictment, Trump was indicted on state charges in Fulton County, Georgia, for allegedly interfering in the state’s 2020 presidential election results. The Georgia case has been mired in pretrial disputes over alleged misconduct by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.

Courtroom conditions

In the dim, tightly secured hallway just feet from the courtroom at the New York County Supreme Court, Trump again criticized the trial Monday and accused prosecutors of wanting to keep him off the campaign trail.

“We’re here an hour early today. I was supposed to be making a speech for political purposes. I’m not allowed to have anything to do with politics because I’m sitting in a very freezing cold courtroom for the last four weeks. It’s very unfair. They have no case, they have no crime,” he said before the news cameras that he’s stopped to speak in front of every day during the trial.

Trump told the cameras that outside the courtroom was like “Fort Knox.”

He complained that there are “more police than I’ve ever seen anywhere,” and said “there’s not a civilian within three blocks of the courthouse.”

That statement is false. States Newsroom attended the trial Monday and witnessed the scene outside the courthouse during the morning, mid-afternoon and late afternoon.

Just as dawn broke, people standing in the general-public line vying for the few public seats in the courtroom squabbled over who was in front of whom.

About an hour later, a woman with a bullhorn showed up in the adjacent Collect Pond Park to read the Bible and amplify contemporary Christian music played from her phone. A man paced the park holding a sign that read, “Trump 2 Terrified 2 Testify.”

Several people sat outside eating and talking at tables in Collect Pond Park during the 1 p.m. hour, as witnessed by reporters who left the courtroom after Merchan dismissed the jury for lunch.

By late afternoon, a small handful of protesters holding Trump flags and signs shouted that he was innocent.

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Former President Donald Trump appears in court during his trial for allegedly covering up hush money payments at Manhattan Criminal Court on May 20, 2024, in New York City. Trump faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first of his criminal cases to go to trial. (Photo by Steven Hirsch-Pool/Getty Images)

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

NEW YORK — New York state prosecutors rested their case against Donald Trump Monday after four days of testimony from their key witness, Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen, who says the former president was well aware of a hush money cover-up. The defense paints Cohen as a liar.

The Manhattan criminal trial, the first ever for a former president, now in its sixth week, was poised to reach closing arguments as early as Tuesday. But New York Justice Juan Merchan indicated Monday that proceedings would stretch beyond Memorial Day.

Trump attorney Todd Blanche, in a lengthy, and at times slow and disjointed cross- examination Monday, continued wringing Cohen for proof that would convince jurors the former fixer cannot be trusted.

Cohen’s earlier testimony that Trump reimbursed him for paying a porn star to stay quiet before the 2016 presidential election is at the crux of the prosecution’s case.

Trump is charged with falsifying 11 invoices, 11 checks, and 12 ledger entries as routine legal expenses rather than reimbursement of the hush money, amounting to 34 felony counts.

Trump denies any wrongdoing and maintains he never had a sexual relationship with adult film actress and director Stormy Daniels. She testified otherwise in excruciating and awkward detail in early May.

Monday’s proceedings were beset with objections and technology issues, and wrapped with tense testimony from the defense’s second witness, Robert Costello, Cohen’s legal counsel, who promised backdoor communication to Trump after Cohen was under the FBI’s thumb in 2018.

The day ended with a long shot, but expected, request from the defense to throw the case out. Merchan dismissed the court, saying he’d issue his ruling Tuesday. The defense is likely to rest its case then as well.

Closing arguments are expected after the holiday.

On a ‘journey’

Blanche began the day grilling Cohen on his previous business dealings, income and the money he’s made since breaking ties with the former president.

Cohen testified that he’s made millions of dollars on his books “Disloyal” and “Revenge,” and his podcast “Mea Culpa,” all of which sharply criticize the man from whom he used to seek praise, as he testified days earlier.

Prompted by Blanche, Cohen confirmed he’s mulling over a third book, has a television show in the works titled “The Fixer” and is considering a run for Congress because he has “the best name recognition” out there.

When Blanche suggested Cohen’s name recognition hinges on Trump, Cohen disagreed.

“I wouldn’t characterize it that way. My name recognition is because of the journey I’ve been on,” Cohen said.

“Well the journey you’ve been on … has included daily attacks on Trump,” Blanche responded.

Through the course of Blanche’s questioning, Cohen again acknowledged his previous crimes and also fessed up to stealing $30,000 from the Trump Organization when Trump lagged on paying a tech company to rig a CNBC poll of famous businessmen.

Minutes later, Blanche asked, “Do you have a financial interest in this case?”

“Yes, sir,” Cohen responded.

When Blanche pressed about whether a guilty verdict is Cohen’s preferred outcome, Cohen responded, “The answer is no. It’s better if he’s not (guilty) for me because it gives me more to talk about in the future.”

Prosecutor Susan Hoffinger conducted her redirect at a tidy and speedy clip, leading Cohen through each of Blanche’s doubting lines of questioning to reaffirm for the jury Cohen’s testimony that Trump’s hand was behind the hush money reimbursements.

“They’ve asked you a lot of questions about how you’ve made money and (your) podcast… Putting aside financial matters, how has telling the truth affected your life?” Hoffinger asked.

“My entire life has been turned upside down as a direct result,” Cohen responded.

Before the prosecution rested its case, the defense lobbed a lengthy objection to a still frame of a C-SPAN video depicting Trump with his bodyguard Keith Schiller just before 8 p.m. on Oct. 24, 2016. The parties eventually agreed to admit it.

Evidence that Trump and Schiller were together that night looms large for Cohen’s claim that he spoke to both of them on the phone about paying off Daniels.

Trump’s support inside the courtroom

A steady flow of high-profile Republican supporters has shown up for the GOP’s presumed 2024 presidential nominee.

Monday’s supporters included Trump ally and attorney Alan Dershowitz; legal adviser Boris Epshteyn, who himself is indicted in Arizona for trying to subvert the 2020 presidential election results; and Chuck Zito, an actor and one of the founders of New York City’s Hells Angels chapter in the 1980s.

Several Republican lawmakers, including vice presidential hopefuls, have flocked to Manhattan for the trial.

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio and former GOP primary hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy attended May 13. Sens. Rick Scott of Florida and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama also made appearances last week, alongside Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird.

House Speaker Mike Johnson delivered remarks outside the courthouse May 14, slamming the “sham trial” and accusing New York prosecutors of only wanting to keep the former president off the campaign trail.

The Louisiana Republican cast Trump as a victim of a “travesty of justice.”

Nearly a dozen far-right Republican House members showed up Thursday, led by Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida. Accompanying Gaetz were other right-wing House Freedom Caucus members: fellow Floridian Reps. Anna Paulina Luna and Mike Waltz; Eli Crane and Andy Biggs of Arizona; Lauren Boebert of Colorado; Ralph Norman of South Carolina; Diana Harshbarger and Andy Ogles of Tennessee; Mike Cloud of Texas; and caucus Chair Bob Good of Virginia.

Speaking on the sidewalk outside the courthouse, Gaetz described the charges as the “Mr. Potatohead doll of crimes,” accusing the prosecution of combining things “that did not belong together.”

Reps. Byron Donalds and Cory Mills of Florida attended earlier in the week.

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UnitedHealth CEO Andrew Witty testified before the U.S. Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday, May 1, 2024, about a cyberattack on Change Healthcare, a subsidiary. (Screenshot from committee webcast)

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

WASHINGTON — Capitol Hill lawmakers from both parties on Wednesday grilled UnitedHealth Group’s CEO over the largest-ever cyberattack on the U.S. health care industry, which has crippled payments to providers and pharmacies and left millions of patients clueless about whether their information is now on the dark web.

A Russia-linked cybercrime organization dubbed “BlackCat” infiltrated a vulnerable server in February belonging to Change Healthcare, a subsidiary of the massive Minnesota-based UnitedHealth. The hackers demanded ransom for stolen data.

UnitedHealth’s CEO Andrew Witty told the Senate Committee on Finance the decision to pay the $22 million ransom in Bitcoin “was mine (and) was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make.”

“To all those impacted, let me be very clear: I am deeply sorry,” Witty said in his opening testimony.

The company warned in its latest update in late April that a preliminary ongoing investigation revealed compromised personal health and identifiable information that “could cover a substantial proportion of people in America.”

‘Mr. Witty owes Americans an explanation’

Witty’s apology did little to stop lawmakers from demanding that he answer for basic cybersecurity missteps, significant revenue losses and delays in notifying patients whether their personal information was among data stolen by the cyber criminals.

Sen. Ron Wyden, the committee’s chair, said “failure starts at the top.”

“Mr. Witty owes Americans an explanation for how a company of UHG’s size and importance failed to have multi-factor authentication on a server providing open door access to protected health information, why its recovery plans were so woefully inadequate and how long it will take to finally secure all of its systems,” the Oregon Democrat said.

UnitedHealth Group, which ranks among the nation’s largest companies, acquired Change Healthcare in a controversial 2022 deal that added to its behemoth footprint in the American health care industry.

Change Healthcare is an information superhighway for payments, requests for insurers to authorize care and roughly a third of Americans’ medical records. It processes 14 billion “clinical, financial and operational transactions annually,” according to the company.

Witty told lawmakers that with the Change purchase came the company’s “legacy technology” that UnitedHealth has been in the process of upgrading.

Both Wyden and the committee’s ranking member, Mike Crapo of Idaho, criticized the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for not playing a larger role after the attack.

Wyden panned the agency for not conducting “a proactive cybersecurity audit in seven years.”

HHS, which has published recommended cybersecurity standards for the health care industry, did not respond to a request for comment. It released a statement and guidance about the cyberattack on March 5.

That wasn’t soon enough, Crapo said, and “the administration’s delay exacerbated an already uncertain landscape, leaving providers and patients with reasonable concerns about access to essential medical services and life-saving drugs.”

Not a ‘rosy’ picture

The cybercriminals that attacked Change Healthcare allegedly accessed a server using stolen credentials.

The server did not have multi-factor authentication — a widely used two-step log-in process — and hackers were in the system for nine days before being detected, Witty confirmed for the committee.

Wyden said the attack could have been stopped by using “cybersecurity 101.”

“I don’t believe there are any excuses for that,” Wyden said.

The company immediately contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation and disconnected Change from the rest of its network after discovering the breach, Witty said.

Cutting off the system halted billing, insurance authorizations and other activities for weeks, costing providers more than $100 million a day, according to the American Medical Association.

UnitedHealth maintains medical claims are flowing again at “near normal” levels, and payment processing has reached 86% of pre-incident levels “and is increasing as additional functionality is restored,” according to Witty’s submitted written testimony.

Witty told lawmakers that as of Friday the company had issued $6.5 billion in payments and no-interest loans to medical providers.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn said her office has been inundated with calls about the Change attack. The reality patients and providers are describing “is wildly different from the rosy picture that you have painted,” she said.

The Tennessee Republican said she’s hearing from hospitals and doctors who are facing weeks of backlogged claims and payments.

“Here’s a good ‘for instance’ for you: a small, independent, private hospital in West Tennessee. They have diligently submitted all of their claims, and they are burdened with a backlog of Medicare claims that is equivalent to 30 days revenue, and they’re waiting for these things to be transmitted to Medicare,” Blackburn said.

“This is all because of the missteps you all have had.”

Sen. James Lankford, an Oklahoma Republican, asked Witty for a “target time when everyone will be made completely whole.”

“I would hope that that’s in the next month or six weeks,” Witty said.

Patient data 

Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina held up the book “Hacking for Dummies,” which he said he’s used as a resource on various Senate committees, and told Witty “this is basic stuff.”

“Your entire enterprise is based on the movement and exchange of data,” Tillis, a Republican, said during his questioning. “That’s how you create value. … When you have a breach, it’s gotta be your problem, not my problem. So everything that you do to keep those folks whole for any damage in the brief is just a function of doing business. Do you agree with that?”

“I do sir,” Witty responded. “And we’ve (leaned) in to take full responsibility on notification, and we are waiting for that notification. We’ve already stood up credit protection, identity theft protection, and they can reach us through a 1-800 number and through our cyber support.”

The company has provided a call center at 1-866-262-5342 and a website changecybersupport.com.

Witty told Nevada Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto that the timeline for notifying providers and patients whether their data has been breached — as required by federal and state law — will take “several weeks.”

“You’ve been saying several more weeks since what, this attack was how long ago, 69 days ago?” asked Cortez-Masto.

“Yes, and thank you for the question. We only were able to start this process about a month after the attack when we got the dataset back and were able to start to interrogate it, a very complex process,” Witty replied.

Protesters briefly stood after the hearing adjourned and chanted “Andrew Witty, you can’t hide. We can see your greedy side.”

Witty also testified before the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce Wednesday.

The Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment on the investigation into the attack.

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Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. Nevada was one of a dozen states participating in the first year of the IRS Direct File program. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Internal Revenue Service saw a successful tax filing season, providing high levels of customer service, enforcing collection from the wealthy and launching a free filing option for taxpayers, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told tax writers on Capitol Hill Tuesday.

The agency “met or exceeded” goals for the filing season and “successfully” piloted IRS Direct File — the first time the government has provided a free public option for eligible taxpayers to file federal returns directly to the IRS, Yellen said.

“The modernization of the Internal Revenue Service, made possible by the (Inflation Reduction Act) and discretionary appropriations, has enabled us to combat tax evasion by the wealthiest Americans that costs our country over $150 billion a year. And it’s made it easier for taxpayers to file their taxes and get the credits they’re owed,” Yellen told the House Committee on Ways and Means.

Just over 140,800 taxpayers in a dozen states filed returns that were successfully accepted via the IRS Direct File pilot program, according to the agency. The completed returns were just a fraction of the 19 million taxpayers whose tax situations qualified them for the program.

The agency launched IRS Direct File, which was open to earners with simple W-2 income and limited deductions and credits, in early March and closed it April 21.

Roughly 3.3 million people checked their eligibility for the program, and 423,450 actually logged in, according to the agency.

The states leading in returns filed included California with 33,328, Texas with 29,099, Florida with 20,840, New York with 14,144 and Washington with 13,954. Exact figures for other states in the pilot program were not provided by the IRS, but they included Arizona, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee and Wyoming.

The agency’s survey of more than 11,000 Direct File users found that 90% of respondents ranked the experience on both the platform and with customer service as “excellent” or “above average.”

The IRS has not yet announced whether it will continue or expand the pilot program next year.

IRS Direct File faced fierce opposition from Republicans who warned the program would steal business from the tax preparation industry.

Chief also among the critics were state officials who said that states could lose revenue because taxpayers would be confused about also filing state returns — something they’re automatically prompted to do with a tax preparer or commercial tax prep software.

But supporters of free public tax filing are pointing to a “seamless” experience for Direct File users in Arizona and New York, who were able to import data from their federal to state return and file both for free.

The nonprofit Code for America built FileYourStateTaxes, a separate tool that integrated the processes.

Upon finishing their federal return with IRS Direct File, taxpayers in Arizona and New York — two of the pilot program states — were led straight to FileYourStateTaxes, where they could create an account and transfer the data onto their state return with one click, according to the nonprofit.

“Folks who have raised the question of ‘How will state filing work in Direct File?’ — it was a valid question to be raising. I think we’ve shown here that there’s a really good answer,” said Gabriel Zucker, the nonprofit’s interim director for tax policy and partnerships.

Code for America reported follow-up survey results Tuesday that showed 96% of the tool’s users were “very satisfied” or “satisfied,” while 95% found the data transfer “seamless and quick.”

The nonprofit reported that 90% of people in Arizona and New York who used IRS Direct File went on to use FileYourStateTaxes, and 98% of those returns were accepted.

Code for America did not provide the exact number of filers in either state.

Several states included in the IRS Direct File pilot do not collect state income taxes.

Other state governments already offer free public electronic filing for state income tax returns, including California and Massachusetts.

Fight over Trump tax breaks

Yellen’s testimony before U.S. House tax writers occurred against the backdrop of a looming tax fight in Congress as a Trump-era tax law nears its expiration at the end of 2025.

President Joe Biden told the North America’s Building Trades Unions last week that the 2017 law will be “expired and dead forever if I’m reelected.”

Biden and former President Donald Trump are debating their dueling tax policies as the 2024 presidential election nears.

Trump continues to vow he would raise tariffs, to more than 10%, on imports from China and Mexico. Economists have warned the increase will amount to a tax on American consumers, but Trump denies that charge.

Biden has repeatedly promised to not raise taxes on anyone making less than $400,000, to expand the child tax credit and to institute a minimum tax for billionaires.

Biden and Democrats authorized an additional $80 billion to modernize the IRS in 2022’s so-called Inflation Reduction Act, including $15 million earmarked for the agency to explore creating Direct File.

Defunding the IRS became a rallying cry for Republicans after the funding was approved.

The GOP clawed back $20 billion of the funding in a budget deal with Democrats less than two years later.

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Dozens of anti-Trump protesters gathered outside the U.S. Supreme Court on April 25, 2024, while the justices heard arguments about whether former President Donald Trump has immunity from prosecution on criminal charges related to his actions while in office. (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court appeared skeptical Thursday of former President Donald Trump’s argument he is immune from criminal charges that he tried to overturn his loss in the 2020 election.

But conservatives who dominate the court appeared open to returning key questions to a trial court, possibly delaying Trump’s prosecution beyond the November election — and essentially assisting the former president as he fights legal challenges on multiple fronts.

Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, has argued in a federal trial court and in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia that his actions following the 2020 election and leading up to the violent Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, were “official acts” conducted while still in office and therefore are not subject to criminal prosecution.

While court precedent establishes that U.S. presidents are immune to civil damages for their official acts, and to criminal prosecution while in office, the justices now must decide the unanswered question of whether former presidents are absolutely immune from criminal law.

At oral arguments Thursday in Trump v. United States, much of the discussion centered on what should be considered an official presidential act.

Several conservative justices suggested that lower courts work to determine what aspects of the charges against Trump arose solely from his private conduct.

Such a detour could eat up additional weeks or months as the trial calendar converges with Election Day.

A decision from the court may not arrive until late June or early July. If a ruling calls for additional fact-finding at the trial court level, Trump’s election interference trial likely would not happen prior to the November election.

Trump’s lawyer, D. John Sauer, of St. Louis, argued that nearly everything a president does in office — including hypotheticals about ordering a military coup or assassinating a political rival — could be considered official acts.

While much of the court appeared skeptical of that broad view of official acts, several justices on the conservative wing asked about having the trial court determine what acts should be considered official. They also suggested prosecutors could drop sections of the four-count indictment against Trump that dealt with official acts.

The court’s three liberal justices voiced serious concerns about Trump’s immunity argument, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wondering aloud if the court accepting a broad view of criminal immunity for the president would make the Oval Office “the seat of criminal activity.”

The case is one of four in state and federal courts in which criminal charges have been made against Trump. On Thursday, he was in a New York state courtroom where he faces charges in an ongoing hush-money trial; the judge there did not allow him to attend the Supreme Court arguments.

Conservative justices asked if they could avoid the constitutional question by having the trial court, presided over by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, determine which parts of the allegations could be considered official or unofficial acts.

Special counsel Jack Smith and his team of prosecutors have indicated that prosecuting only Trump’s private conduct would be sufficient, Justice Amy Coney Barrett said.

“The normal process, what Mr. Sauer asked, would be for us to remand if we decided that there were some official acts immunity, and to let that be sorted out below,” Barrett said, referring to a process in which a case is sent back to a lower court. “It is another option for the special counsel to just proceed based on the private conduct and drop the official conduct.”

‘Absolute immunity’

Sauer argued, as he has for months, for “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution for presidents acting in their official capacity.

No president who has not been impeached and removed from office can be prosecuted for official actions, Sauer said, broadly interpreting the meaning of official acts.

Liberal justices questioned Sauer about how far his definition of official acts would stretch. Trump’s attorney was reluctant to list any exceptions.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked a hypothetical that arose in a lower court: Would it be an official act for the president to order the assassination of a political rival?

“That could well be an official act,” Sauer answered.

He also answered Justice Elena Kagan that it could be an official act for a president to order a military coup, though Sauer said “it would depend on the circumstances.”

Michael R. Dreeben, representing the U.S. Department of Justice, argued that Trump’s broad view of presidential immunity would break a fundamental element of U.S. democracy, that no one is above the law.

“His novel theory would immunize former presidents for criminal liability for bribery, treason, sedition, murder, and here, conspiring to use fraud to overturn the results of an election and perpetuate himself in power,” Dreeben said.

Jackson, questioning Sauer, appeared to agree with that argument.

She said Sauer appeared worried that the president would be “chilled” by potential criminal prosecution, but she said there would be “a really significant opposite problem if the president wasn’t chilled.”

“Once we say, ‘No criminal liability, Mr. President, you can do whatever you want,’ I’m worried that we would have a worse problem than the problem of the president feeling constrained to follow the law while he’s in office,” Jackson said.

‘A special, peculiarly precarious position’

But other members of the court appeared more amenable to Sauer’s argument that subjecting presidents to criminal prosecution would constrain them.

Justice Samuel Alito, one of the court’s conservatives, asked Dreeben about Trump’s argument that a president’s duties require a broad view of immunity.

The president has to make difficult decisions, sometimes in areas of law that are unsettled, Alito said.

“I understand you to say, ‘If he makes a mistake, he makes a mistake, he’s subject to the criminal laws just like anybody else,’” Alito said. “You don’t think he’s in a special, peculiarly precarious position?”

Dreeben answered that the president has access to highly qualified legal advice and that making a mistake is not what generally leads to criminal prosecution.

He also noted that the allegations against Trump involve him going beyond his powers as president to interfere with the certification of an election, which is not a presidential power in the Constitution.

Incumbents leaving office

Alito, who seemed to be the justice most sympathetic to Trump’s argument that allowing a president to be prosecuted would undermine the powers of the office, also raised the prospect that incumbents who lose elections may seek to illegally stay in power precisely because prosecution would await after they leave office.

“A stable democratic society requires that a candidate who loses an election, even a close one, even a hotly contested one, leave office peacefully,” he said.

“If an incumbent who loses a very close, hotly contested election, knows that a real possibility after leaving office is … the president may be criminally prosecuted by a bitter political opponent, will that not lead us into a cycle that destabilizes the functioning of our country as a democracy?”

Dreeben answered that “it’s exactly the opposite,” because there are well-established lawful options, including court challenges, available to challenge election results.

Trump posted several times Thursday morning on his social media platform Truth Social that the president would “have no power at all” without absolute immunity.

“That would be the end of the Presidency, and our Country, as we know it, and is just one of the many Traps there would be for a President without Presidential Immunity. Obama, Bush, and soon, Crooked Joe Biden, would all be in BIG TROUBLE,” he wrote.

‘Writing a rule for the ages’

Some justices indicated they will be thinking beyond the question as it relates to Trump’s election interference charges, possibly hinting at a drawn-out process in issuing an opinion.

Criminally prosecuting a former president could open the door to prosecution based on motives, including the motive to get reelected or for other personal gain, conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch suggested.

“I’m not concerned about this case, but I am concerned about future uses of the criminal law to target political opponents based on accusations about their motives,” Gorsuch said in a lengthy back-and-forth with Dreeben.

“I’m going to say something that I don’t normally say, which is: That’s really not involved in this case,” Dreeben said, eliciting a laugh from Gorsuch.

“I understand that. I appreciate that. But you also appreciate that we’re writing a rule for the ages,” Gorsuch responded.

At another point, Dreeben tried to redirect the justices to specific details of the Trump case, including his point that the judicial system has safeguards against purely politically motivated and retaliatory legal action.

Dreeben attempted to detail for Alito that the Justice Department functioned “in the way that it is supposed to” when Trump’s alleged plan to ask officials to send fraudulent letters to states regarding election results failed.

Alito pushed back, saying he wanted to discuss the case “in the abstract.”

“I understand that Mr. Dreeben. But as I said, this case will have effects that go far beyond this particular prosecution,” Alito said.

Alan Morrison, a law professor at George Washington University who has argued 20 cases before the Supreme Court, said in a phone interview after oral arguments that the court will not reach “a fast decision” as the justices wrestle with the extent of what is considered a president’s official acts.

“Neither side is going to get everything they want,” Morrison said. “And the hardest questions to answer are going to be what are official and what are not official acts.”

‘Reacting against a monarch’

Sticking to the specifics of the indictment against Trump, Kagan ran through a list of the allegations and asked Sauer to discern what constituted an official act.

“The defendant asked the Arizona House Speaker to call the legislature into session to hold a hearing based on their claims of election fraud,” Kagan said, citing the indictment.

“Absolutely an official act for the president to communicate with state officials on a matter of enormous federal interest and concern,” Sauer answered, “attempting to defend the integrity of a federal election to communicate with state officials and urge them to view what he views as their job under state law and federal law.”

Kagan moved to hypotheticals and asked if a president who ordered a military coup, but was never impeached and convicted by Congress, could not be held to U.S. criminal law.

“He was the president. He is the commander in chief. He talks to his generals all the time, and he told the generals, ‘I don’t feel like leaving office. I want to stage a coup.’ Is that immune?”

“If it’s an official act, there needs to be impeachment and conviction beforehand,” Sauer said, citing the defense’s reliance on the Constitution’s Impeachment Clause argument.

“That is the wisdom of the (Constitution’s) framers,” he added.

“The framers did not put an immunity clause into the Constitution,” she quickly responded. “… They didn’t provide immunity to the president, and you know, not so surprising. They were reacting against a monarch who claimed to be above the law.”

“Wasn’t the whole point that the president was not a monarch and the president was not supposed to be above the law?” she said.

Federal election interference charges

A federal grand jury charged Trump with four felony counts in August 2023 for working with several co-conspirators to overturn election results in seven states.

The indictment charged the former president with conspiracy to defraud the United States and obstruction of an official proceeding, among other charges.

Trump allegedly worked with several others to replace legitimate electors with fraudulent ones in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, according to the indictment.

The prosecution also alleges that he tried to leverage the Justice Department to pressure the states to replace their slates of electors, and pressure Vice President Mike Pence into altering results during Congress’s joint session to certify the results on Jan. 6, 2021.

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The justices must consider whether Trump can be tried on criminal charges, and depending on the timing of their decision, whether a trial on charges of trying to overturn the 2020 election results can move forward before the 2024 presidential election. (Photo: Hugh Jackson/Nevada Current)

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Thursday over former President Donald Trump’s pursuit of absolute immunity from criminal charges alleging that he schemed and knowingly fed lies to subvert the 2020 presidential election, eventually leading to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

In the final argument of this term, the justices must consider whether Trump can be tried on criminal charges, and depending on the timing of their decision, whether a trial can move forward before November’s presidential election.

The former president and presumed 2024 Republican presidential nominee is seeking immunity from charges that include conspiracy to defraud the United States for spreading “prolific lies about election fraud,” working with co-conspirators to develop fake electors in seven states and pressuring his vice president, Mike Pence, to alter election results using the slates of fake electors.

Oral arguments are at 10 a.m. Eastern in the Supreme Court chamber Thursday, and audio will be live-streamed on the Supreme Court website. Audio and a transcript also will be available later on the site.

Here’s a guide to the complicated path from Trump’s false election fraud claims that inflamed his supporters to his immunity claim reaching the nation’s highest court this week:

When was Trump charged?

A federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., indicted Trump on Aug. 1, 2023.

The 45-page indictment outlined four felony criminal charges against the former president as a result of an investigation of his actions following the November 2020 presidential election. In addition to conspiracy to defraud the U.S., they include:

• Conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding
• Obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding
• Conspiracy against rights

Trump’s “pervasive and destabilizing lies” about his 2020 presidential election loss to Democrat Joe Biden “targeted a bedrock function of the United States federal government: the nation’s process of collecting, counting and certifying the results of a presidential election,” prosecutors wrote.

The indictment details Trump’s alleged schemes with co-conspirators to falsify election results in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

The indictment also describes a steady pressure campaign to “enlist” Pence to alter the outcome during his ceremonial role in certifying presidential election results during a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, prior to Inauguration Day.

Among the multiple phone calls and conversations detailed in the indictment is Trump’s outreach to Pence on both Christmas and New Year’s Day to send holiday greetings, during which he “berated” the vice president as “too honest” for refusing to join the scheme.

Why hasn’t the case gone to trial?

Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith said upon the indictment’s release that he would seek a speedy trial in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

The case began to move, and Trump pleaded not guilty on Aug. 3, 2023 at his arraignment before Magistrate Judge Moxila A. Upadhyaya.

District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who waived Trump’s appearance at the first hearing on Aug. 28, 2023, set jury selection to begin on March 4 despite protests from Trump’s lawyers who asked to delay the trial until January 2026.

However, March has come and gone, and proceedings have been on hold as Trump and his legal team steadily marched his immunity challenge to the high court and hopscotched between the several other criminal and civil cases against him.

Trump, who is currently on trial for criminal charges in New York, will not attend Thursday’s Supreme Court arguments. The state judge has mandated Trump to be in the Manhattan courtroom every day throughout the proceedings.

Trump’s motion to dismiss his federal election interference case, which he filed in October 2023 and based on the argument of presidential immunity, was denied by Chutkan in early December.

Trump appealed the ruling on Dec. 7, 2023, and Smith quickly asked the Supreme Court justices to leapfrog the appellate court and promptly rule on the question of presidential immunity. The justices denied Smith’s request.

On Jan. 9, a three-judge panel — made up of one former President George W. Bush appointee and two Biden picks — grilled Trump’s lawyer over claims that former and sitting presidents should be immune from criminal prosecution.

The oral arguments notably featured a line of questioning from Judge Florence Y. Pan on whether a president could order SEAL Team Six to assassinate a political rival with impunity.

In early February, the federal appeals court turned down Trump’s immunity argument.

The former president then asked the Supreme Court to pause his federal trial while he requested a hearing before a full panel of appeals judges.

But the justices decided on Feb. 28 that they would be the final arbiters and scheduled arguments for the last week of the term.

Trump’s federal trial would meanwhile remain on hold.

What do the critics say about the delay?

Critics contend that Trump’s quest for immunity has been an exercise in delaying his trial until after the November 2024 presidential election.

“It’s much more about that than this underlying immunity claim,” said Tom Joscelyn, senior fellow at the Reiss Center on Law and Security at New York University and former senior staff member on the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“Now, we’ve had to delay the federal trial for a couple of months because they’re taking up this claim,” Joscelyn told States Newsroom, as he lambasted the legal community for “having these navel-gazing arguments for hours on end over stuff that is obviously nonsense.”

“There’s no way a president, current or former president, can be immune from charges that stem from that president seeking to overturn the will of the American people in a democratically held election, and that’s what these charges are all about,” said Joscelyn, one of the principal authors of the select committee’s Jan. 6 report. “Nothing is more unconstitutional.”

Former Rep. Liz Cheney, who was vice chair of the Jan. 6 select committee, published an op-ed in the New York Times Monday urging the justices to swiftly rule on the immunity question.

“If delay prevents this Trump case from being tried this year, the public may never hear critical and historic evidence developed before the grand jury, and our system may never hold the man most responsible for Jan. 6 to account,” the Wyoming Republican wrote.

What arguments will Supreme Court justices hear?

Trump and supporters of the presidential immunity argument paint a doomsday picture of a hamstrung executive office should the justices decide that a president can be held criminally accountable.

The former president maintains that the framers of the U.S. Constitution intended a strong executive to face virtually no liability from the judicial branch, and that a “234-year unbroken tradition” of not prosecuting presidents bolsters his case.

“The President cannot function, and the Presidency itself cannot retain its vital independence, if the President faces criminal prosecution for official acts once he leaves office,” Trump’s attorneys wrote in March.

They wrote later in the brief: “Even if some level of Presidential malfeasance, not present in this case at all, were to escape punishment, that risk is inherent in the Constitution’s design.”

Trump’s lawyers argue that the only exception that makes a president vulnerable to criminal prosecution is if he or she is first impeached and convicted.

The former president was impeached by the U.S. House twice — the second time for inciting an insurrection on Jan. 6. He was acquitted by the U.S. Senate on both occasions.

In his response, special counsel Smith characterized Trump’s arguments as “radical” and akin to the monarchy rule that the U.S. broke away from at its birth.

“If petitioner were correct that the former President has permanent immunity from federal criminal prosecution except after his impeachment and Senate conviction — which has never happened — it would upset the separation of powers and usher in a regime that would have been anathema to the Framers,” Smith wrote.

Impeachment, Smith wrote, is a “political remedy” and “not intended to provide accountability under the ordinary course of the law.”

History also illustrates that presidents have presumed they must follow the law, the special counsel argued.

Following the Watergate scandal, former President Richard Nixon’s “acceptance of a pardon implied his and President Ford’s recognition that a former President was subject to prosecution,” Smith wrote.

Who is weighing in on the case?

The case has attracted nearly 50 friend-of-the-court filings, otherwise known as amici briefs.

Like supporters of the immunity argument, opponents similarly envision a bleak future for the presidency, and the nation, if the ruling doesn’t go their way.

Twenty-six former U.S. Department of Justice attorneys, lawmakers and others, who were either elected Republicans or served during GOP administrations, warned of “terrifying possibilities” that would endanger the nation’s hallmark peaceful transfers of power.

“Under former President Trump’s view of absolute immunity, future first-term Presidents would be encouraged to violate federal criminal statutes by employing the military and armed federal agents to remain in power,” they wrote.

Several retired four-star generals also argued that absolute immunity for a commander-in-chief would result in “​​irreparably harming the trust fundamental to civil-military relations” if he or she ordered generals to direct troops unlawfully.

“Immunizing the Commander-in-Chief from criminal prosecution, as Petitioner argues for here, would fly in the face of that duty, creating the likelihood that service members will be placed in the impossible position of having to choose between following their Commander-in-Chief and obeying the laws enacted by Congress,” the generals wrote.

Filings in support of the former president insist the criminal charges against Trump are “partisan” and warn of opening the proverbial “floodgates” of politically motivated cases against presidents if immunity is not granted.

Several state attorneys general accused the Department of Justice of timing the case with Trump’s 2024 presidential run.

The “lengthy delay in bringing charges … followed by an unexplained rush to take him to trial, gives credence to the concern that factional interests can drive criminal investigations and prosecutions of the President for his official acts,” Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall wrote in a brief co-signed by 17 other Republican attorneys general.

U.S. Sen. Steve Daines, a Montana Republican and chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, contends that the Constitution already dictates a process of accountability for the president through impeachment.

The fact that the Senate acquitted Trump over his actions surrounding Jan. 6, 2021, “should have ended the matter,” Daines and the NRSC wrote.

“Not every impeachment inquiry will result in the punishment that a President’s political opponents believe he deserves, but that is not a reason for prosecutors and the courts to go hunting for an alternative.”

After voting to acquit Trump in the impeachment trial accusing Trump of inciting insurrection in 2021, Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell explained his decision by saying impeachment was neither appropriate nor constitutional because by the time the House delivered the impeachment for trial in the Senate, Trump was no longer president.

“We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one,” McConnell added at the time.

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Donald Trump speaks to the media as he arrives with his attorney Todd Blanche, right, in court for opening statements in his trial for allegedly covering up hush money payments at Manhattan Criminal Court on April 22, 2024, in New York City. Trump faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first of his criminal cases to go to trial. (Photo by Yuki Iwamura-Pool/Getty Images)

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

WASHINGTON — Oral arguments in former President Donald Trump’s historic case in New York began Monday in a Manhattan courtroom where jurors will be tasked with deciding whether deceptive hush money payments to hide an affair amount to a criminal conviction.

The first-ever criminal trial of an ex-U.S. president centers on Trump’s alleged falsified business records to cover up a $130,000 payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels, with whom he denies he had a sexual relationship.

Assistant District Attorney Matthew Colangelo told jurors Monday that Trump’s payments to Daniels in 2016, which he reimbursed to his former lawyer Michael Cohen as legal expenses, were meant to “influence the presidential election,” according to reporters at the courthouse.

“This case is about a criminal conspiracy and fraud. The defendant, Donald Trump, orchestrated a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election, then he covered up that conspiracy by lying in his New York business records over, and over, and over again,” Colangelo argued, according to journalists present.

The New York court does not permit audio or video recording but will provide daily transcripts on its website.

Defense attorney Todd Blanche argued for Trump, whom he said will be referred to as “President Trump” throughout the trial “out of respect” and because he “earned” the title.

Blanche told the jurors “President Trump is innocent. President Trump did not commit any crimes. The Manhattan district attorney should never have brought this case.”

Claiming that Trump was unaware of the nuances of the payments, Blanche argued, “You’ll learn that President Trump had nothing to do with any of the 34 pieces of paper … except he signed the checks.”

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg charged Trump with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first degree for each reimbursement payment to Cohen.

Blanche also told the jurors to dismiss the prosecution’s election interference theory: “I have a spoiler alert: there’s nothing wrong with trying to influence an election, it’s called democracy,” he said, according to reporters in the courthouse.

Trump raised his fist and did not take questions as he left the courtroom for a brief recess after opening statements, according to reporters.

The prosecution called David Pecker, former chairman of the tabloid National Enquirer’s parent company, as its first witness Monday. Pecker was involved in the scheme with Cohen to identify and purchase, nicknamed “catch and kill,” damaging stories about Trump ahead of the 2016 election.

The prosecution is also expected to call Cohen, who has already served prison time in relation to the payments, and Hope Hicks, a former Trump campaign press secretary.

The trial could last for longer than a month, possibly two, keeping the presumed 2024 Republican presidential nominee off the campaign trail four days a week.

The New York proceeding also overlaps with Trump’s immunity arguments scheduled for Thursday before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The former president claims he enjoys absolute criminal immunity for his actions while in office, including immunity from special counsel Jack Smith’s charges that he allegedly schemed to subvert the 2020 presidential election results, culminating in a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

New York Judge Juan Merchan denied Trump’s request to attend the Supreme Court arguments, saying he must be present at his Manhattan trial, according to media reports.

In early morning posts to his social media platform Truth Social, Trump blamed President Joe Biden — despite the case being at the state level — and repeated his refrain that the trial is politically motivated. He wrote, partially in all caps, that he will now be “STUCK in a courtroom, and not be allowed to campaign for President of the United States!”

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U.S. Sen. Ted Budd of North Carolina told reporters Thursday, March 21, 2024, that he planned to try to add the House-passed Laken Riley Act to the spending package before Congress this week. Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student in Georgia, was allegedly killed by an immigrant who was in the country illegally and had been cited for shoplifting. The bill has become a lightning rod for Republicans as immigration remains a focal point in the 2024 election cycle. (Screenshot of Senate Republican press conference.)

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Republicans want to tie an immigration bill named for a slain Georgia nursing student to a massive spending package lawmakers must pass by Friday night to avoid a partial shutdown.

Senate Republicans, led by Ted Budd of North Carolina, told reporters Thursday they’re proposing to attach the House-passed Laken Riley Act as an amendment to the $1.2 trillion spending bill slated to fund crucial federal government functions, including the Department of Homeland Security.

The legislation is named for 22-year-old Augusta University nursing student Laken Riley who was killed Feb. 22 on a running trail on the University of Georgia campus. Police arrested a 26-year-old Venezuelan man, Jose Ibarra, for her murder.

Ibarra entered the U.S. unlawfully in 2022, according to U.S. immigration authorities, and had been previously arrested in Georgia on a shoplifting charge and in New York for driving a scooter while unlicensed and with a child who was not wearing a helmet, according to news reports.

Budd, with several GOP senators at his side Thursday, blamed the Biden administration for a “complete lack of enforcement” at the border that results in situations like the accused Ibarra not being detained on the federal or local levels.

“We simply don’t believe that another American family needs to experience a tragedy like the one that befell the Riley family. And that’s why we need to pass this Laken Riley Act today,” Budd said.

When asked by reporters if he thought the spending package would be an appropriate vehicle for adding the immigration measure, Budd said he believes the amendment meets the “germane” standard needed to add a measure to an appropriations bill.

“If you look at the content of it, we would hope all of them would support it, but if you look at the reality, that’s not our expectation,” he said.

Campaign issue

The tragic killing has become a lightning rod for Republican lawmakers as 2024 GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump campaigns on immigration.

Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia wore a t-shirt bearing Riley’s name at the State of the Union address and tried to hand President Joe Biden a pin with her name as he entered the House chamber.

Ongoing tensions over U.S. immigration policy grew particularly fierce in early February when months-long bipartisan Senate negotiations for tightened immigration laws in exchange for Ukraine aid went bust after Trump urged congressional Republicans to oppose it.

In a 251-170 vote on March 7, House lawmakers approved the bill named for Riley, which would require Homeland Security officials to detain immigrants charged with local theft, burglary or shoplifting.

The bill would also authorize state attorneys general to bring civil lawsuits against the federal government on behalf of residents harmed by a “failure” of federal officials to enforce immigration laws.

Thirty-seven House Democrats joined Republicans in passing the legislation, including all three House Democrats from Nevada, Susie Lee, Steven Horsford, and Dina Titus.

The messaging bill was never expected to gain traction in the Senate, where Democrats hold a slim majority.

Budd and Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama asked on March 14 for unanimous consent that the legislation be brought to the Senate floor.

But Majority Whip Dick Durbin objected, while acknowledging that Riley’s death was “a horrible crime and a heartbreaking loss.”

However, Durbin said, the “sweeping approach” proposed in the bill would eliminate the discretion of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, “to prioritize the most dangerous individuals and require ICE to treat those arrested for shoplifting the same as those convicted of violent crimes. Let me repeat that — require ICE to treat those arrested for shoplifting the same as those convicted of violent crimes.”

“This would overwhelm ICE’s capacity and facilities and make our nation less, not more, safe,” Durbin said on the floor.

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A tax package that includes an expanded child tax credit passed the U.S. House on a broad bipartisan vote, but is stuck in the Senate over objections to what is known as a “look-back” provision intended to boost low-income families. (Photo illustration by Getty Images)

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

WASHINGTON — One of the cheapest provisions aimed at helping low-income families has become a main sticking point for Republican senators as they negotiate a bipartisan tax package that attracted broad support in the U.S. House.

The reason for the opposition is that a taxpayer could earn no income for a year and still qualify for an expanded child tax credit. Republicans argue that the provision will encourage parents to drop out of the workforce and push the child tax credit toward a “de facto welfare program,” as GOP Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina wrote in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed.

Supporters of the provision say such gaming of the tax code is highly unlikely, and the intent is to help families whose income dives in one year but rises in another.

The contested part of the legislation — that lawmakers and tax policy wonks call a “look-back” provision — would allow households to claim their previous year’s annual income on their tax return if it was higher than their current year’s earnings.

The idea, proponents say, is to give families a chance to maximize the child tax credit even if a job loss, illness or caregiving duties interrupted their ability to work during the most recent year.

As the legislation is written now, families would only have that option on their 2024 and 2025 tax returns. The temporary look-back to the previous year would cost the government just over $1.5 billion, according to the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation.

In the roughly $78 billion tax package, the look-back provision’s price tag is dwarfed by the bill’s other proposals to temporarily expand the worth of the child tax credit and revive business tax credits.

And a selling point that sponsors tout is that the bill will be paid for by ending a fraud-ridden pandemic-era employment tax credit.

Though Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Danny Werfel told lawmakers the agency could handle changes for the 2023 filing season, some are worried the window of opportunity will close before the Senate acts.

Objections from Crapo

Despite being just a fraction of the package, the look-back provision has become a primary talking point for Senate Republicans, who argue the measure could keep those who claim the child tax credit at home instead of in the workforce.

Sen. Mike Crapo, lead negotiator for Senate Republicans, said in his most recent statement on the bill that he remains concerned the child tax credit proposals “undermine the work requirement and represent a significant shift — described by some Democrats as a down payment — to transform the CTC from primarily working family tax relief into a government subsidy.”

“Allowing individuals to receive a refundable credit when they have zero annual earnings — as the prior year’s earnings provision allows — is a departure from longstanding policy tying the CTC to work,” the Idaho Republican and ranking member of the Senate Committee on Finance said on Feb. 28.

“I understand this provision may have been dropped for 2023 in an effort to gain my support, but it does not change the fact that I objected to its inclusion for 2024 and 2025. I did not agree to its inclusion then, and I do not support it now.”

Crapo is not saying much during ongoing negotiations, but “he is still working toward a bipartisan solution that a majority of Republicans in the Senate can support,” Crapo’s communications director Mandi Critchfield said in an email March 13.

Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, one of the most senior Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee, told reporters in mid-March that though he’s not at the negotiating table, he’s “following Crapo’s lead.”

“I don’t think we should have a federal policy discouraging people from working,” Grassley said.

Sen. Todd Young of Indiana, who also sits on the Senate Finance Committee, told States Newsroom he’s not against the look-back provision but will follow Republican committee leadership.

“I’ve been clear about (the look-back provision). Now, I support Senator Crapo in his negotiations because I think making some concessions for Republicans’ concerns will be necessary to get 60 votes,” Young said. The legislation would need 60 votes to advance in the Senate.

Think tank analysis

The American Enterprise Institute’s Center on Opportunity and Social Mobility reflected Republican concerns in January when a team at the right-leaning think tank published a paper warning that the look-back provision “would have important impacts on the labor market that require further study before being considered for passage by Congress.”

According to the AEI’s analysis, “for the vast majority of families who work regularly, this reform would — every other year — eliminate the Child Tax Credit’s work incentive and lead over 700,000 parents to stop working.”

On the other hand, the every-other-year model would also spark some workforce participation, the authors found in their analysis that assumed parents would perceive the change as permanent and continuing beyond 2025.

“For the minority of families who do not work in any given two-year period, the Child Tax Credit’s work incentive would be doubled every other year and lead 395,000 parents to start working,” wrote researchers Kevin Corinth, Angela Rachidi, Matt Weidinger, and Scott Winship.

The paper’s purpose was to “shine a light on the potential costs of some of these programs in the form of these behavioral changes that will impede upward mobility,” Winship, the Center on Opportunity and Social Mobility’s director, told States Newsroom in January.

Winship was not available for comments in March.

Encouragement to work

AEI also acknowledges other provisions of the proposed child tax credit expansion would encourage parents to work.

For example, the tax legislation would increase work incentives by phasing in the child tax credit at 15% on the dollar per child on any earnings above $2,500, wrote AEI’s senior fellow Kyle Pomerleau.

In other words, the tax credit would phase in at 30% on earnings above the threshold for a family that has two kids.

Under current law, the credit phases in at a fixed 15%, no matter how many children a family has.

But in a Feb. 27 post, as the bill remained stalled in the Senate, AEI’s Center on Opportunity and Social Mobility recommended that senators altogether drop from the bill the look-back provision as well as the accelerated 15% per-child phase-in, citing concerns over the growing national debt and that the provisions “discourage work and marriage.”

Andrew Lautz, senior economic policy analyst for the Bipartisan Policy Center, which aims to reflect policies from both political parties, said his organization doesn’t believe that the look-back provision “either on a standalone basis or in combination with the other child tax credit changes that are being proposed, will have a significant impact on work one way or the other.”

“I think you have to have a pretty sophisticated understanding of child tax credit rules to be able to game the system like some lawmakers fear,” Lautz said.

“These kinds of double-edged sword provisions in the proposed child tax credit expansion lead us to believe that on work incentives it will effectively be a wash.”

The Joint Committee on Taxation’s macroeconomic analysis of the tax bill found that the proposed child tax credit expansion, on net, increases labor supply, but any change is “too small to be significant.”

AEI, meanwhile, says it wants to sound the alarm on the longer-term outlook.

The think tank’s late February post conveyed the conservatives’ fear — echoing Crapo’s “down payment” language — that the provisions would not be temporary, but rather become extended when Congress begins to negotiate new tax policies as the Trump-era tax law sunsets in 2025.

“The outcome of the current legislative fight, then, will shape the compromises to come in 2025, for good and ill. Conservatives, now and then, should resist trading corporate tax breaks for liberals’ preferred down payment on a child allowance without a work requirement,” the team wrote.

‘We’re all working’

Lana Gonzales, a single mother in Boise, Idaho, said she doesn’t have the “luxury of holding out” for expansion of the child tax credit while Congress battles.

“We’re all working. I’m working. You want to come see how much I’m working? Like, don’t worry about that. We’re all working our tails off to make ends meet,” said Gonzales, a program director for a nonprofit that helps people with disabilities find jobs and other resources.

Gonzales takes care of her 14-year-old son with special needs. Her two other children, who recently turned 18, still live at home.

When Congress temporarily expanded the child tax credit in 2021 in response to the pandemic, Gonzales says the increase allowed her to build a cushion in case of emergency.

“Being poor is expensive, and I don’t think that the senator has any clue what that looks like,” Gonzales said, referring to Crapo.

Under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, the child tax credit was made available to parents with no annual income, increased to $3,000 per child, and $3,600 for each kid under age 6, and was distributed to parents in monthly installments.

Under current law, the tax credit is $2,000 per child, but most low-income households will only reach $1,600 as a refundable portion — meaning the amount parents can receive in a refund check.

The current tax credit begins to accrue at 15% once a household earns more than $2,500. Money accumulated beyond what the household owes in federal taxes will be available as a refund.

The tax bill senators are currently mulling over would incrementally increase the refundable portion to $1,800 for 2023, $1,900 in 2024 and $2,000 in 2025.

Crapo has also expressed concern about increasing the increasing government cost of refunds after the credits offset tax liabilities.

“More than 90 percent of the bill’s CTC benefits accrue to taxpayers who will not owe a single dollar of federal income tax,” he said in his Feb. 28 statement.

Sen. Ron Wyden, chair of the Senate Committee on Finance and original sponsor of the tax package, said talks are ongoing but wouldn’t get into specifics.

“I’m not gonna comment on where it is. You don’t do that if you want to get it done,” the Oregon Democrat said March 12 when asked about negotiations. “I’m talking to colleagues all the time. We got a full court press, the (2023 tax) filing deadline is coming up, and we’re pulling out all the stops.”

“My timeline was yesterday,” he said. “I mean, it’s been weeks since we got 357 votes (in the House). We’re just pulling out all the stops.”

The Senate is scheduled to go on a two-week recess beginning March 25.

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