With his criminal trial in the New York hush money case set to begin on April 15, former President Donald Trump this week suffered a series of setbacks in his efforts to delay and dismiss his various legal cases. On Monday, Trump moved to adjourn the case in New York indefinitely due to "pretrial publicity" (that didn’t work). On Wednesday, responding to an earlier pretrial motion, Judge Juan Merchan ruled that Trump cannot invoke his presidential immunity claim to preclude the admission of certain evidence. Then, in a motion made public on Friday, Trump's lawyers argued that the judge must recuse himself due to his daughter’s political clients — despite the state court’s ethics committee having previously found no reason to recuse. Meanwhile, in Georgia, Judge Scott McAfee rejected Trump's motion to dismiss the election interference case on First Amendment grounds. The same day (still Wednesday), another judge denied Trump’s bid to dismiss the classified documents case, rejecting Trump’s assertion that the papers were considered “personal” under the Presidential Records Act. That defeat marked Trump’s third major legal loss in 24 hours.
But even as Trump’s legal setbacks piled up, tension continued to grow between special counsel Jack Smith and Judge Aileen Cannon. Following Cannon’s request for jury instructions that would bolster Trump’s unfounded claims that the Presidential Records Act allowed him to take the classified documents when he left the White House , Smith issued a scathing new filing that expressed his willingness to go to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to intervene in the case and potentially to seek her removal.
An Israeli airstrike killed seven aid workers with World Central Kitchen trying to deliver food to Palestinians in Gaza on Monday. The airstrike “outraged” President Biden, according to White House officials. Biden condemned Israel’s actions as “unacceptable” in a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, warning that ‘‘immediate action” must be taken to protect civilians. The IDF released the results of its investigation, saying forces misidentified the aid convoy as Hamas.
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