Kentucky Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams, who worked to expand early voting in the Bluegrass State and has spoken out against election denialism in his own party, has been chosen to receive the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award this year.

In its announcement Monday, the JFK Library Foundation said Adams was recognized “for expanding voting rights and standing up for free and fair elections despite party opposition and death threats from election deniers.”

Adams — whose signature policy objective is to make it easy to vote and hard to cheat — was at the forefront of a bipartisan effort with Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear that led to the enactment of 2021 legislation allowing for three days of no-excuse, early in-person voting — including on a Saturday — before Election Day. Adams hailed it as Kentucky’s most significant election law update in more than a century. About one-fifth of the Kentuckians who voted in last year’s statewide election did so during those three days of early, in-person voting, Adams’ office said Monday.

As his state’s chief election officer, Adams has pushed back forcefully against false claims about rigged elections, referring to election skeptics as “cranks and kooks.”

“There’s a lot of irresponsible chatter out there and demagoguery about us having hacked elections,” Adams said in a 2022 interview on Spectrum News 1. “It’s all hogwash. Our elections have never been hacked and are not hacked now.”

First elected in 2019, Adams won reelection by a wide margin last year after dominating his party’s primary, which included a challenger who promoted debunked election claims.

Adams, a Kentucky native and graduate of Harvard Law School, said Monday that Kennedy’s “admonition to put country before self still resonates today, and rings true now more than ever.”

“I am honored to accept this award on behalf of election officials and poll workers across America who, inspired by his call, sacrifice to keep the American experiment in self-government alive,” he added.

Adams is part of an effort begun after the last presidential election that seeks to bring together Republican officials who are willing to defend the country’s election systems and the people who run them. They want officials to reinforce the message that elections are secure and accurate, which they say is especially important as the country heads toward another divisive presidential contest in November.

“It’s an obligation on Republicans’ part to stand up for the defense of our system because our party — there’s some blame for where we stand right now,” Adams said recently. “But it’s also strategically wise for Republicans to say, ‘Hey Republicans, you can trust this. Don’t stay at home.’”

During a recent campaign rally, former President Donald Trump — the presumptive Republican nominee for president this year — repeated his false claim that Democrats rigged the 2020 election.

Just 24% of Republicans said they had a great deal or quite a bit of confidence that votes will be counted accurately in the 2024 presidential election, according to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in December.

Adams is seen as a potential candidate for governor in 2027, when he and Beshear will be term-limited in their current jobs.

Honorary JFK Library Foundation President Caroline Kennedy and her son, Jack Schlossberg, will present the award to Adams on June 9 at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston.

President Kennedy’s book, “Profiles in Courage,” recounts the stories of eight U.S. senators who risked their careers by taking principled stands for unpopular positions. Past winners of the Profile in Courage Award include former U.S. presidents Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush and Barack Obama.

By Brendan Pierson

(Reuters) -New York state’s top prosecutor on Monday sued Heartbeat International, an anti-abortion group, and 11 crisis pregnancy centers, accusing them of misleading and potentially endangering women by claiming that they can provide a treatment reversing the effect of the abortion pill mifepristone.

In the lawsuit, New York Attorney General Letitia James asked a state court in Manhattan to block Heartbeat International and the centers, located across New York state and whose mission is to discourage women from having abortions, from advertising abortion pill reversal on their websites or anywhere else and award an unspecified amount of money damages.

“Abortions cannot be reversed,” James said in a statement. “Any treatments that claim to do so are made without scientific evidence and could be unsafe.”

Heartbeat International in a statement called the lawsuit “a clear attempt to censor speech, leaving women who regret their chemical abortions in the dark, and ultimately forcing them to complete an abortion they no longer want.”

Mifepristone is the first part of a two-drug regimen used for medication abortion, which is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to terminate pregnancy in the first 10 weeks. Medication abortion accounted for more than 60% of U.S. abortions last year.

Proponents of medication abortion reversal say mifepristone’s effects can be blocked by a high dose of the hormone progesterone. There are no controlled clinical trials showing the procedure is safe or effective, and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says that it is not supported by science.

New York’s lawsuit comes as the U.S. Supreme Court considers a case brought by abortion opponents seeking to restrict the availability of mifepristone nationwide. One of the plaintiffs in that case, George Delgado, sits on Heartbeat International’s medical advisory board and is credited with developing abortion pill reversal.

Heartbeat International is an international anti-abortion group affiliated with more than 2,000 crisis pregnancy centers around the country. Through its website, it offers to connect women to providers who will perform abortion pill reversal.

Crisis pregnancy centers provide services to pregnant women with the goal of preventing them from having abortions. All of the centers named in James’ lawsuit are listed in a directory maintained by HBI, and nine of them pay the organization an annual fee for affiliate status, according to the lawsuit.

Some of the centers’ websites appeared to offer abortion pill reversal themselves, while others direct visitors to HBI’s “Abortion Pill Rescue Network,” according to James’ complaint.

California’s attorney general filed a similar lawsuit against HBI and crisis pregnancy center affiliates last September.

Last October, a federal judge ruled that Colorado cannot ban abortion pill reversal treatment. Later that month, a judge in Kansas blocked a state law that would have required healthcare providers to tell patients that medication abortion can be reversed.

(Reporting By Brendan Pierson in New York; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Leslie Adler)

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Milwaukee’s election leader has been ousted by the mayor in a surprise move that comes just six months before Wisconsin’s largest city will be in the spotlight in the presidential swing state.

Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson announced Monday that he would be replacing Milwaukee Election Commission Executive Director Claire Woodall with her deputy, Paulina Gutierrez.

Milwaukee has been at the center of attention in Wisconsin, a state known for close elections and where four of the past six presidential contests have been decided by less than a percentage point.

In 2020, former President Donald Trump and others were quick to cry fraud after late-arriving results from Democratic-dominated Milwaukee helped Joe Biden narrowly carry the state by just under 21,000 votes. Recounts demanded by Trump confirmed Biden’s victory.

The change has nothing to do with how Woodall ran elections, but instead had to do with “other issues internal to the election commission office and to city government that raised concern,” said the mayor’s spokesperson Jeff Fleming. He declined to say what those issues were.

“People see one side on this side of the camera, but there are other things on the other side of the camera that I also have to deal with and that’s exactly what I did with my decision,” Johnson told WISN-TV. He declined to elaborate.

Woodall did not return messages seeking comment. Her replacement, Gutierrez, also did not return messages.

Woodall has been outspoken about the challenges she and other election officials have felt in recent years.

She has described being harassed and threatened after the 2020 election via email, phone calls and letters to her home — threats serious enough that she has an assigned FBI agent to forward them to.

The change came a week after Woodall’s former deputy, Kimberly Zapata, was sentenced to probation and fined $3,000 after being convicted of misconduct in office and fraud for obtaining fake absentee ballots. Zapata argued that she was acting as a whistleblower, exposing vulnerabilities in the state’s election system.

Johnson and others who work in elections stressed that the change would not affect how elections are run in Milwaukee.

“Paulina’s integrity and capabilities are ideally suited to this position,” Johnson said in a statement announcing the change. “She will lead the office at an important juncture when public scrutiny of the work of the department will be extremely high. I have confidence in her, and I will make certain the department has the resources it needs to fulfill its duties.”

Gutierrez has only been a staff member at the city election commission for a little over a year. Neil Albrecht, who led the office for 15 years before retiring in May 2020, has offered his assistance as a volunteer, Fleming said. Woodall took over for Albrecht in 2020 and had been leading the office until now.

Following his reelection in April, Johnson had to renominate all of his Cabinet-level positions for city council approval. That is why he decided to make the change at this time, Fleming said.

None of the city’s three election commissioners returned messages seeking comment. But Ann Jacobs, a Democratic member of the Wisconsin Elections Commission from Milwaukee, said she was surprised by the move.

“Changes like this are always challenging, but given how many elections Wisconsin has there’s no ‘good time’ for these sort of changes to happen,” Jacobs said. “I expect the office to be professional and to continue their work and that the election will be run smoothly and properly.”

Jacobs stressed that elections are run by teams of people.

“The administration of elections isn’t something that is dependent on one person,” she said. “It is dependent on the workflow, the task flows and the operations of an entire office.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont announced Monday he will run for reelection this year, squelching speculation that the 82-year-old progressive icon might retire at a time when the Democratic Party is anxious about the advancing age of its top leaders.

Hailing from a Democratic stronghold, Sanders’ decision virtually guarantees that he will return to Washington for a fourth Senate term. And his announcement comes at a critical moment for Democrats as the party navigates a growing divide over Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.

Sanders has criticized President Joe Biden’s handling of the U.S. relationship with Israel even as he’s hailed much of Biden’s domestic agenda ahead of what could be a tough reelection fight for Biden against GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump.

Sanders said he wants the war in Gaza ended immediately, massive humanitarian aid to follow and no more money sent to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“We are living in a complicated and difficult political moment,” Sanders told The Associated Press on Monday. “I very strongly disagree with Biden in terms of the war in Gaza.”

At home, he said, the presidential election is between Biden and Trump, “and Donald Trump is in my view the most dangerous president, has been the most dangerous president in American history.”

With the prospect of Trump’s possible return to the White House, Sanders framed his bid to return to the Senate as being driven by concerns about the future of democracy in the U.S. In an announcement video, he said that in many ways the 2024 election “is the most consequential election in our lifetimes.”

“Will the United States continue to even function as a democracy, or will we move to an authoritarian form of government?” he said. He questioned whether the country will reverse what he called “the unprecedented level of income and wealth inequality” and if it can create a government that works for all, and not continue with a political system dominated by wealthy campaign contributors.

Known for his liberal politics and crusty demeanor, Sanders has been famously consistent over his 40 years in politics, championing better health care paid for by the government, higher taxes for the wealthy, less military intervention and major solutions for climate change. He has also spent his career trying to hold corporate executives to account, something that he’s had more power to do as chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

Sanders is an independent. He was a Democratic congressman for 16 years and still caucuses with the Democrats.

He sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016 and 2020. He said a year ago that he would forgo another presidential bid and endorse Biden’s reelection this year.

“I have been, and will be if re-elected, in a strong position to provide the kind of help that Vermonters need in these difficult times,” Sanders said in a review of his positions as chairman of the important Senate panel and a member of the chamber’s Democratic leadership team, as well as a senior member of various other committees.

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AP writer Mary Clare Jalonick contributed from Washington.

NEW YORK (AP) — The judge presiding over Donald Trump’s New York Trial fined him $1,000 on Monday for violating his gag order once again and warned the former president that additional violations could result in jail time.

The fine marks the second time since the trial began last month that Trump has been sanctioned for violating the gag order, which bars him from making incendiary comments about jurors, witnesses and other people closely connected to the case. He was fined $9,000 last week, $1,000 for each of nine violations.

The violation in this case stems from an April 22 interview in which he criticized the speed at which the jury was picked and claimed it was stacked with Democrats.

“It appears that the $1,000 fines are not serving as a deterrent. Therefore going forward, this court will have to consider a jail sanction,” Judge Juan Merchan said. Trump’s statements, the judge continued, “threaten to interfere with the fair administration of justice and constitute a direct attack on the rule of law. I cannot allow that to continue.”

But he also expressed reservations about the idea of putting Trump in jail, calling it “the last thing I want to do.”

“You are the former president of the United States and possibly the next president as well. There are many reasons why incarceration is truly a last resort for me. To take that step would be disruptive to these proceedings,” Merchan said.

Meanwhile, testimony resumed Monday with prosecutors moving deeper into Trump’s orbit following an inside-the-room account about the former president’s reaction to a politically damaging recording that surfaced in the final weeks of the 2016 campaign.

Trump faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection with alleged payments made to stifle potentially embarrassing stories.

Trump has pleaded not guilty and denied sexual encounters with any of the women, as well as any wrongdoing.

So far, jurors have heard from witnesses including a tabloid magazine publisher and Trump friend who bought the rights to several sordid tales about Trump to prevent them from coming out and a Los Angeles lawyer who negotiated hush money deals on behalf of both Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal.

Trump’s lawyers have tried to chip away at the prosecution’s theory of the case and the credibility of some witnesses. They’ve raised questions during cross-examinations about whether Trump was possibly a target of extortion, forced to arrange payouts to suppress harmful stories and spare his family embarrassment and pain. Prosecutors maintain the payments were about preserving his political viability as he sought the presidency.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The judge in the criminal hush money trial of Donald Trump said on Monday that he will consider jail time for the former president for additional violations of the gag order after finding that $1,000 fines are not working as a deterrent.

Justice Juan Merchan Merchan, who has already imposed $9,000 in fines on Trump, said during the hearing that he will find Trump in contempt of court for the 10th time.

(Reporting by Luc Cohen, Katharine Jackson; Editing by Doina Chiacu)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Frustrated by the seemingly endless cash flowing to Democrats, Republicans aiming to retake the Senate have rallied around candidates with plenty of their own money.

The goal is to neutralize Democrats’ roughly 2-to-1 financial advantage, among the few bright spots for a party defending twice as many Senate seats as Republicans this year. But it also risks elevating untested candidates who might not be prepared for the scrutiny often associated with fiercely contested Senate campaigns.

In Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, GOP Senate candidates are being pressed on whether they live in the state. In Montana, the party’s Senate candidate recently admitted lying about the circumstances of a gunshot wound he sustained. And in Ohio, the Republican contender pitched himself as financially independent but now may be turning to donors for help repaying loans he made to his campaign.

“One of the challenges they face, as opposed to established politicians, is that established politicians have already gone through the process,” said David Winston, a Republican pollster and senior adviser to House Republicans.

The GOP needs to gain only two seats to win Senate control, and the party’s top Democratic targets have vulnerabilities of their own that run counter to their carefully curated images as advocates for the working class. Those liabilities include Montana Sen. Jon Tester’s ties to defense industry lobbyists; Sherrod Brown, of Ohio, repeatedly failing to pay property taxes on time; and Pennsylvania’s Bob Casey spending more than $500,000 in campaign cash at his sister’s printing business.

But for Republicans, the dynamic is sensitive because they’ve been here before.

Since the rise of the tea party movement more than a decade ago, Republicans have lost what were seen as winnable Senate seats by elevating candidates out of sync with mainstream voters who are often critical in statewide contests. The GOP shifted tactics this year, taking a more active role in the primary process and identifying candidates who could help fund their own campaigns. Such contenders, the party hoped, would have the benefit of both presenting themselves as political outsiders and being less reliant on an exhausted donor class.

While that has largely helped Republicans avoid bruising primary fights and go into the general election with well-funded candidates, other complications are surfacing.

In Wisconsin, businessman and real estate mogul Eric Hovde is the leading contender to face two-term Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin. While it’s unclear how much Hovde is worth because he has not yet filed a mandatory financial disclosure, he had the wherewithal to lend his campaign $8 million in the first quarter of 2024 — and may have to tap into those resources again to combat questions about the depth of his ties to Wisconsin.

He was born in Madison and educated at the University of Wisconsin, but he’s the CEO of a Utah-based bank, owns a luxury home in California and voted absentee from the Golden State in 2023 and 2024.

Hovde has taken pains to share the story of his Norwegian immigrant great-grandparents’ arrival in a northwest Wisconsin logging town and is airing an ad featuring his wife, Sharon, leafing through a photo album featuring his days at Madison East High School and UW. He also posted a video clip of him plunging through a thin layer of ice on Lake Mendota near the house he owns on Madison’s west side.

“He’s Wisconsin through and through,” said campaign spokesman Ben Voelkel. “They are trying to distract from literally every other issue that they don’t want to talk about.”

Dave McCormick, the Republican Senate nominee in Pennsylvania, has faced similar questions. The former hedge fund CEO has plenty of money to help fund a campaign in one of the most politically divided states. His 2024 net worth, with his wife, was between $61.6 million and $183.6 million. He lent over $14 million to his 2022 campaign for Senate, and so far he has plunged nearly $2 million into his bid this year.

While he was born and raised in Pennsylvania, where he started a business and worked after college, he more recently lived and worked in Connecticut, only buying a home in Pittsburgh before his unsuccessful try for the Senate in 2022.

During this year’s campaign, McCormick has acknowledged making frequent trips to Connecticut, where his daughter is completing high school and he rents a luxury home in Westport. McCormick has said he goes there to see his daughter following a divorce but maintains his primary residence in Pennsylvania.

“And, if that’s a political problem, so be it,” he told reporters in Pennsylvania.

In Montana, Tim Sheehy has invested more than $1.5 million of his own money into his campaign. With a household net worth of between $72.9 million and $255.9 million, he has the ability to tap into far more. The wealthy executive’s military service is central to his campaign against Tester, a three-term incumbent in a Republican-friendly state.

But the retired Navy SEAL, who runs an aerial firefighting company, recently acknowledged that he lied to a Glacier National Park ranger on a police report in 2015. He told the ranger he was wounded when his personal handgun discharged accidentally, but he has since said he was wounded in Afghanistan in 2012. He says he didn’t report it to protect fellow service members because it may have come from friendly fire.

Sheehy’s conflicting accounts, first reported by The Washington Post, could undermine the potentially compelling profile of a combat veteran who started a Montana company. He has blamed a “liberal smear machine” for using the shooting to help Tester.

In Ohio, meanwhile, anxiety about Bernie Moreno was building among Republicans well before he won the party’s Senate nomination last month.

The Associated Press reported in March that in 2008, someone with access to Moreno’s work email account created a profile on an adult website seeking “Men for 1-on-1 sex.” The AP could not definitively confirm that it was created by Moreno. Moreno’s lawyer said a former intern created the account and provided a statement from the intern, Dan Ricci, who said he created the account as “part of a juvenile prank.”

Questions about the profile have circulated in GOP circles, sparking frustration among senior Republican operatives about Moreno’s potential vulnerability in a general election, according to seven people who are directly familiar with conversations about how to address the matter. They requested anonymity to avoid running afoul of former President Donald Trump, who endorsed Moreno, and his allies.

Moreno, a former car dealership owner, had a net worth as high as $168 million last year, more than enough to power his bid to unseat Brown. That’s what made the language in an invitation to a recent high-dollar fundraiser in Cleveland all the more notable.

The invitation, obtained by the AP, stated that the first $3,300 of each contribution would be used for “debt retirement, until such debt is extinguished,” and before raising money for his general election contest.

It’s common for candidates who emerge from competitive primaries, as Moreno did March 19, to ask donors to help pay off debt. What’s unusual in Moreno’s case is that he is the only person identified on his most recent campaign finance disclosure who would benefit from retiring the campaign’s debt. The records show he lent his campaign $4.5 million in personal and bank loans, which means that the bank would also benefit by receiving interest payments. But no other debts are listed on the document.

In a statement, Moreno’s campaign said “not one dime” of the money raised at the event would be used to help him recoup his loans. Instead, they said, it would be used to pay off separate debts that the campaign racked up during the primary, but they declined to offer additional details on what was owed.

Ozzie Palomo, a Connecticut-based Republican fundraiser who was part of former 2024 GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley’s finance committee, called the priority of retiring debt “a bit of an unorthodox approach” that could be a turn-off for donors.

“You invest in a campaign in hopes of them winning,” Palomo said. “Not in hopes of paying off someone else’s debt.”

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Associated Press reporters Marc Levy from Harrisburg, Pa., Julie Carr Smyth from Columbus, Ohio, and Matthew Brown from Billings, Montana, contributed to this report.

By Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – As the Democratic minority leader in a Republican-controlled House of Representatives, Hakeem Jeffries’ influence is normally limited. This week, he may be the most powerful person in Congress.

That is because the chamber’s embattled speaker, Republican Mike Johnson, is expected to need the support of Jeffries’ opposition Democrats to fend off an effort by hardline members of his own party to topple their second party leader in just eight months.

A small band of hardline Republicans made history in October when they ousted their speaker from the role for the first time ever, setting off a messy weeks-long leadership fight that brought the chamber to a halt. Now firebrand Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene wants to try the same move on Johnson.

“House Republicans are either unwilling or unable to get Marjorie Taylor Greene and extreme MAGA Republicans under control and so it’s going to take a bipartisan coalition and partnership,” Jeffries, 53, told reporters last week. He confirmed that members of his own party would vote to support Johnson — a highly unusual move — to prevent a replay of last year’s chaos.

Democrats hope to erase Republicans’ narrow 217-212 majority in the Nov. 5 elections, which would allow them to elect Jeffries as the first-ever Black speaker of the House, a role second in line to the presidency after the vice president. Some are already calling the New York lawmaker a “shadow speaker.”

“Jeffries has done a good job in keeping us unified and building consensus. He governs with a light touch and solicits members’ opinions,” said Democratic Representative Ro Khanna in a recent interview.

Representative Pramila Jayapal, who heads the Congressional Progressive Caucus, called Jeffries “an incredible leader.”

WHAT’S THE TRADEOFF?

But Jayapal said she expects to get something in return if members of her party are going to support a political rival.

“My concern is that this speaker is anti-choice, anti-democracy, anti-immigrant and we are going to have to go back to people and explain why we would have saved the speaker,” she said an interview last week.

Johnson drew the ire of his party hardliners by working with Democrats to pass bills averting a government shutdown and providing additional aid to Ukraine.

Still, Jayapal said she’d expect to see further concessions if Democrats protect Johnson, rattling off demands such as renewing an expiring “Affordable Connectivity Program” that helps low-income households afford broadband service.

Ousting Johnson, and triggering a replay of October’s House chaos, could pose a political risk for Republicans in an election year, one reason their presidential candidate, Donald Trump, voiced concern about the move.

Even Trump’s words have not soothed hardline Republicans angry that Johnson, a fourth-term conservative from Louisiana, has not taken a harder line.

“There was nothing in his prior life, political or private, that qualified him for this job. He is a lost ball in tall weeds,” said far-right Republican Representative Thomas Massie, who is backing Greene’s effort.

Jeffries, whose leadership bid was backed by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, has far less trouble from his own caucus, though as a minority leader his job has been easier than Johnson’s, as he has not had to drive the House agenda and deal with all the political pitfalls that go with it.

One Democratic aide who asked not to be identified said, “It’s easy to look great when you’re standing to the side of the three-ring circus.”

(Reporting by Richard Cowan; Editing by Scott Malone and Bill Berkrot)

By Jack Queen, Luc Cohen and Andy Sullivan

NEW YORK (Reuters) -The judge in Donald Trump’s criminal trial fined him $1,000 and held him in contempt of court for a 10th time on Monday for violating a gag order and warned that further violations could land the former president in jail.

Justice Juan Merchan said the nine $1,000 fines he had imposed so far did not seem to be deterring the wealthy business mogul from violating the order, which bars him from speaking publicly about jurors and witnesses in the first criminal trial of a former U.S. president.

“I do not want to impose a jail sanction and have done everything I can to avoid doing so. But I will if necessary,” Merchan said before the jury entered.

Imprisonment would be an unprecedented step in the historic trial, which stems from a hush money payment made to porn star Stormy Daniels in the final weeks of the 2016 election.

After Merchan’s ruling, jurors heard testimony from a former Trump employee that could bolster prosecutors’ case that Trump falsified business records to cover up the hush money payment.

Trump has pleaded not guilty and denies wrongdoing.

As he imposed the fine, Merchan said he considered jail time “truly the last resort” as it would disrupt the trial, pose extraordinary security challenges and complicate the 2024 presidential election, in which the Republican Trump seeks to win the White House back from Democratic President Joe Biden.

But he said Trump’s “continued, willful” violations of the gag order amounted to a “direct attack on the rule of law.”

Merchan imposed the 10th $1,000 fine on Monday for an April 22 broadcast interview in which the former president said: “That jury was picked so fast – 95% Democrats. The area’s mostly all Democrat.”

Merchan found that other statements flagged by prosecutors that mentioned witnesses Michael Cohen and David Pecker did not violate the order.

The gag order prevents Trump from making statements about jurors, witnesses and families of the judge and prosecutors if meant to interfere with the case. Violations are punishable by fines of up to $1,000 or jail time of up to 30 days.

Last week Merchan fined Trump $9,000 for nine social media posts that he ruled had violated the gag order.

Trump complains frequently that the gag order limits his ability to make his case to voters in his comeback White House bid.

“He’s taken away my constitutional right to speak,” Trump told reporters outside the courtroom before the start of the 12th day of trial.

PAYMENT RECORDS DISPLAYED

Prosecutors on Monday later showed jurors business records that documented payments totaling $420,000 from Trump to Cohen, his former fixer and personal lawyer.

Those payments were listed as legal fees, but prosecutors say they were actually meant to reimburse Cohen for paying $130,000 to Daniels to keep quiet about a sexual encounter she says she had with Trump in 2006.

Trump denies ever having had sex with Daniels.

Prosecutors say the $420,000 paid by Trump was meant to cover the $130,000 Cohen paid to Daniels, along with $50,000 in other expenses he had incurred. Trump doubled that total to account for taxes and also included a $60,000 year-end bonus, they say.

A former controller in Trump’s organization, Jeffrey McConney, testified that he was not aware of any other instance in which the Trump Organization reimbursed someone so generously.

He said he was told by the company’s top finance official Allen Weisselberg that the payments were reimbursements, not legal fees. He said he never spoke with Trump about the payments.

Prosecutors also showed jurors ledger entries that payments to Cohen had not been listed among legal expenses the company paid to outside lawyers.

Most of the jurors appeared to look intently at the email messages displayed on the screens in front of their seats as McConney testified.

Prosecutors say Trump’s payment to Daniels corrupted the 2016 election by keeping the news from voters, at a time when his treatment of women was a central issue in his campaign against Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

They say the altered business records covered up election-law and tax-law violations that elevate the 34 counts Trump faces from misdemeanors to felonies punishable by up to four years in prison.

If found guilty, Trump could face up to four years in prison, though defendants typically face fines and probation.

The main players in the case have yet to testify, including Cohen and Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.

The case features sordid allegations of adultery and secret payoffs, but it is widely seen as less consequential than three other criminal prosecutions Trump faces. It is the only one certain to go to trial before the Nov. 5 presidential election.

The other cases charge him with trying to overturn his 2020 presidential defeat and mishandling classified documents after leaving office. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all three.

(Reporting by Jack Queen and Luc Cohen in New York and Andy Sullivan in Washington; Editing by Howard Goller)