TV News LIES

A Manhattan federal court judge on Wednesday ordered the release of the more than $5m Donald Trump owes E Jean Carroll following her successful 2023 sexual abuse and defamation trial against him. Less than an hour after the judge issued his order, Trump filed paperwork indicating he was appealing the decision.

Trump had deposited this $5m jury award, as well as 11% interest, into a court-held account some six weeks after Carroll’s courtroom victory. Judge Lewis Kaplan’s order directs the disbursement of these court controlled funds, which now total some $5.8m due to interest accrual.https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/08/trump-e-jean-carroll-settlement

“The Clerk is respectfully directed to disburse … the value of the principle Judgment, which amounts to $5,000,000.00,” Kaplan’s order stated. “The Clerk is further respectfully directed to disburse … the value of the post-judgment interest.”

Kaplan’s decision comes more than three years after Carroll bested Trump in her bombshell civil case; jurors determined that he sexually abused the former Elle writer and unlawfully impugned her reputation with false, vitriolic denials. Trump denied all wrongdoing.

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Graham Platner, the oyster farmer whose populist platform took Maine by storm, dropped his Senate bid Wednesday night as controversies over his past stacked up, leaving Democrats without a nominee to take on Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) this fall.

“We’re suspending campaign operations,” Platner told his supporters in a lengthy video posted on social media Wednesday evening, at times growing emotional.

“I intend to file my paperwork to withdraw,” he added. “The process needs to assure that what comes next is reflective of the Mainers, who on June 9 turned out and showed that they are desperate for a different kind of politics.”

Platner’s decision comes after he easily won the Democratic primary last month despite a growing list of scandals, including revelations around a sexting scandal, since-deleted social media posts downplaying sexual assault and criticizing law enforcement and reports of problematic behavior with former romantic partners.

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In a blow to President Donald Trump's efforts to investigate the 2020 presidential election, a federal judge quashed a grand jury subpoena July 7 seeking information on 2020 election workers from Atlanta's Fulton County.

"The breadth of the Grand Jury Subpoena ... is staggering," targeting personal identifying information for "thousands of employees and volunteers," wrote Judge William M. Ray II, who was appointed by Trump to the federal bench in 2018.

More...A series of audits, recounts and court cases have failed to produce evidence that would support Trump's assertions that Joe Biden beat him through widespread fraud, but Trump has continued to promote his unsubstantiated claims.More...

"The breadth of the Grand Jury Subpoena ... is staggering," targeting personal identifying information for "thousands of employees and volunteers," wrote Judge William M. Ray II, who was appointed by Trump to the federal bench in 2018.

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Lawyers for Donald Trump have requested more time to pay a $5m civil judgment to magazine columnist E Jean Carroll from 2023, days after the US supreme court declined to hear an appeal.

In a new filing, the president’s attorney said that since his former lead counsel, Justin Smith, took up a position as a federal judge last month (a post he was nominated to by Trump), his new lead counsel, Josh Halpern, needed more time “to become completely familiar with the facts and procedural circumstances” of the case.

A jury awarded Carroll damages after concluding that Trump had sexually abused her in 1996 and then defamed her after she publicly described the attack in 2019. Trump deposited money in an escrow fund to pay the award but is trying to delay the release of an amount that is now nearly $5.8m with interest.

Trump’s attorneys requested that the court extend the deadline for a response to Carroll’s request for payment to 14 July, arguing that the “plaintiff faces no risk of material harm as a result of granting this request”.

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New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) called on Americans to confront the nation’s flaws rather than ignore them on the eve of the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence, framing “righteous dissent” as core to the country’s founding ideals.

“This will be no ordinary day of celebration,” he said. “Two hundred fifty years presents a rare opportunity for more than 340 million people to turn together, both toward one another and toward ourselves, to take measure of who we are as a nation.”

Speaking from former President George Washington’s desk at New York City Hall, the first-term mayor reflected on the resilience of American revolutionaries who sought to free themselves from the British “yoke of oppression” in pursuit of a “grand experiment in self-governance.”

He recounted New York City’s role as the symbolic gateway to the nation, tracing the struggles and triumphs of enslaved Africans through the generations of immigrants who came in search of greater opportunity.

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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called protesters "ingrates" on Thursday, July 2, as he and other top members of the Trump administration praised the National Guard's work during a D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force event.

“This background noise this morning is perfect; it’s the sound of ingrates, of ingratitude, of people who are so blinded by ideology they can’t see law and order and common sense in front of them,” Hegseth said. “There’s nothing ideological about this group. There’s nothing political about this exercise.”

Apart from Hegseth, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche were also heckled by “Free DC” protesters during an event.

The protesters blew whistles and horns while Trump administration officials touted the National Guard, who have been patrolling Washington, DC, since the president deployed the military branch following a public safety emergency declaration last year, according to reporting from The Hill.

“Thank you for being here, for backing us up along the way. To the entire team, to the soldiers here, thank you for everything you’re doing. Thank you for waiting out here in the sun,” Hegseth said.

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