Latest news with #Manhattan
The Guardian
2 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Dragon on Centre Street by Jonah Bromwich review – drama of Trump the felon
Trump Convicted on All Counts to Become America's First Felon President: so blared the New York Times headline on 31 May 2024. 'Donald J Trump was convicted on Thursday of falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal that threatened to derail his 2016 presidential campaign, capping an extraordinary trial that tested the resilience of the American justice system and transformed the former commander in chief into a felon.' Jonah Bromwich shared the byline. From pre-indictment stakeout to arraignment to jury verdict to sentencing, he covered the legal tribulations of the once and future president, a drama for the ages in a courthouse in lower Manhattan. Dragon on Centre Street is his eyewitness account. A former style section writer, Bromwich is mindful of human folly. His first book captures the personalities that filled the corridors of the court and the streets around it, light-hearted one moment, deadly serious the next. 'The first clash between Trump and the criminal court system was shaping up to be the entertainment event of the season,' Bromwich writes, with a touch of glee. The run-up to the arraignment assumed the air of a rock concert or a sports championship. In the words of one Times stringer, it was 'hotter than Springsteen'. 'Professional line sitters, from a company called Same Ole Line Dude, showed up wearing merch advertising the name of their company and toting colorful tents.' Pages later, Bromwich introduces the reader to Max Azzarello, a name now largely forgotten. 'On 7 April 2024, 12 days before he killed himself outside a Manhattan courthouse, [he] ambled downstairs to his neighbors' apartment in St Augustine, Florida, holding a fistful of glow sticks.' Max and a friend, Mandy, wanted to gain the attention of a family of bats who circled overhead, much as the two had played with a pair of stray cats and a toy alligator. 'Cat fishing', they called it. But after the death of his mother in 2022, Max's life had turned dark. Less than two weeks later, in a park across from the court in New York, the 37-year-old set himself on fire. Bromwich's descriptions are insightful – at times, withering. 'His color, created for the camera, looks strange at close range,' he writes of Trump at his arraignment, in April 2023. 'So does his hair, coiffed in the front but threadbare in the back, such that someone sitting behind him for weeks at a time sees a different patch of his scalp each day.' But Bromwich also gives Trump his due. 'In person, it was easier to see the fundamentals – how tall he was, how imposing – and to sense the way his charisma exerted pressure on those around him.' The competing versions of Trump occupied the same space at the same time. Elsewhere, Bromwich conveys the judgment of Olivia Nuzzi, then a writer for New York magazine, in time tabloid fodder in her own right. Watching the trial on the court's closed-circuit television system, he describes her as 'blown away' by the visuals. 'Stripped of his power, Trump was reduced to a small garish human trapped in the municipal monochrome of the courtroom,' summarizing what she saw. Bromwich recounts the trial testimony of Stormy Daniels, born Stephanie Clifford, the adult film star who Trump paid to keep quiet about the affair she claimed and he denied. Before Daniels took the stand, Sally Franklin, a vice-president at Penguin Random House, read 'telling' excerpts of Trump's books. 'The defense looked stressed,' Bromwich writes. 'There was no doubt that Stormy had enraged Trump, and it was an open question whether he could keep himself in check, even with the threat of jail hanging over his head.' Daniels testified that she spanked Trump. He mouthed 'bullshit'. Isabelle Brourman, a courtroom artist, sketched Trump getting his butt swatted. The show continued. Trump had said she ought to be a contestant on The Apprentice, Daniels said. After all, Daniels reminded him of Ivanka, his daughter: smart, beautiful and underestimated. 'The dizzying feeling in the courtroom was increasing … in the gallery, Eric Trump was slowly turning from pale to pink,' Bromwich observes. Donald Trump cursed and shook his head. Justice Juan Merchan, the trial judge, warned Todd Blanche, Trump's counsel, his client could be held in contempt. 'I'll talk to him,' Blanche said. In all, the court fined Trump $9,000 for contempt and another $1,000 for violating a gag order. Ivanka and Melania, Trump's third wife, never appeared in court. Ditto Jared Kushner, Ivanka's husband, once Donald Trump's chief White House adviser. On the other hand, Trump was supported by the likes of Mike 'Moses' Johnson, the House speaker; JD Vance, then a senator from Ohio, eventually Trump's vice-president; and a phalanx of future cabinet members. 'Those guests who populated the left side of the gallery in [the courtroom] were quickly drafted into Trump's administration,' Bromwich writes. Susie Wiles is chief of staff. Doug Burgum is secretary of the interior. Kash Patel leads the FBI. Trump's lawyers fared well too. Blanche is deputy attorney general. Emil Bove is principal associate deputy attorney general. On Wednesday, Trump nominated him to the US court of appeals for the third circuit, which covers Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Maryanne Trump, the president's late sister, once sat on that bench. Facing an ethics investigation, she retired in February 2019. In the courthouse on Centre Street, in May 2024, the Dragon was convicted. It didn't matter: in November, he won the White House again. In January 2025, as he waited to return to power, he faced sentencing. 'The fact is that I'm totally innocent,' Trump announced, via computer. Justice Merchan handed down an unconditional discharge. Ten days later, Trump was back in the Oval Office. Dragon on Centre Street is published in the US by Authors Equity
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Harvey Weinstein still deciding whether he'll testify in NYC sex assault retrial
Harvey Weinstein is still on the fence about whether he'll take the stand in his own defense in his Manhattan sex assault retrial, his lawyer said Thursday. As Weinstein's Manhattan Supreme Court trial inches to a close, the former Hollywood producer will have to make his decision before the defense rests its case in the coming days. 'It's usually, but not always, the most difficult defense decision to make,' defense lawyer Arthur Aidala said. 'We're gonna make a gametime, more or less, decision.' Aidala said the defense team spent the Memorial Day weekend with Weinstein, who's being held in Bellevue Hospital, to discuss whether he'll testify. 'He thinks that the evidence at this trial has been challenged very forcefully, and many of [the accusers'] stories have been torn apart,' Aidala said. Still, he said, 'There is a part of him that is seriously contemplating whether in a he-said-she-said case, human beings feel obligated to hear the other side of the story. … There's no easy answer.' The trial has featured testimony from three accusers — one-time actress Jessica Mann, former TV production assistant Miriam Haley, and Polish model and aspiring actress Kaja Sokola. Mann and Haley testified at Weinstein's 2020 Manhattan Supreme Court trial, which ended in a guilty verdict and a 23-year prison term. The state's highest court overturned the jury's guilty verdict in that case last year, ruling 4-3 that the trial court judge shouldn't have allowed testimony of 'uncharged, alleged prior sexual acts against persons other than the complainants of the underlying crimes.' On Thursday, the defense called Helga Samuelsen, who was Sokola's roommate in fall 2005. Sokola testified that when she was a 16-year-old model, Weinstein rubbed her vagina under her pants and underwear in 2002, and two years later, he grabbed her breast in a limo. In 2006, she alleged, he forcibly performed oral sex on her in the Tribeca Grand hotel, while her sister waited at a restaurant table downstairs. Samuelsen testified that Weinstein visited Sokola's apartment in 2005, and Sokola led her to a bedroom, where they stayed behind closed doors for about a half-hour. Prosecutors tried to cast doubt on Samuelsen's credibility, pointing out that she sent a text to Sokola saying she felt 'forced' to sign an affidavit for the defense, and bringing up her connections and friendships in Weinstein's circle. With News Wire Services
The Guardian
4 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Harvey Weinstein retrial plays out in Manhattan court – will he testify?
In comparable terms of criminal justice, Harvey Weinstein's sexual crimes retrial in a Manhattan criminal court has had little of the fanfare that meets the trial of Sean 'Diddy' Combs playing out just steps away in federal court. Combs's trial, on charges of sex-trafficking conspiracy and featuring lurid testimony, has been a hub for content creators, each day lining up outside to deliver their thoughts on the day's evidence. But nearby, Weinstein retrial in Judge Curtis Farber's dingy courtroom exists in a virtual vacuum of attention, though both – one for a fallen movie mogul, in the other a rap entrepreneur – share similarities around issues of sexual consent that, prosecutors allege, crossed over into serious crimes. Five years ago, under the high-wattage glare of the #MeToo movement, a jury convicted Weinstein of one count of rape in the third degree of Jessica Mann, a former aspiring actor, and one count of criminal sexual act in the first degree against Mimi Haley, a former production assistant on Project Runway. That conviction helped cement #MeToo in the popular consciousness of America and the world – a huge victory not just for Weinstein's victims but also for millions of other women who have experienced sexual assault and harassment. Yet that conviction, and subsequent 23-year sentence, was sensationally vacated in April last year on the grounds that New York prosecutors had used testimony from accusers that was unrelated to the charges. A second trial in California two years after his New York retrial had found Weinstein guilty on three of seven charges, including rape and sexual assault. That conviction is now also under appeal on similar grounds. Weinstein, 73, denies ever raping or sexually assaulting anyone. Over the past several weeks, New York prosecutors have rebuilt the first, familiar case before a new jury – with an additional accuser, Kaja Sokola, a model turned actor who alleges she was assaulted by Weinstein in a Manhattan hotel in early 2006. Weinstein is a shadow of the man in the first trial – pale and so sick that Farber agreed to him travelling to court from the prison-hospital wing of Bellevue hospital, and not Rikers Island, the notorious city jail, where he had been held since his first New York conviction was overturned. Weinstein has arrived in court each day in a wheelchair. In opening arguments, prosecutors told jurors that Weinstein exerted 'enormous control' over the film and TV industry, and used that power to offer women scripts, the promise of fame, but then 'used those dream opportunities as weapons'. But each of the three women have faced questions about their relationship with Weinstein before and after the alleged assaults, as well as payouts from a compensation fund. Heather Cucolo, a New York law school professor, said there was not anything new in the defense's approach 'to break down the victim's credibility in a 'he said, she said' scenario of events that are far removed by time'. It is not known whether the prosecutors use of prior bad-act testimony in the first two trials was pivotal to the jury's decision, Cucolo said, but it is difficult to say that the prior conviction in California, now also under appeal, 'isn't somewhere in the minds of the jurors'. On Thursday, as the defense case started, jurors heard from Helga Samuelsen, who shared a New York apartment with Sokola. She testified that Weinstein had visited them in late 2005 and the pair had disappeared into a bedroom for half an hour, countering Sokola's testimony that she never spent time with Weinstein in the apartment prior to the alleged assault. Asked why she was testifying for the defense, Samuelsen said: 'Someone's life is at stake. At least that's my opinion.' The comment was later struck from the court record. Earlier in the trial, accuser Jessica Mann described Weinstein grabbing, dragging, forcefully undressing and raping her in a Beverly Hills hotel room in early 2014. Mann testified that she told Weinstein she had a boyfriend. 'You owe me one more time!' Weinstein shouted, Mann said. In court, Weinstein shook his head. As she left court during a break in her testimony, Mann, 39, turned toward Weinstein and aimed a finger at her eyes and then at him. Weinstein's lead defense attorney, Arthur Aidala, requested a mistrial, arguing that the alleged Los Angeles encounter is not charged by the state. Weinstein is charged with raping Mann on another occasion, in New York in 2013. Mann testified that she had had a consensual, on-and-off relationship with Weinstein, then a Miramax movie producer. The defense lawyers have been brutally aggressive. Aidala has portrayed Mann as an aspiring actor who had only willing sexual encounters with a Hollywood bigwig she thought it could help her. He also raised the question of why Mann had first tried to reject Weinstein's sexual advances but, he said, ultimately pretended to enjoy it. Mann had testified that she gave in because Weinstein wouldn't let her leave, and she faked an orgasm in order to extricate herself. 'Meg Ryan in the restaurant,' Mann said to a question about whether she had lied to her alleged assailant, referring to the famous scene in the film When Harry Met Sally. Outside the presence of jury, prosecutor Matthew Colangelo complained that Aidala's questioning went 'beyond the pale'. Prosecutors have also called expert witnesses to describe the impact of sexual assault trauma on memory recall, the psychology of victim-abuser relationships, and on erectile dysfunction. As the defense continues, the key question is whether Weinstein himself will testify. The producer did not take the stand in either of the first two trials. The New York court of appeals, in overturning the original trial verdict, said Weinstein had been unfairly deterred from exercising his right to testify because the judge had warned him he could be questioned on the uncharged witness testimony. 'It's always risky for a defendant to take the stand, but there are exceptions,' said Cucolo. 'I don't think him taking the stand to claim his innocence would necessarily benefit him. And it would also open him up to prosecutorial cross-examination that would then have the potential to really nitpick, and take apart, any and all things he has said.' Taking the stand in his own defense may not be warranted. In a highly unusual move as the prosecution rested, the rightwing YouTuber Candace Owens released a jail-house interview with Weinstein in which she said she had changed her mind about his culpability, and now believed he was wrongly convicted and had been swept up in the #MeToo movement. 'It definitely looked like the #MeToo movement got so big that they needed to sort of hang somebody, you know?' she said. Weinstein said he now wished he had pushed back harder on the initial claims against him. 'I should have just done a press conference and handled each situation and said, 'This girl is full of shit, and this one here and that, and this and that.' And I ran away from it,' he told Owens. Outside court on Thursday, Aidala was asked how his client thinks the trial is proceeding. 'He thinks that the evidence at this trial has been challenged very forcefully and that many of the complainant stories have been torn apart,' he said. Aidala told reporters that his client is 'seriously contemplating' testifying, but that Weinstein and his defense team were still deliberating the question. It was 'a decision that the client makes, and that overrides the lawyers'. 'We're going to make a game-time, more or less, decision,' he added. Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organizations. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at
New York Times
4 hours ago
- Business
- New York Times
The Cerebral, Bach-Loving Patrician Who Wrote Trump's Playbook
In a memorable exchange during a Republican primary debate in January 2016, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas needled the upstart candidate Donald Trump, saying he was not a true conservative and adding, 'Not a lot of conservatives come out of Manhattan.' Mr. Trump was ready with a retort. 'Conservatives actually do come out of Manhattan,' he replied, 'including William F. Buckley.' It was obvious why Mr. Trump would invoke William F. Buckley Jr. — the author, columnist, magazine editor, TV debater and political candidate who died at 82 in 2008 (and who did work for decades in Manhattan). Mr. Buckley was the leading intellectual architect of the modern conservative movement — indeed, he personified it for more than 50 years. But by what reasoning could Mr. Trump rightfully claim a connection with him? Outwardly, Mr. Buckley, with his patrician manner, salon wit and gold-plated vocabulary, his passion for Bach and connoisseur's taste for fine writing, could not have been less like Mr. Trump. And in policy terms, Mr. Trump's love of tariffs, defense of entitlement programs and isolationist tendencies were at odds with Mr. Buckley's fondness for the free market, skepticism of big government and support for a muscular foreign policy. In fact, in the winter of 2016, the editors of National Review, the venerable political journal Mr. Buckley founded in 1955, devoted an entire issue to making the case against Mr. Trump. They invited conservatives 'across the spectrum' to argue that he was a 'philosophically unmoored political opportunist who would trash the broad conservative ideological consensus within the G.O.P. in favor of a free-floating populism with strongman overtones.' Since then, the ranks of anti- or 'never' Trump conservatives have thinned almost to extinction, in the pages of National Review and elsewhere. Mr. Trump controls the Republican Party top to bottom and commands the loyalty of its policy minds as well as the thriving right-wing media ecosphere. His vision, it seems, has prevailed. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- General
- Yahoo
Dem Rep. Jerrold Nadler's aide detained by DHS agents in Manhattan office
Longtime Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler slammed President Trump for 'sowing chaos' nationwide after federal agents handcuffed one of his aides inside his lower Manhattan office. The lawmaker's verbal tirade came after Department of Homeland Security officers entered the Big Apple office Wednesday and accused his staff of 'harboring rioters' in a dramatic confrontation caught on video. 'President Trump and the Department of Homeland Security are sowing chaos in our communities, using intimidating tactics against both citizens and non-citizens in a reckless and dangerous manner,' he said in a statement to Politico. 'If this can happen in a Member of Congress's office, it can happen to anyone — and it is happening.' The video, obtained by Gothamist, showed one agent aggressively restraining a teary-eyed female staffer, while another employee asked for a warrant and blocked a second officer from entering a private section of the congressional office, located in the same Varick Street building as federal immigration court. 'I'm a federal officer, we're here checking on something,' the male agent said to the employee standing in his way, the footage showed. 'We have the right to check. You are harboring rioters in the office,' he argued in the heated back-and-forth that ended with the staffer granting him access to the back office. Nadler said that the 'deeply troubling' incident showed a clear violation of legal protocols. Federal Protective Service officers went to the congressman's office to conduct a security check after receiving reports that protesters were hiding inside, DHS told The Post in a statement. 'Based on earlier incidents in a nearby facility, FPS officers were concerned about the safety of the federal employees in the office and went to the location to ensure the safety and wellbeing of those present,' Homeland Security officials said. When they arrived, one individual – the woman who was briefly detained – was 'verbally confrontational and physically blocked access to the office' after the officers identified themselves and explained why there were there. 'The officers then detained the individual in the hallway for the purpose of completing the security check,' DHS said. The aide was released after the fiery standoff — which reportedly erupted when a Nadler staffer invited two advocates monitoring ICE activity at the courthouse into the office. Nadler charged that the Trump administration is embracing totalitarian and authoritarian tactics. 'The Trump administration is trying to intimidate members of Congress,' Nadler told the New York Times Saturday. 'They're behaving like fascists. We have to fight them. We don't want to be a fascist country.' The White House did not immediately respond to The Post's request for comment.
