Arizona Republicans block quick push to repeal near-total abortion ban, which hasn’t taken effect yet

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(WASHINGTON) — Arizona Republicans on Wednesday blocked efforts to move forward on a bill to repeal a near-total abortion ban in the state that dates to 1864, which the Arizona Supreme Court ruled this week is enforceable.

Despite many members in their own party calling for an end to the law, GOP leaders in the Legislature, which is controlled by conservatives, said they will be “closely reviewing” the court’s ruling and listening to constituents to determine the best course of action.

“The Supreme Court has made its decision, and it was one based solely on the text of the law – it was not a policy statement,” Senate President Warren Petersen and House Speaker Ben Toma said in a statement to ABC News.

Petersen and Toma noted that the court’s ruling this week has not yet taken effect and is expected to not kick in for several weeks, at least.

“During this time, we will be closely reviewing the court’s ruling, talking to our members, and listening to our constituents to determine the best course of action for the legislature,” the state Senate president and House speaker said.

The court ruling on Tuesday drew support from abortion opponents and denunciation from advocates for reproductive rights, including President Joe Biden, who labeled it “cruel” and blamed it on the “result of the extreme agenda of Republican elected officials who are committed to ripping away women’s freedom.”

The president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, Marjorie Dannenfelser, who opposes abortion, called the court decision an “enormous victory for unborn children and their mothers.”

“Reinstating Arizona’s pro-life law will protect more than 11,000 babies annually … The compassion of the pro-life movement won in court today,” she said.

But notable Arizona Republicans, including Senate candidate Kari Lake and former Gov. Doug Ducey, both of whom supported less strict abortion bans, distanced themselves from the court’s decision.

Democrats and Republicans alike in the Legislature have been calling to repeal the ban, which predates Arizona’s statehood and includes only an exception to save the life of the pregnant woman.

Amid the bipartisan outcry, drama was stirred in the Arizona House on Wednesday as Democrats tried to bring forward a bill to repeal the law.

Republicans got ahead of them, with Rep. Matt Gress moving to bring the legislation to the floor. But then he quickly joined other Republicans to temporarily adjourn for recess before they could vote.

There were then chants of “shame, shame, shame” from Arizona Democrats, per members in the room.

The state House later narrowly voted, 30-29, to adjourn for the next week.

Democratic Rep. Stephanie Stahl Hamilton — who introduced the proposal in the House to repeal the ban — made a passionate speech to her colleagues amid the voting on the second motion to adjourn.

“We’re in a real moment right now. We’ve got the eyes of the world watching the state of Arizona. And that’s not hyperbole,” she said.

“This is probably one of the most important decisions we will make this legislative session. And when people’s lives are at stake, we don’t have time to waste. So today we need to stay in this chamber,” she said.

Republican Rep. Teresa Martinez then took to the floor to advocate for the body to adjourn so that they might not “rush on this very important topic.”

She also decried the actions of her Democratic colleagues earlier in the day, when they chanted “shame” at Republicans on the floor.

“I cannot believe the lack of decorum and childish behavior displayed,” she said.

Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, slammed state Republicans, saying they “had the chance to do the right thing for their constituents, and they failed.”

“I will do everything in my power to protect reproductive freedoms for Arizona women. … My heart is with every single woman who is now questioning if it is safe for them to start a family. I am proud to be a voice for every Arizonan who believes in freedom and bodily autonomy,” Hobbs said in a statement to ABC News.

“This fight is far from over,” she said.

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House fails to pass procedural vote on FISA in blow to GOP

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(WASHINGTON) — A key procedural vote on a bill to reauthorize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act failed on the House floor on Wednesday, another sign of Republican infighting under Speaker Mike Johnson’s leadership.

Nineteen Republicans broke ranks with party leadership and voted against the measure, despite urging from Johnson that the legislation reformed the FISA program and is necessary for national security. The final vote was 193-228.

“We will regroup and formulate another plan,” Johnson told reporters after the defeat. “We cannot allow Section 702 of FISA to expire. It’s too important to national security. I think most of the members understand that.”

“It’s never helpful for the majority party to take down its own rule,” he added.

FISA is a federal law that establishes procedures for intelligence gathering of foreign nationals, but sometimes results in the collection of data on Americans who are in contact with those surveilled individuals.

Hard-line Republicans are opposed to reauthorizing FISA without an amendment that would require the intelligence community to obtain an additional warrant to access the data of those Americans. Some civil liberties groups, including the ACLU, have also pushed for similar reforms. The bill voted on Wednesday didn’t include the warrant amendment.

The requirement of an additional warrant, the intelligence community has warned, could create a massive backlog in the FISA process and effectively shut down the program.

Former President Donald Trump ramped up pressure on GOP lawmakers to oppose the legislation as he weighed in on the matter ahead of the vote.

In a post on his conservative social media site, Trump said to “KILL FISA” as part of his grievances against the FBI’s handling of surveillance against Carter Page, a former adviser to his campaign.

Johnson tried to sell House Republicans on the FISA legislation during a closed-door conference meeting earlier Wednesday despite growing opposition, according to several members.

This is the fourth rule vote that’s failed during Johnson’s six months as speaker, an embarrassment for House Republican leadership.

Every Democrat also voted against this procedural vote, a common practice in the House where the minority party votes against the procedural votes of the majority.

Democratic leadership and the White House have vocally supported FISA reauthorization and a majority of Democrats would likely ultimately vote to extend FISA when the legislation is brought up for an official vote.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan, speaking with reporters at the White House on Tuesday, also made his case for Congress to reauthorize FISA.

“If we lost 702 [of FISA], we would lose vital insight into precisely the threats Americans expect us in government to identify and counter,” Sullivan said.

Sullivan proceeded to list off some examples: “Terrorist threats to the homeland, fentanyl supply chains bringing deadly drugs into American communities, hostile governments’ recruitment of spies in our midst, transnational repression by authoritarian regimes, penetrations of our critical infrastructure, adversaries’ attempts to illicitly acquire sensitive dual use and military commodities and technology, ransomware attacks against major American companies and nonprofits, Russian war crimes and more.”

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Mayorkas takes heat from GOP in hearings on DHS budget, border

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(WASHINGTON) — Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said that the DHS has a “perennially insufficient budget” and pushed for each agency to receive needed funds, including efforts to secure the southern border, he testified before two different congressional committees on Wednesday.

Mayorkas, who the House voted to impeach in February over his handling of the migrant surge at the southern border, spoke about the president’s fiscal 2025 budget request as Republicans blasted him over his handling of the border.

The budget includes billions of dollars to help fight terrorism, secure the United States’ borders, strengthen disaster resilience and more, Mayorkas said. The budget also includes $4.7 billion for the Southwest Border Contingency Fund to fund border security measures and immigration enforcement efforts along the southern border.

“The dedicated public servants of DHS deserve full support, and the American people deserve the results a fully resourced DHS can deliver,” Mayorkas said in his opening statement to the House Appropriations Committee. “The funding opportunities outlined in the President’s Fiscal Year 2025 Budget for DHS are critical to meeting both goals.”

Mayorkas called the situation at the southwest border a crisis.

“Yes, I would,” he said, when asked whether he would call the situation at the southern border a crisis. “As a matter of fact, I work every single day with the men and women in the Department of Homeland Security to not only strengthen security of our southern border as well as the northern border, and we deploy personnel from different parts of our department whenever the situation so warrants and the situation at the border.”

He also called on Congress to pass the bipartisan border bill — a package Senate negotiators worked on with the DHS and Mayorkas. In February, the Senate didn’t pass the bipartisan foreign aid bill with major new border provisions. The Senate then removed the border provisions — voting only on the national security supplemental, which passed. Speaker Mike Johnson rejected that bill and hasn’t brought it to the House floor for a vote.

“Only Congress can fix our broken and outdated system, and only Congress can address our need for more border patrol agents, asylum officers and immigration judges, facilities, and technology,” Mayorkas said at the House hearing. “Our administration worked closely with a bipartisan group of senators to reach agreement on a national security supplemental package — one that would make the system changes that are needed and give DHS the tools and resources necessary to meet today’s border security challenges. We remain ready to work with you to pass this tough, fair, bipartisan agreement.”

In the Senate’s Homeland Security budget hearing later Wednesday, Mayorkas repeated the call to pass a border deal, saying the agreed-upon border legislation would have addressed problems he had personally observed for decades.

“My first encounter with the immigration system — the broken immigration system — was in the 1990s when I served as a federal prosecutor in California and I learned that the system was fundamentally broken and it remains so,” Mayorkas said.

“This piece of bipartisan legislation would have been the most transformative change to our broken immigration system, not only for the resources it provided, but for the changes in the law, that it delivered. It would have brought … such extraordinary fairness in a system that has suffered backlogs and interminable timelines in the processing of claims,” he said.

Mayorkas said the bill would have changed the “risk calculus” for migrants deciding whether to embark on a dangerous journey north. This deterrence effect would have been an “absolute game changer,” Mayorkas said.

Questioned by Republican Sen. John Kennedy about unauthorized immigrants counting for congressional representation, Mayorkas said it was “preposterous” and “disrespectful” to suggest the department has allowed illegal immigration to freely occur.

During the House hearing, Mayorkas was pressed about resources being used to secure the southern border, taking heat from Republicans, who are pushing for his ouster.

“Mr. Secretary, we’ve seen gamesmanship out of the administration and gimmicks and I called for your resignation last year, and I stand by my request,” Rep. Ashley Hinson, R-Iowa, told him.

The House voted to impeach Mayorkas on Feb. 13 by a vote of 214-213 over what Republicans claimed was his failure to enforce border laws amid a “crisis” of high illegal immigration, allegations the secretary denied as “baseless.”

The DHS and Mayorkas have criticized the impeachment efforts. His impeachment proceedings are set to begin next week.

Asked by Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., about migrants who are committing crimes in the country, Mayorkas said Immigration and Customs Enforcement works with other agencies to find and remove them.

“I believe that when an individual poses a threat to public safety, or national security, your local or state jurisdiction should cooperate with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement for the swift detention and removal of that individual,” he said.

While the surge of migrants at the southern border hit an all-time high in December 2023 at 302,000, in the past year, the DHS has deported 630,000 migrants, the vast majority of whom crossed the southwest border — including more than 99,000 individual family members, a DHS official said.

Mayorkas was also asked about communities that don’t comply with an ICE detainer — which is when an illegal migrant is flagged for removal while they are in a local jail. Some communities do not allow for the detainer to be executed.

“We continue to work with local jurisdictions to persuade them that when an individual poses a threat to public safety, and the individual has a detainer placed on him or her that they honor the detainer and not release the individual onto the streets, but rather turn the individual over immigration and customs enforcement,” he said.

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Trump says Arizona abortion ban ruling goes too far, again touts role in ending Roe

Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the media as he arrives at the Atlanta Airport on April 10, 2024 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Megan Varner/Getty Images)

(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that a new court ruling in Arizona upholding a near-total ban on abortion in the state, based on a 19th-century law, had gone too far and “needs to be straightened out.”

It was the latest example of how the 2024 candidate is now trying to balance his support for abortion opponents without embracing the broader bans that voters have been rejecting.

“It’s all about states’ rights and it needs to be straightened out,” Trump said in Atlanta, reacting to the ruling. “And I’m sure that the governor and everybody else will bring it back into reason and that will be taken care of.”

Trump also told ABC News that he will not sign a federal abortion ban if he is elected president again and Congress sends such legislation to his desk.

Asked about a separate Florida court decision earlier this month that upheld the state’s 15-week ban and paved the way for a six-week ban, Trump said his home state “is probably going to change” while again touting his role in the “incredible achievement” of overruling Roe v. Wade’s abortion protections and leaving it up to the states.

“We did that and now the states have it, and the states are putting out what they want. It’s the will of the people,” he said.

“Arizona is going to definitely change,” he continued. “Everybody wants that to happen.”

Trump would not say how he intends to vote on an upcoming ballot measure in Florida which would broaden abortion access there.

When asked explicitly about the November referendum, Trump quipped instead that he’s going to vote for Brian Jack, his former political adviser, who is running for a House seat in Georgia.

Later, during a visit to a Chick-fil-A, Trump said it should be up to the states to decide if doctors should be punished for performing abortions if they are illegal.

“Let that be to the states,” he said. “Everything we’re doing now is states and states’ rights.”

Rival Joe Biden’s campaign responded by slamming Trump’s comments about Roe and suggesting his new position on abortion can’t be trusted because he “lies constantly – about everything.”

“Donald Trump owns the suffering and chaos happening right now, including in Arizona, because he proudly overturned Roe – something he called ‘an incredible thing’ and ‘pretty amazing’ just today,” Biden campaign spokesman Michael Tyler said.

Biden was also asked at the end of a press conference on Wednesday: “What do you say to the people of Arizona right now who are witnessing a law go in place that dates back to the Civil War era?”

He was interrupted by reporters before he could complete his thought, but he appeared to be criticizing the ban for being so old.

The Arizona Supreme Court’s decision on Tuesday on the abortion ban drew differing reactions from state Republicans who previously claimed to be “100% pro-life” while both local and national Democrats vowed to push to protect abortion access in one of the most politically important states on the 2024 map.

Vice President Kamala Harris is planning to travel to Tucson on Friday for her “Fight for Reproductive Freedoms.”

“Arizona just rolled back the clock to a time before women could vote – and, by his own admission, there’s one person responsible: Donald Trump,” Harris said in a statement on Tuesday.

Biden, in a statement through the White House, also blasted the Arizona ban, which only has exceptions to save the life of the pregnant woman. Biden called the restrictions “cruel” and the “result of the extreme agenda of Republican elected officials who are committed to ripping away women’s freedom.”

GOP Senate candidate Kari Lake, who narrowly lost the governor’s race in 2022, said in her own statement that she supports Trump’s stance on abortion and claimed that as a senator she would oppose both “federal funding” and “federal ban[s]” on abortion.

However, Lake also regularly says she’s “100% pro-life” and supports “saving as many babies as possible.”

Asked last month how she would vote on a pro-abortion access initiative if it made it on the ballot in Arizona, Lake dismissed the question to simply say, “I’m pro-life.”

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‘I don’t have any files for you,’ man tells Trump’s lawyers after they subpoena wrong person

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(NEW YORK) — There are multiple Jeremy Rosenbergs in New York City, as former President Donald Trump’s attorneys found out Tuesday after they sent a subpoena to the wrong one.

Last month, Trump’s attorneys in his criminal hush money case in Manhattan sought to subpoena the Jeremy Rosenberg who was a supervising investigator in the Manhattan district attorney’s office.

Instead, according to court filings revealed Tuesday, the subpoena went to another Jeremy Rosenberg living in an $8 million Brooklyn home.

“I don’t have any files for you,” that Rosenberg wrote to defense attorney Todd Blanche, per the court filings.

Furthermore, that Rosenberg wrote, “I’m keeping the fifteen dollars” Blanche had provided to help him pay the cost of sending the requested documents.

Prosecutors informed the court that was not the Jeremy Rosenberg Trump’s legal team was looking for, after Blanche complained Rosenberg was not being cooperative.

“After receiving defendant’s pre-motion letter, the People spoke with Mr. Rosenberg’s counsel, who informed the People that Mr. Rosenberg was not, in fact, served with the subpoena, that Mr. Rosenberg had not corresponded with defense counsel, and that Mr. Rosenberg does not have any connection to the Brooklyn address where the subpoena purportedly was served,” prosecutors said.

Trump is scheduled to go to trial on April 15 after prosecutors say he falsified business records in connection with a hush money payment his then-attorney Michael Cohen made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels just days before the 2016 presidential election.

The former president has pleaded not guilty and denied all wrongdoing.

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Trump again asks appeals court to delay his upcoming hush money trial

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(NEW YORK) — Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday asked a New York appellate court for an interim stay to his upcoming criminal hush money trial in New York — a tactic that has already failed twice this week.

Trump’s latest effort to scuttle the trial involves a petition against Judge Juan Merchan, challenging his failure to recuse himself from the case and his refusal to allow Trump to make arguments about presidential immunity.

There was no immediate word from the court on when — or whether — a judge will hear those arguments.

Merchan has said presidential immunity does not apply to Trump’s hush money case because he failed to invoke the defense in a timely fashion.

“This Court finds that Defendant had myriad opportunities to raise the claim of presidential immunity well before March 7, 2024,” Merchan wrote earlier this month.

Merchan declined to recuse himself from the case last August, writing that “this Court has examined its conscience and is certain in its ability to be fair and impartial.”

Trump insists that Merchan should not preside over the trial because his daughter did political consulting work for Democrats, creating an “unacceptable appearance of impropriety,” his lawyers have said.

Trump has tried, and failed, twice this week to delay the trial while he challenges a gag order and while he tries to get the case moved out of Manhattan.

The former president last April pleaded not guilty to a 34-count indictment charging him with falsifying business records in connection with a hush money payment his then-attorney Michael Cohen made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels just days before the 2016 presidential election. Trump has denied all wrongdoing.

Jury selection for the trial is scheduled to get underway this coming Monday in New York City.

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Speaker Johnson defends his leadership ahead of meeting with GOP’s Marjorie Taylor Greene

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(WASHINGTON) — House Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday defended his leadership strategy ahead of a meeting with fellow Republican Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene, who has threatened to remove Johnson from his post.

It will be their first sit-down since Greene introduced a motion to vacate the speaker’s chair before the House broke for a two-week recess.

Asked about the upcoming meeting during a press conference alongside other House Republican leaders, Johnson said he and Greene are on the same team when it comes to Republican ideals.

“Marjorie and I don’t disagree, I think, on any matter of philosophy,” he said, calling her a colleague and a friend. “We’re both conservatives. But we do disagree sometimes on strategy with regard to what we put on the floor and when.”

Johnson noted Greene’s anger over the House passage of funding bills to avert a government shutdown, telling reporters he shared her frustration, but they are limited with a one-vote majority in the House and a Democrat-controlled Senate and White House.

“We are not going to get, because of that reality, we are not going to be able to do big transformational changes that we’d like, that we know are necessary,” Johnson said.

The speaker added, “We will never get 100% of what we want and believe is necessary for the country because that’s the reality. It’s a matter of math in the Congress.”

Greene criticized Johnson, laying out her point-by-point case in a letter to colleagues on Tuesday, knocking the Louisiana congressman for working with Democrats to avoid a government shutdown and pledging to act on providing more aid to Ukraine.

“This has been a complete and total surrender, if not complete and total lockstep with, the Democrats’ agenda that has angered the Republican base so much and given them very little reason to vote for a Republican House majority,” Greene wrote in the five-page letter.

Johnson pushed back Wednesday that he didn’t believe allowing the government to shut down was in the GOP’s political interests in trying to keep and expand their majority in the November elections.

“That would put a lot of pressure on the American people … at a very desperate time,” Johnson said of a possible shutdown.

“Nor does a motion to vacate help us in that regard either. It would be chaos in the House,” Johnson said. “So Marjorie and I are going to visit later today, and look forward to the conversation.”

Another point of contention for Greene and other hard-line Republicans is Johnson’s potential movement on Ukraine aid.

The Senate passed its own $95 billion national security supplemental bill in February that included assistance for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, but Johnson has not brought it to the House floor for a vote.

In an interview with Fox News during recess, Johnson pledged to act on Ukraine aid when lawmakers returned to Washington.

But as of Wednesday, Johnson said details on a measure to provide assistance to Ukraine as Russia’s invasion rages on were still being worked out.

“On the supplemental, the House members are continuing to actively discuss our options on a path forward,” he said. “There are a lot of different ideas on that. It’s a very complicated matter at a very complicated time. The clock is ticking on it and everyone here feels the urgency of that, but what’s required is that you reach consensus on it and that’s what we’re working on.”

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Trump files another petition in bid to scuttle upcoming hush money trial

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(NEW YORK) — Former President Donald Trump is trying again on Wednesday to fight his upcoming criminal hush money trial in New York, asking an appeals court to intervene.

The Appellate Division First Department docket shows Trump is filing another petition against Judge Juan Merchan, the New York judge overseeing the case.

The documents associated with Wednesday’s petition are sealed, so the basis for it was not immediately clear.

Trump has tried, and failed, twice this week to delay the trial while he challenges a gag order and while he tries to get the case moved out of Manhattan.

Trump’s attorneys have also been trying to get Merchan removed from the case on the grounds that his daughter has done work for a Democratic political consulting firm.

The former president last April pleaded not guilty to a 34-count indictment charging him with falsifying business records in connection with a hush money payment his then-attorney Michael Cohen made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels just days before the 2016 presidential election. Trump has denied all wrongdoing.

Jury selection for the trial is scheduled to get underway this coming Monday in New York City.

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Ex-Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg sentenced to 5 months for perjury

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(NEW YORK) — Former Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg was sentenced Wednesday to five months in jail for lying under oath during his testimony in former President Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial and during the investigation that preceded it.

Weisselberg, 76, arrived at New York criminal court not in a suit, but dressed for jail in jogging pants and a zip-up jacket.

“The promise is five months of incarceration,” Judge Laurie Peterson said during sentencing.

“Mr. Weisselberg is there anything you’d like to say?” the judge asked.

“No your honor,” Weisselberg replied before court officers handcuffed him and took him into custody.

Weisselberg pleaded guilty last month to two felony counts of perjury that charged him with lying under oath. Prosecutors said Weisselberg lied about his role in valuing Trump’s Fifth Avenue triplex apartment at three times its actual size.

During his trial testimony, Weisselberg struggled to explain why the apartment, which is less than 11,000 square feet, was listed on Trump’s statements of financial condition as 30,000 square feet.

“It was almost de minimis relative to his net worth, so I didn’t really focus on it,” Weisselberg said during trial. “I never even thought about the apartment.”

But Forbes published an article following Weisselberg’s appearance that accused him of lying under oath and suggested Weisselberg did think about the apartment because he played a key role in trying to convince the magazine the apartment was as big as Trump’s financial statements represented.

At the trial, a lawyer with the New York AG’s office, Louis Solomon, confronted Weisselberg with emails from a Forbes reporter seeking clarity about the apartment’s size and a letter signed by Weisselberg certifying the excessive square footage to the Trump Organization’s accountant, Mazars USA.

“Forbes was right, the triplex was actually only 10,996 right?” Solomon asked.

“Right,” Weisselberg finally conceded.

In recent days, defense lawyers for Trump and his adult sons have attempted to recast Weisselberg’s guilty plea as an act of legal coercion, rather than an acknowledgement of wrongdoing.

“To be clear, counsel for Defendants have no ‘knowledge’ that Mr. Weisselberg made false statements during the trial; to the contrary, many believe that Mr. Weisselberg only made such admissions because he was being threatened with life in prison,” defense lawyer Clifford Robert added in a footnote of a filing earlier this week.

New York Judge Arthur Engoron in February ordered Trump to pay $464 million in disgorgement and pre-judgment interest after he found the former president, his adult sons, Weisselberg, and another former Trump Organization executive liable for using “numerous acts of fraud and misrepresentation” to inflate his net worth in order to get more favorable loan terms.

Trump has denied all wrongdoing and has appealed the decision in the case.

Weisselberg last year served three months in jail for tax fraud after he pleaded guilty to 15 felony charges related to his compensation while working for Trump.

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Cornel West to announce running mate for independent 2024 campaign

Presidential candidate Dr. Cornel West speaks to the community and congregation at Second Baptist Church in Santa Ana, Mar. 29, 2024. (Leonard Ortiz/Orange County Register via Getty Images)

(WASHINGTON) — Independent presidential candidate Cornel West will announce his vice presidential pick on Wednesday as he seeks to gain ballot access in additional states ahead of the November general election.

West, a prominent activist, author and philosopher who had entered the 2024 field first as a Green Party candidate before switching to an independent bid, will make the announcement on “The Tavis Smiley Show.”

“On Wednesday, we will joyfully open a new chapter in this ‘moment in a movement,’ by announcing a committed candidate for Vice President who stands in solidarity with poor, oppressed and forgotten people everywhere,” West said in a statement released by his campaign.

His running mate decision will also “allow the campaign to further progress in additional key states which require a VP candidate to obtain ballot access and give voters an independent choice alongside the duopoly candidates,” his campaign noted.

Independent candidates need a running mate to qualify for the ballot in multiple states. Another independent White House hopeful, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., encountered such a dilemma in the state of Nevada, where his lack of a running mate at the time he delivered the signatures required to get on the state’s ballot may now invalidate his efforts to gain access.

Kennedy announced his vice presidential pick, Nicole Shanahan, shortly after the dispute arose. (State officials have not resolved the issue.)

West’s campaign has said he is on the ballot in four states: Alaska, Oregon, South Carolina and Utah, either independently or associated with minor parties, though officials in each state have not yet confirmed that.

He was on the Peace and Freedom March 5 presidential primary ballot in California, where current results show him in second place. Results will be certified in California on April 12.

Going forward, West’s campaign has said they’re attempting to get him on ballots in all 50 states. In January, they announced that he was launching a new political party, the Justice for All Party, in order to more easily gain access everywhere as in some places it’s easier, mostly because of signature requirements, to get on the ballot as a member of a new party rather than as an independent.

Richard Winger, a ballot access expert and political analyst, told ABC News that a number of past third-party or independent candidates have used patchwork methods the way West is attempting in order to get on more ballots.

New party creation is achieved state-by-state, so West may be able to gain access in one place as an independent and another place as a member of the Justice for All Party or even affiliated with other small parties.

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