NEW: Donald Trump is concerned that evidence sought by Michael Cohen in the former president's $500 million lawsuit against his ex-lawyer and fixer could potentially incriminate him in his multiple ongoing criminal proceedings via @bpoliticsbloomberg.com/news/articles/… Michael Cohen “has already requested documents that interfere with and/or relate to the pending criminal proceedings and the underlying facts that form the basis of such criminal proceedings,” Trump attorney Alejandro Brito said in a filing Wednesday in federal court in Miami

NEW: In Dominion Voting Systems Inc.'s $1.6 billion defamation suit against Newsmax over its reporting on the 2020 election, the voting-machine company is asking to see all communications between relevant Newsmax employees and the Trump administration after the election. According to a Dominion court filing, Newsmax doesn't dispute that the Trump emails are relevant to the suit, but it wants Dominion to provide an itemized list of specific Trump staffers and their email domains. Dominion says it needn't be that specific & points to Newsmax's CEO

NEW: Former President Donald Trump’s lawyers in suit accusing Hillary Clinton and dozens of other people of engaging in a conspiracy to harm his reputation were sanctioned by the judge for bringing frivolous claims, ordered to pay $50,000 to the court and $16,000 to one defendant The judge cited a "toxic combination of political fundraising with legal fees paid by political action committees, reckless and factually untrue statements by lawyers at rallies and in the media, and efforts to advance a political narrative through lawsuits without factual basis"

NEW: A federal judge on Tuesday dismissed Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman's lawsuit accusing Donald Trump Jr., Rudy Giuliani and Daniel Scavino of conspiring to retaliate against him for testifying against Donald Trump at his impeachment hearing over the Ukraine phone call "Plaintiff’s pled facts, taken as true, certainly suggest that Defendants leveled harsh, meanspirited, and at times misleading attacks against him,” an Obama-appointed judge wrote. “But political hackery alone does not violate" the law they were accused of breaking, the KKK Act

SCOOP: Donald Trump has said one reason the FBI found boxes of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago was that federal workers packed up the White House. Records obtained by Bloomberg's @JasonLeopold under a FOIA request tell a different story bloomberg.com/news/articles/… via @bpolitics More than 100 pages of emails and shipping lists between White House and transition staff and the General Services Administration describe the minutiae of moving the Trump to Florida, down to how many rolls of bubble wrap, all within a plan signed by Chief of Staff Mark Meadows

NEW: An appeals court granted DOJ’s bid to expedite its challenge to the appointment of a #SpecialMaster to review documents seized from Trump’s estate. DOJ argued speed was of the essence in its Trump criminal probe. Story w/ @ZoeTillman bloomberg.com/news/articles/… via @bpolitics The order Wednesday from the federal appeals court in Atlanta didn’t specify when it would hear arguments—or which judges would hear the case—but set a briefing schedule that wraps up on Nov. 17. Trump had argued against expediting the case & suggested oral arguments in January.

NEW: A writer who claims Donald Trump sexually assaulted her during an interview and a former saleswoman who says he groped her on an airplane are among the witnesses whose upcoming depositions in E. Jean Carroll's defamation suit he's wants to put on hold bloomberg.com/news/articles/… Natasha Stoynoff, who says Trump attacked her at his Mar-a-Lago home when she was interviewing him for People in 2005, and Jessica Leeds, who says he groped her when they sat next to each other on a flight three decades ago, are both set to be deposed Oct. 13, court filings show

My latest: Donald Trump sued CNN for defamation, accusing the network of smearing him -- including with frequent comparisons to Adolf Hitler -- to undermine a potential run for re-election in 2024 bloomberg.com/news/articles/… CNN has tainted Trump’s image by using “ever-more scandalous” labels to describe him, including “racist,” “Russian lackey,” and “insurrectionist,” culminating in false comparisons to the late Nazi leader, according to a suit filed in federal court in Fort Lauderdale, Florida

ICYMI: A group of former prosecutors who served in GOP administrations told the 11th Circuit on Friday that Judge Cannon's #specialmaster ruling had given Trump special treatment. The group urged the court to let DOJ continue using seized classified records in its criminal probe "A former President is entitled to no greater protection under the law than is any other citizen..[C]oncern for reputational harm is not a valid basis for enjoining a criminal investigation, especially one that is inexorably intertwined with a national security damage assessment"

My latest: Donald Trump failed to meet a key filing deadline in his effort to stop the US from being removed as a defendant in his lawsuit accusing Hillary Clinton and various officials of conspired against him during the Russia probe bloomberg.com/news/articles/… US District Judge Donald Middlebrooks on Friday said Trump failed to respond by Sept. 1 to a motion to dismiss filed by the US government, which is one of many defendants in the suit filed under a civil racketeering law. He extended the deadline to Sept. 6

My latest: A federal judge declined to rule from the bench on Thursday after hearing arguments on Donald Trump’s request for a neutral third party to review documents seized from the former president’s home by FBI agents seeking classified records bloomberg.com/news/articles/… The DOJ argued Trump had no right to such a review. “He is no longer the president,” said Jay Bratt, the DOJ’s counterintelligence chief. “And because he is no longer the president, he did not have the right to take those documents. He was unlawfully in possession of them.”

My latest: White House records held in a storage room at Donald Trump’s estate may have been concealed or removed before an FBI search for classified documents in June, suggesting possible attempts to obstruct the probe, the DOJ told a judge bloomberg.com/news/articles/… via @bpolitics The DOJ made the assertion in a response to Trump’s suit seeking appointment of a special master to review the documents taken from Mar-a-Lago and flag any records subject to attorney-client or executive privilege. The DOJ said the request should be denied.

NEW: In Trump's special master suit, a half dozen former federal prosecutors & ex-NJ Governor Christine Todd Whitman filed an amicus brief saying: "Regardless of one’s political views, it is clear that there is no legal support for the relief requested by the former President" Reminder: the DOJ has until the end of the day to meet a court-ordered deadline to file its public response to Trump's Aug. 22 lawsuit. Trump will then have until 8PM Wed. night to respond, followed by an in-person hearing in West Palm Beach on Thurs. at 1PM

Secret Service Director James Murray will retire after serving in the post for three years. Murray raised eyebrows by allowing Anthony Ornato, a senior Secret Service official, to serve as a political adviser to Trump while he was president

politi.co/3AvN5il via @politico The retirement comes shortly after former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony to the House Jan. 6 committee probing the attack on the Capitol, in which she highlighted Ornato's dealings with Trump and other White House aides as the insurrection played out

Nearly 2 1/2 years since the pandemic began, the most infectious and transmissible variant yet has arrived. BA.5—which is evolving, escaping immunity and driving an uptick in cases and hospitalizations—is a clear sign that the pandemic is far from over cnn.com/2022/07/13/wor… In Europe, the Omicron subvariants are powering a spike in cases of about 25%, though Dr. Michael Ryan, the executive director of WHO's Health Emergencies Program, has said that number may actually be higher, given the "almost collapse in testing."

My latest: New York’s assault-weapons ban is the target of a new lawsuit by a national gun rights group. The Firearms Policy Coalition argues the statute is unconstitutional because it deprives residents of popular AR-15 semiautomatic rifles bloomberg.com/news/articles/… via @bpolitics “AR-15 rifles are among the most popular firearms in the nation, and they are owned by millions of Americans,” the Sacramento-based nonprofit said in the complaint, adding that nearly 25 million Americans have already owned up to 44 million such rifles in the US

Twitter's complaint: “Having mounted a public spectacle to put Twitter in play...Musk apparently believes that he...is free to change his mind, trash the company, disrupt its operations, destroy stockholder value, and walk away" bloomberg.com/news/articles/… via @technology Lawyers for Twitter told a Delaware judge that the world’s richest man failed to honor his agreement to pay $54.20 a share for the San Francisco-based social-media platform. Musk abandoned the deal Friday, citing in part concerns about the number of fake accounts among users

My latest: Fox News’s parent must face a defamation suit by Dominion Voting Systems because Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch may have acted with “actual malice” in directing Fox to broadcast a conspiracy theory that it rigged the 2020 election
bloomberg.com/news/articles/… via @bpolitics Delaware state court Judge Eric Davis noted in his ruling Tuesday that Dominion cited in its suit a report that Rupert Murdoch spoke with Trump a few days after the election “and informed him that he had lost,” yet the network continued to air claims Dominion rigged the vote

Rudolph Giuliani’s lawsuit seeking to reverse Donald Trump’s Pennsylvania loss in the 2020 presidential election led to formal allegations -- called charges -- being filed against him by the bar association in Washington, D.C. The charges were filed in April and made public today The bar’s board of professional responsibility claims Giuliani filed a frivolous lawsuit and “engaged in conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice." The move escalates his problems in D.C., where he was temporarily suspended last year. A trial of sorts will take place

US Rep. Bennie Jackson kicked off the hearing by comparing #Jan6 apologists to people in his home state of Mississippi who try to justify slavery and the actions of the KKK

#January6thCommitteeHearings NBC News reports that Trump is at his Bedminster NJ golf club tonight. His spokesman declined to comment on whether he’s the watching

Donald Trump, Ivanka and Don Jr. agreed to testify starting July 15 in New York’s probe of potentially fraudulent asset valuations at their real estate company, even as a judge ruled the former president is still in contempt of court over his documents bloomberg.com/news/articles/… The agreement on testimony was outlined in a court filing Wednesday in Manhattan, where New York AG Letitia James sued in 2020 to enforce her subpoenas. James is probing whether Trump manipulated asset valuations to get more favorable terms on bank loans, insurance and tax breaks