Tuesday, April 30, 2024

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1/ Trump was held in contempt of court and fined $9,000 for repeatedly violating a gag order that barred him from making public statements about witnesses and jurors in his Manhattan criminal trial. Trump was also ordered to remove seven “offending” social media posts and two posts on his campaign website. Judge Juan Merchan warned Trump he could be jailed for further violations. (Associated Press / NPR / Wall Street Journal / Axios / NBC News / CNBC)

• On the witness stand today: Keith Davidson, the lawyer who represented Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal when they sold their stories of affairs with Trump to the National Enquirer.

• “I have a blockbuster Trump story,” Davidson said in a text to an Enquirer editor, referring to McDougal’s relationship with Trump.

• Davidson testified that interest in Stormy Daniels’s story intensified after the emergence of the “Access Hollywood” tape, on which Trump bragged about assaulting women.

• “Every single time I talked to Michael Cohen he leaned on his close affiliation with Donald Trump,” Davidson testified. “I don’t know if it was ever explicitly stated that ‘I am negotiating this matter on behalf of Donald Trump,’ but it was part of [Cohen’s] identity.”

• Sources: New York Times / Washington Post / NBC News / Associated Press / CNN / Politico / Bloomberg

2/ House Democrats said they’d block Marjorie Taylor Greene’s effort to remove Speaker Mike Johnson. Greene and two other Republicans hardliners have threatened for weeks to introduce a motion to oust Johnson because he worked with Democrats to approve a $95 billion foreign aid package for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. “If she invokes the motion, it will not succeed,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said. “From the very beginning of this Congress, House Democrats have put people over politics and found bipartisan common ground with traditional Republicans in order to deliver real results. At the same time, House Democrats have aggressively pushed back against MAGA extremism. We will continue to do just that.” Greene, nevertheless, suggested she’d force a vote anyway, saying: “if the Democrats want to elect him Speaker (and some Republicans want to support the Democrats’ chosen Speaker), I’ll give them the chance to do it.” (Politico / WTF Just Happened Today? for more news and headlines, brought to you by Matt Kiser. The WTFJHT Podcast is narrated and produced by Joe Amditis.