Election Updates: Watchdog group accuses the Trump campaign of violating finance law. (2024)

Steve Garvey, the former L.A. Dodgers star and Republican U.S. Senate candidate in California, accused University of Southern California of enabling pro-Palestinian protests and equated the encampments to terrorism for obstructing "the pathway to classes." The school's provost noted yesterday that it asked protesters to remove the tents and closed campus gates to keep the demonstration from growing.

During a speech about federal investments in semiconductor manufacturing, Mr. Biden again trolled Republicans who voted against or criticized his CHIPS act. “My predecessor and his MAGA Republican friends have a very different view,” Mr. Biden said, as he celebrated $6.1 billion grant for Micron. Referring to Representatives Brandon Williams and Elise Stefanik, Biden said, “I guess they’re not going to be here today to celebrate.”

President Biden is preparing to deliver a speech celebrating $6.1 billion in grants to Micron Technology, the latest federal award to bolster semiconductors. “It’s going to have a gigantic impact,” Biden said. As he entered the science and technology museum where he will speak here in Syracuse, a group of about 100 pro-Palestinian protesters across the street chanted “ceasefire now!”

Five Republicans and three Democrats submitted signatures to the state of Michigan to try to qualify for their party primaries on Aug, 6 for the state's open U.S. Senate seat. G.O.P. petition filers included a trio of former House members: Mike Rogers, Peter Meijer and Justin Amash. The Democrats included Representative Elissa Slotkin and the actor Hill Harper.

Federal filings show that Christina Bobb was paid $5,288.82 on March 29 by the R.N.C., which provided a statement from Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesman, in response to questions about her status. Mr. Cheung said Ms. Bobb’s indictment in Arizona was another example of Democrats’ weaponization of the justice system. “The Democrat platform for 2024: if you can’t beat them, try to throw them in jail.”

One name to watch in the Arizona election indictment is Christina Bobb, a right-wing former lawyer for Donald Trump whom the R.N.C. hired as a senior election counsel. “This tells you all you need to know about today’s Republican National Committee,” Liz Cheney wrote on X, “The person in charge of election integrity for the @GOP was just indicted in Arizona for a lack of election integrity.”

North Carolina’s elections board said Thursday that felons who have not completed their sentences remain ineligible to vote, including parolees and those on probation and supervised release. It attempted to clarify their status after a federal judge on Monday blocked the state from enforcing an 1877 law, one criticized as discriminatory, that made it a crime for offenders who voted without knowing about the ban.

Donald Trump made a campaign stop this morning at a construction site in Manhattan, where he shook hands with union members. The brief visit, meant to highlight Trump’s criticism of Biden’s economic policies, exemplifies how his campaign intends to balance his court schedule with stops in media-heavy New York City that help him broadcast his national message.

Several lawyers and advisers to former President Donald J. Trump, including Rudolph W. Giuliani and Mark Meadows, were indicted in Arizona on Wednesday in connection with efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Trump was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the case, as well as in a similar case in Michigan.

Donald Trump’s legal team will argue to the Supreme Court this morning that he can’t be prosecuted because former presidents have “absolute immunity” from criminal charges for acts they took in office. Trump’s campaign, meanwhile, sent out a fund-raising email last night titled “Put Biden on Trial,” saying, “CROOKED JOE DESERVES LIFE IN PRISON!”

Watchdog group accuses the Trump campaign of violating finance law.

In its complaint, the Campaign Legal Center said that the Trump political committees had used Red Curve, which did not appear to offer legal services, “as a conduit to conceal payments for legal services.” The group filed its complaint hours after The Daily Beast published an article about the payments to Red Curve.

Neither Red Curve nor representatives of the Trump campaign responded to a request for comment.

“This apparent payment scheme, however, violates the reporting requirements of the Federal Election Campaign Act,” the complaint said, “which requires that committees provide detailed information about who they are paying for services, and how much they are paying for those services.”

The complaint also said that Red Curve advanced payments for the legal costs to the Trump committees as part of the payment scheme, potentially violating a campaign finance law that prevents corporations from giving money to candidates.

“What Red Curve was doing was basically making a contribution," said Saurav Ghosh, the director of federal campaign finance reform at the Campaign Legal Center. “If it’s treated as a corporation under federal campaign finance law, then that’s illegal on its face.”

He added: “If, alternatively, it’s an unincorporated entity for campaign finance purposes, then the contributions would be in excess” of the amount permitted by federal law.

Mr. Trump has spent more than $100 million on lawyers and other legal costs since he left office in 2021, relying almost entirely on political donations to cover those expenses. Red Curve was the largest single recipient of those payments, receiving $7.2 million, according to records filed to the F.E.C.

The F.E.C. also on Wednesday fined a pro-Trump super PAC $6,075 in a negotiated settlement for failing to disclose $150,600 in in-kind contributions in an April 2022 quarterly report. The super PAC — Make America Great Again, Again — was once a leading fund-raising group for Mr. Trump. It fell under scrutiny last year for an unusual payment of $155,000 to Melania Trump, Mr. Trump’s wife, for a speaking engagement.

The Trump campaign did not respond to questions about the fine.

In its complaint concerning Red Curve, the Campaign Legal Center cited what it said were similar violations of campaign finance law. The watchdog group noted the use of a law firm by Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee in 2016 that made payments to the firm Fusion GPS to conduct research against Mr. Trump — research that was used in what became known as the Steele dossier. The Clinton campaign and the D.N.C. agreed to pay $113,000 in fines to settle an F.E.C. investigation into campaign spending disclosures.

“It’s similar to this situation,” Mr. Ghosh said of the Fusion GPS case. “In that there was, you know, a lack of transparency about who’s getting paid. What is the payment for?”

Trump again compares campus protests to the violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville.

The current campus protests, while resulting in hundreds of arrests, have had no reports of significant violence.

But standing outside a Manhattan courthouse on Thursday, Mr. Trump said, “Charlottesville was a little peanut and was nothing compared — and the hate wasn’t the kind of hate that you have here. This is tremendous hate.” Of President Biden, he added, “We have a man that can’t talk about it because he doesn’t understand it.”

Andrew Bates, a spokesman for the White House, said in a statement that “minimizing the antisemitic and white supremacist poison displayed in Charlottesville is repugnant and divisive.” He added: “That moment compelled President Biden to run in 2020, because he has fought antisemitism and hate his entire life.”

Mr. Trump had used that same characterization about Charlottesville only a day earlier in a post on his social media site. The former president diminished the violence at the far-right rally, calling it “like a ‘peanut’” compared with the campus protests against the war in Gaza, which he distorted as “riots and anti-Israel protests.”

Mr. Trump also in that post repeated an attack on President Biden, saying that he “HATES Israel and Hates the Jewish people,” while adding “the problem is that he HATES the Palestinians even more, and he just doesn’t know what to do!?!?” Mr. Trump has repeatedly insulted Jews who vote for Democrats and for Mr. Biden, saying that they hate their religion and Israel.

Representatives for the Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Trump — who also presided over civil unrest set off by the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in May 2020 — sought to downplay a chapter of his presidency that garnered widespread outrage and criticism.

In Charlottesville’s aftermath, Mr. Trump repeatedly drew a moral equivalency between the white supremacists — who brandished swastikas, Confederate flags and “Trump/Pence” signs — and peaceful counterprotesters, asserting that there were “very fine people on both sides.”

Underpinning the Charlottesville gathering of neo-Nazis, antisemites and white supremacists was a racist conspiracy theory, called the great replacement theory, which says that elites, sometimes manipulated by Jews, seek to “replace” and disempower white Americans. The growing prominence of the theory in far-right circles has incited racist terror attacks across the world, including several mass shootings in the United States.

Mr. Biden has in recent months faced protests and opposition to his presidential campaign from Americans who are sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians and angry at the United States for arming Israel in the fighting in Gaza. Mr. Trump’s social media post on Wednesday sought to portray many of these protesters as a riotous mob, while also seeking to stoke protesters’ anger by claiming that Mr. Biden hates the Palestinians.

Some of the campus demonstrations have included hate speech and expressions of support for Hamas, the militant group in Gaza that carried out attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, killing about 1,200 people. In response to those attacks, Israel has waged a war on Hamas in Gaza, killing more than 34,000 people, mostly women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. This week Mr. Biden condemned demonstrations that he said veered into antisemitism, but he also expressed sympathy for the Palestinians.

“I condemn the antisemitic protests,” Mr. Biden told reporters on Monday. “I also condemn those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians.”

Biden was in Syracuse as Trump’s trial continued in Manhattan.

Mr. Trump’s trial in a Manhattan courthouse was in recess on Wednesday, and will pick back up today — most likely unfolding as Mr. Biden gives his speech in upstate New York, 250 miles away. Mr. Trump made a brief campaign stop early in the morning at a construction site in Manhattan.

It is a dynamic that will continue for at least several more weeks: While Mr. Biden campaigns across the country, Mr. Trump has often been in the Manhattan courtroom.

Mr. Trump has tried to make campaign stops outside of the courtroom, as he did Thursday morning, and on the weekends. But a rally that he had scheduled in North Carolina last weekend was called off because of weather.

And Mr. Trump’s legal troubles have only grown in recent days. On Wednesday, Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mark Meadows and a number of other Trump allies were indicted in Arizona for their role in a fake elector scheme in 2020 that sought to overturn the results of the election in that state. The indictment includes conspiracy, fraud and forgery charges, related to efforts by the defendants to change the 2020 election results.

Mr. Trump was also named an unindicted co-conspirator in the case.

On Wednesday evening, Mr. Trump weighed in on the growing pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses, distorting the mostly peaceful demonstrations as “riots” while downplaying the violence at a 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., saying that “Charlottesville is like a ‘peanut’” in comparison to the current student protests.

Mr. Trump, in the same social media post, accused Mr. Biden of hating Israel and Jewish people, even as Mr. Biden reaffirmed his commitment to Israel as “ironclad.” Mr. Trump has made similar accusations against Jews who vote for Democrats, saying that they hate Israel and their religion.

Trump makes a campaign stop in Manhattan before his trial resumes.

His warm reception — a cheering crowd of roughly 100 people gathered behind him, chanting “we want Trump” — marked a stark contrast from the sober environment of the courthouse where Mr. Trump has spent most weekdays since his trial began last week, and where his comments have largely been limited to addressing reporters in the hallway during breaks.

Mr. Trump has not held a rally since just before the trial began, in part because a planned event in North Carolina last weekend was canceled because of weather. But his visit to the construction site typifies how his campaign is using retail stops in New York, a left-leaning state not expected to be in play in November, to help broadcast his national message.

“I have a lot of support here,” Mr. Trump said, as roughly two dozen workers clambered up scaffolding and equipment to catch a glimpse of him. Among those in the crowd were members of the Teamsters union, whose endorsem*nt Mr. Trump has been courting.

The trip to the construction site kicks off what will be a significant day in Mr. Trump’s legal battles. In Manhattan, where Mr. Trump is accused of falsifying business records, David Pecker, the former publisher of The National Enquirer, is expected to return to the stand and detail the hush-money payment at the center of his case. Asked by reporters, Mr. Trump said that Mr. Pecker had been “very nice” and called him a “nice guy.”

In Washington, the Supreme Court will consider Mr. Trump’s argument that he is immune from prosecution on federal charges that he plotted to subvert the 2020 election. Mr. Trump, who will likely be in the Manhattan courtroom during the oral arguments before the Supreme Court, repeated an argument he has been making for months that “a president has to have immunity, otherwise you just have a ceremonial president.”

Mr. Trump’s appeal to working-class voters was key to his victory in 2016, and as he tries to return to the White House, he has been eager to win the support of rank-and-file union members and to drive a wedge between them and labor leaders who have long favored Democrats.

In January, Mr. Trump met with the Teamsters union’s executive board and said he believed he had a “good shot” at securing the influential union’s endorsem*nt. The union endorsed Mr. Biden in 2020, and its leaders met with the president last month.

Mr. Biden has for years touted his allegiance to unions. On Wednesday he received the endorsem*nt of the North America’s Building Trades Unions, an umbrella group whose leaders pointed to Mr. Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure package.

Jason Miller, a senior Trump campaign adviser, said that Thursday’s visit had been “on the books for some time” and was part of the campaign’s larger strategy to contend with the scheduling challenges posed by the Manhattan trial.

“Since the Biden Trials are an attempt to keep us off the campaign trail, we’ll bring the campaign trail to us,” he said. Mr. Trump has said without citing evidence that the charges are part of an “election interference” scheme orchestrated by Mr. Biden.