Manhattan prosecutors on Monday asked a federal judge to dismiss President Donald Trump’s lawsuit challenging a subpoena for his financial records, emphasizing that their investigation extends beyond hush-money payments and pointing to public reports of “extensive and protracted criminal conduct” at the Trump Organization.

Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance’s lawyers have previously said the probe is expansive, and on Monday they pointed out that when the subpoena was issued, “there were public allegations of possible criminal activity at Plaintiff’s New York County-based Trump Organization dating back over a decade.”

Last week, lawyers for Trump filed an amended complaint seeking to block the state grand jury subpoena to Trump’s long-time accountant Mazars USA for eight years of personal and business records by arguing the subpoena was “wildly overbroad” and issued in bad faith.

Trump’s latest legal challenge comes after the US Supreme Court ruled last month that the President does not have broad immunity from a state grand jury subpoena.

In a court filing Monday, lawyers for Vance wrote: “This ‘new’ filing contains nothing new whatsoever, and Plaintiff has utterly failed to make a ‘stronger showing of bad faith than he previously made to this Court.”

The district attorney’s office added that Trump’s lawyers are relying on a false assumption that the investigation is limited to hush-money payments made to two women during the 2016 presidential campaign who alleged affairs with Trump. Trump has denied the affairs.

“Plaintiff’s argument that the Mazars Subpoena is overbroad fails for the additional reason that it rests on the false premise that the grand jury’s investigation is limited to so-called ‘hush-money’ payments made by Michael Cohen on behalf of Plaintiff in 2016,” the district attorney’s office said.

CNN has previously reported that Vance is investigating other transactions that go beyond the hush-money payments.

On Monday, they told the court that given public reports “of these public reports of possibly extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Trump Organization, there was nothing facially improper (or even particularly unusual) about the Mazars Subpoena, which issued in connection with a complex financial investigation, requesting eight years of records from an accounting firm.”

In 2019, Vance’s office described the scope of its investigation in court filings, but redacted several paragraphs over three pages. That filing openly described the hush money investigation because it was already public. US District Judge Victor Marrero privately viewed the unredacted information and found the subpoena was not overly broad.

Last year, ProPublica revealed discrepancies about the information the Trump Organization told tax authorities and lenders about its business. Vance’s office is looking into those allegations, according to people familiar with the matter.

Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney, told Congress in 2018 that he believed Trump artificially inflated the value of some of his assets in dealings with insurers and banks. Cohen offered only three internal financial documents as his proof, but no other documents to bolster his claims.

The district attorney’s office interviewed Cohen as part of its Trump investigation at least three times last year, CNN has previously reported. People familiar with the inquiry say Cohen was asked about the range of allegations he has made against the President.

Source: CNN

The US military said Sunday it has called off a search for seven Marines and a sailor missing at sea for days, saying they were presumed dead.

The military personnel were aboard an amphibious vehicle that sank Thursday in deep water off the coast of California during a training exercise.

“It is with a heavy heart that I decided to conclude the search and rescue effort,” said Colonel Christopher Bronzi, commander of the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit.

During the 40-hour search, Marine, Navy and Coast Guard helicopters, ships, and watercraft searched more than 1,000 square nautical miles, the Marines said in a statement.

A total of 16 service members were on the amphibious vehicle — until now eight were rescued but one later died, and two others are in critical condition.

The search and rescue operation now shifts to one aimed at finding the bodies of the missing service members, Bronzi said.

Source: AFP

The US Republican Party’s vote to nominate its presidential candidate this month will be held in private, without press in attendance.

A Republican National Convention spokeswoman gave coronavirus health guidelines as the reason, the Associated Press reports.

Delegates are due to gather in North Carolina to formally renominate President Donald Trump.

The 336 delegates will meet on 24 August in the city of Charlotte.

They will cast proxy votes for some 2,500 official delegates. Mr Trump is the party’s sole remaining nominee, and his renomination will officially launch his re-election bid.

The party was “working within the parameters set before us by state and local guidelines regarding the number of people who can attend events” , the spokeswoman said.

The decision marks a significant change for the convention, which historically has worked to draw media attention to spread party messaging to the public.

Mr Trump had switched the location of the convention to Jacksonville, Florida, after the Democratic governor of North Carolina insisted in May on limiting the crowd size at the convention, on the grounds of social distancing.

But Mr Trump later scrapped the Florida convention , blaming the state’s coronavirus “flare-up”.

Source: BBC

President Donald Trump said Friday night that he will ban the popular short-form video app TikTok from operating in the United States, rejecting a potential deal for Microsoft to buy the app from its Chinese-owned parent company.

“As far as TikTok is concerned, we’re banning them from the United States,” Trump said to reporters while aboard Air Force One.

Trump said he could use emergency economic powers or an executive order. It was not immediately clear what such an order would look like and what legal challenges it might face.

Well, I have that authority,” he said.

Earlier on Friday, people working on the issue within the Trump administration expected the President to sign an order to force ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns the social media platform, to sell the US operations of TikTok, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The move was aimed at resolving policymakers’ concerns that the foreign-owned TikTok may be a national security risk.

The US government is conducting a national security review of TikTok and is preparing to make a policy recommendation to Trump, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told reporters this week at the White House.

ByteDance has been considering changes to its corporate structure and had reportedly already been looking into the possibility of selling a majority stake in TikTok.

Microsoft (MSFT) is in talks to acquire TikTok, according to the New York Times, citing a person with knowledge of the discussions. Microsoft declined to comment to CNN Business. Trump firmly rejected the idea of a potential spin off deal satisfying national security concerns.

The app has exploded in popularity in the US and other western countries, becoming the first Chinese social media platform to gain significant traction with users outside of its home country. It was downloaded 315 million times in the first three months of this year, more quarterly downloads than any other app in history, according to analytics company Sensor Tower.

Critics of TikTok worry that the data it collects on its US users could end up in the hands of the Chinese government, though TikTok has said it stores its data outside of China and that it would resist any attempts by Beijing to seize the information.

“TikTok US user data is stored in the US, with strict controls on employee access. TikTok’s biggest investors come from the US. We are committed to protecting our users’ privacy and safety as we continue working to bring joy to families and meaningful careers to those who create on our platform,” TikTok spokesperson Hilary McQuaide told CNN Business Saturday.

Cybersecurity experts have said TikTok’s potential risk to national security is largely theoretical and that there is no evidence to suggest that TikTok’s user data has been compromised by Chinese intelligence.

This story and its headlining have been updated with President Trump’s comments Friday night.