Politics

Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/GettyJurors who will determine Donald Trump’s fate got their first look at the damning paperwork tying the former president to his porn star hush-money coverup, with testimony from the buffoon accountant who took notes of a meeting that set it in motion.“I made a boo-boo,” Jeffrey S. McConney admitted when describing the erroneous math he scribbled on “TRUMP” corporate letterhead.The former Trump Organization controller testified about the notes he took during a 2017 meeting that laid out how the family real estate company was going to surreptitiously reimburse attorney Michael Cohen for fronting the $130,000 that silenced the porn star Stormy Daniels. That payment kept her from going public about her decade-old, one-night stand with Trump in the days before the 2016 presidential election.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Sonu Mehta/Hindustan Times via Getty ImagesAn Indian lawmaker whose party is allied with the country’s prime minister is believed to have fled to Germany amid allegations that he sexually assaulted or raped as many as 400 women, reports say.Prajwal Revanna, the grandson of former Indian prime minister H.D. Deve Gowda, allegedly fled after thousands of flash drives were left in public places including parks and bus stands last month in the southern state of Karnataka, where Revanna holds office. The drives contained videos allegedly showing the abuse which Revanna filmed himself, according to The Times.The Janata Dal (Secular) or JDS party, which is allied with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), last week suspended Revanna amid the allegations. A Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the claims has reportedly sought the help of Interpol in locating the 33-year-old, who allegedly left the country using a diplomatic passport.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via GettyA super PAC backing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. plans to sue Meta this week, alleging that the parent company to Instagram and Facebook “brazenly” censored a documentary about the candidate.Meta insists that American Values 2024 is being melodramatic. In a statement to The Daily Beast, a spokesperson said the film was “mistakenly blocked” and that the problem was “quickly resolved” after it was flagged. The company previously told The New York Times that the resolution took at most a few hours.According to a press release issued by American Values on Monday, many Facebook and Instagram users were unable to share the 30-minute, Woody Harrelson-narrated documentary about the candidate, Who Is Bobby Kennedy?Read more at The Daily Beast.

ADAM ROSEINGLEWOOD, Calif. — There’s locker-room talk, and then there’s what the entire global Netflix subscriber base may have witnessed Sunday night.Seven-time Super Bowl champion quarterback Tom Brady allowed his former teammates, coach, owner, his longest on-field rival, a couple of celebrities and a pack of truly unleashed comedians go off on him in the largest-attended, longest-ever and most likely most-watched live broadcast of a comedy roast from the Kia Forum for the Netflix is A Joke Fest. The old Friars Club roasts in New York City may have gone longer and featured as much raunch back in the day, but none of those events were ever live streamed globally to a potential audience in the mega millions.Kevin Hart set the tone and the bar below the belt from the get-go as the roast’s host, saying this about the Forum’s previous sports dynasty owners of the 1980s Los Angeles Lakers. “They called this place Showtime because Jerry Buss used to show everybody his dick in this building,” Hart joked. “A lot of nasty shit has happened in this building … I wish I had a blacklight right now, I’d turn that bitch on now so y’all can see all the cum stains you sitting on in these nasty-ass seats.” He then cackled, adding: “Hahaha! That’s right. You better get comfortable being uncomfortable, baby!”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Brendan McDermid/Pool/AFP via GettyDonald Trump has booked a one-way ticket to jail, and the judge overseeing his ongoing New York criminal trial on Monday said he’s ready to send him there at any moment.New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan started the fourth week of Trump’s trial with a speech that’s more than a year in the making, explaining why he hasn’t yet thrown the politician into the slammer—making what he called his final warning to the former president.“I’ll find you in criminal contempt for the tenth time,” Merchan said in a stark tone. “It appears that the $1,000 fines are not serving as a deterrent. Therefore, going forward, this court will have to consider a jail sanction. Mr. Trump, it’s important to understand the last thing I was to do is put you in jail. You are the former president of the United States, and possibly the next one as well.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

John David Mercer/USA Today Sports via ReutersDonald Trump’s hush money trial enters its fourth week Monday following the Star Wars Day weekend, which was seized on by both Republicans and Democrats alike as an opportunity for some pop culture-infused PR for their respective presidential candidates. Joe Biden posed alongside actor Mark Hamill in the White House, while the North Carolina Republican Party depicted Trump as “A New Hope” in a Star Wars-themed post (which drew mockery for seeming to inadvertently cast him as a villain).But the “Hope” that will be on the mind of jurors at the beginning of the 12th day of Trump’s trial is Hope Hicks, his former senior aide who broke down into tears on the stand while testifying Friday about how the campaign responded to the explosive emergence of the Access Hollywood tape—in which Trump boasted about groping women—on the eve of the 2016 election.Hicks said she knew the tape was “going to be a massive story” and that it would be “a damaging development.” The infamous recording had also figured earlier in the week in the testimony of lawyer Keith Davidson, who said it had had a “tremendous influence” on the interest in claims being made by his client, porn star Stormy Daniels, of an alleged affair with Trump.Read more at The Daily Beast.