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Michael Cohen testified Monday he secretly recorded Donald Trump in the lead-up to the 2016 election, discussing plans to buy a Playboy model’s story about having an affair with the then-candidate. Cohen — who worked for Trump for more than a decade — told jurors in Manhattan Court that the Sept. 6, 2016, conversation, taped on the Voice Memos app on his iPhone, was the only time he surreptitiously recorded his former boss. “So, what do we got to pay for this? One-fifty?” Trump could allegedly be heard saying on the nearly three-minute recording played in court by Assistant District...

Former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker will return the witness stand today for the second day of Donald Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial over covering up “hush money” payments to a porn star. Pecker will resume testimony where he is expected to detail the inner workings of a scheme he, Trump and his “fixer” lawyer Michael Cohen devised to buy up and bury bad news during the 2016 presidential election. Trump is on trial for allegedly fudging business records to conceal a $130,000 payoff to Stormy Daniels made before the 2016 presidential election. The 72-year-old ex-CEO of the Enquirer’s parent company,...

Six Massachusetts eighth graders face criminal charges in connection with "hateful and racist comments" in a group chat that allegedly included threats and a mock slave auction, officials said. The group chat unfolded on Snapchat on Feb. 8 into the early morning hours of Feb. 9 among multiple juveniles in Southwick, a suburb of Springfield, according to the Hampden County District Attorney's Office. Several students "expressed hateful and racist comments, including notions of violence toward people of color, racial slurs, derogatory pictures and videos, and a mock slave auction directed at two juveniles known to them," Hampden District Attorney Anthony...

One of former President Trump’s assistants reportedly told federal investigators Trump wrote to-do lists on the backs of classified documents, according to an ABC News report. ABC News, citing sources familiar with the matter, reported former Trump aide Molly Michael told investigators the former president wrote requests or tasks for her on the back of notecards, which she later realized were White House documents “with visible classification markings.” The documents were reportedly used to brief the former president about international matters and phone calls with foreign leaders, ABC News reported. Sources familiar with the matter told ABC News the notecards...

Margo Kaplan is not very popular today. In the Monday edition of the New York Times, the Rutgers-Camden law professor, an NYU and Harvard graduate, takes to the op-ed pages to argue that we’ve got it all wrong when it comes to pedophilia. She writes that pedophiles don’t necessarily turn out to be child molesters and that pedophilia is not a choice, i.e. a pedophile might be born that way. We reached her in her office in Camden to discuss. pedophilia-not-a-crime-rutgers-margo-kaplanYou really lit up the comments section of the op-ed page today. Yes, but I have to be honest. I...

After five weeks and a slate of witnesses that included a who’s who of Washington media and political insiders, a jury will now decide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s fate. The prosecution and defense gave their closing arguments this week, with Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald taking one last opportunity to claim that Libby lied to the FBI regarding his knowledge about the identity of desk set CIA analyst Valerie Plame, and leaked this non-classified information to the media. Libby’s lead defense attorney, Theodore Wells, noted that Libby had a faulty memory, nothing more. Last week, six major Washington reporters all testified...

National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley is reported by Raw Story to be the source who informed the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward of Valerie Plame’s CIA employment and her role in arranging Joe Wilson’s trip to Niger.