Trump returns to court for New York fraud trial after skipping debate: Live updates

After walking back inside the courtroom during a morning break, Trump paused to chat with two courtroom sketch artists seated behind the attorney general’s team.

The artists, hired by news organisations to capture the inside of the no-photos-allowed courtroom, told The Independent that he approved their work. “Nice,” he said.

He also pointed to a sketch of himself, saying “it looks like I need to lose some weight” as he gestured to his neck, they told The Independent.

In addition to appealing Judge Chutkan’s denial of his motion to dismiss, the former president has moved for a stay of all district court proceedings pending resolution of his appeal. If the judge does not grant a stay within seven days, Mr Trump requests a temporary stay of administrative proceedings while he pursues relief from the Court of Appeals.

Such an appeal could be the one thing that delays the trial. While Judge Chutkan is determined to start on 4 March 2024, but a stay could push things back. While the Circuit courts move quickly, appeals courts do not.

Further time could be added if the appeal goes all the way to the Supreme Court. A March start date is starting to look ambitious.

The former president has repeatedly raged at the suggestion that he, at the age of 77, is not as sharp as he used to be.

During a Fox News town hall on Tuesday night, Mr Trump said: “I’ll say our real president is Barack Hussein Obama – they’ll say ‘he doesn’t know who the president is, he thinks it’s Barack Hussein’ – no, I’m being sarcastic.”

A defence witness for Trump and his co-defendants snapped at counsel with the office of New York attorney general after suggesting that he was merely being paid to say what Trump’s team wanted.

“You make up allegations that never existed,” said NYU accounting professor Eli Bartov.

“I’m here to tell the truth,” he said. “Shame on yourself, talking to me like that.”

Judge Arthur Engoron told Mr Bartov to settle down before breaking the courtroom for lunch.

The hearing will resume this afternoon. Stay tuned with The Independent.

A state appeals court on Thursday has declined to stop Donald Trump’s fraud trial, extending an earlier decision that allows the case to continue while blocking key sanctions outlined in Judge Arthur Engoron’s blockbuster pretrial ruling.

Trump, meanwhile, is back in court for the first time in a month t owatch testimony from the second-to-last defence witness.

The former president is the final witness. He’ll return to the stand on Monday.

The federal judge overseeing Donald Trump’s election subversion case roundly rejected his attempts to dismiss the charges on the grounds of presidential immunity.

Read why US District Judge Tanya Chutkan rejected his motion last week:

Another legal challenge to Donald Trump’s eligibility has been filed, this time in the state of Oregon.

As with the other cases, it seeks to disqualify him from state ballots under section 3 of the 14th Amendment: “This is an action to prevent Donald J Trump … from appearing on the 2024 presidential primary or general election ballots because, having sworn an oath to support the Constitution of the United States, he has “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof” and is therefore disqualified from public office.”

And here’s Alex Woodward’s reporting on the Colorado case, which has now reached the state’s Supreme Court:

“Generally accepted accounting principles” provide the framework for creating statements of financial condition, the documents that are at the heart of the case against Trump and his business.

His sons and co-defendants Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump testified that they didn’t know much about GAAP. Neither did Ivanka Trump.

In his taped deposition earlier this year, NYU accounting professor Eli Bartov said he told Trump’s legal team that he also is “not really familiar” with GAAP.

Before he resumed his testimony after a morning break, giant screens next to the witness stand showed a slide titled “Financial reporting and GAAP” with definitions of what that is, exactly.

The attorney general’s office objected to that. Trump attorney Chrtiopher Kise called the slide “just for lack of a better word a teaching aid.”

“What we don’t want is for this to be up on the screen during witness testimony,” AG counsel Louis Solomon said.

The screens were off when Bartov returned, and the first question from Trump attorney Jesus Suarez was “what is GAAP?”

On his way back into the courtroom following a morning break, Trump stopped to chat with the two courtroom sketch artists. I’m a bit too far away to make out what he was saying, but he was smiling with them and gestured to their canvases.

He then took his seat with his defence attorneys to hear more testimony from Eli Bartov, an accounting professor at NYU.