Free Republic

NEW YORK — President-elect Donald Trump was sentenced Friday in his felony hush money case, but the judge declined to impose any punishment, an outcome that cements his conviction but frees him to return to the White House unencumbered by the threat of a jail term or a fine.Trump’s sentence of an unconditional discharge caps a norm-smashing case that saw the former and future president charged with 34 felonies, put on trial for almost two months and convicted on every count. Yet, the legal detour — and sordid details aired in court of a plot to bury affair allegations —...

NEW YORK -- After spending four months in federal prison for snubbing a congressional subpoena, conservative strategist Steve Bannon had a message Tuesday for prosecutors in cases against him and President-elect Donald Trump. “You wait. The hunted are about to become the hunters,” Bannon said outside a New York court where he's now facing a state conspiracy trial as soon as next month. He stepped into a waiting car without elaborating on what “the hunters” intend to do. The longtime Trump ally's latest trial is set to start Dec. 9 — but could be postponed after a hearing Monday —...

President Donald Trump has lost a bid to block an advice columnist’s lawsuit over his remarks that she lied in accusing him of rape. In a decision this week, a Manhattan judge declined to order a hearing on Trump’s request to dismiss E. Jean Carroll’s defamation suit and to put evidence-gathering on hold in the meantime. A lawyer for Trump, Lawrence Rosen, had argued the New York court shouldn’t handle the case, saying that the president’s statements weren’t made in the state and that Trump currently lives in Washington, not New York, his longtime home. Judge Doris Ling-Cohan said the...

California and New York — where almost 1 in 5 Americans live — are on their way to raising their minimum wage to $15 an hour, and the activists who spearheaded those efforts are now setting their sights on other similarly liberal, Democratic-led states. Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington are among the states with active “Fight for $15” efforts, and even economic experts who oppose the increased rate see it gaining momentum. “There is lots of pressure to do this,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former Congressional Budget Office director who is now president of...