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Rudy Giuliani targets Donald Trump for ‘unpaid legal fees’ in new bankruptcy filing

Donald Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani has listed a claim against the one-term president over unpaid legal fees in a new bankruptcy filing.

The ex-New York City mayor includes a “possible claim for unpaid legal fees against Donald J Trump.” in the 26 January filing, which states that the amount is “undetermined.”

Mr Giuliani filed for bankruptcy last month, days after a federal judge ordered him to “immediately” pay more than $148m to a pair of Georgia election workers a jury determined he defamed.

Mr Giuliani represented Mr Trump in a string of unsuccessful lawsuits contesting the results of the 2020 election that he lost to Joe Biden.

Mr Trump’s legal fees owed to Mr Giuliani have previously been reported. The New York Times wrote in August 2023 that “Mr Trump has never explicitly told Mr Giuliani why he is effectively stiffing him, but the former president has pointed out that he lost the cases related to the election.”

Rudy Giuliani speaks to members of the media on  21 January 2024 in Manchester, New Hampshire (Getty Images)

Rudy Giuliani speaks to members of the media on 21 January 2024 in Manchester, New Hampshire (Getty Images)

The newspaper reported that the former president told his aides that he didn’t want Mr Giuliani to receive “a dime” unless he

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Ex-Trump DOJ lawyer Jeffrey Clark hit with legal ethics charges over post-election role

Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department attorney at the center of former President Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election results, was hit Friday with ethics charges alleging that his role in the post-election effort amounted to a breach of legal ethics.

The charges, filed by the District of Columbia Bar Office of Disciplinary Counsel, sets in motion disciplinary proceedings over allegations that Clark engaged in dishonest conduct and sought to interfere with the administration of justice and will culminate in findings that could affect Clark’s D.C. law license.

Clark, who specialized in environmental law at the Justice Department, clark-draft-letter.html”attempted to send a letter to Georgia officials pushing the state to suspend certification of its 2020 election results until the Justice Department investigated fraud claims, despite agency leaders saying such claims were without merit.

After former Attorney General William Barr resigned in December 2020, Clark pushed Trump to nominate him to lead the Justice Department and pursue the president’s false election claims.

Clark said that if selected as acting attorney general he would send the letter to state legislatures, despite warnings from fellow Justice Department lawyers about incorrect information.

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Opinion | ‘Detached From Reality’ Is Trump’s Best Defense at This Point

One potential charge that is getting a lot of attention on social media is conspiracy to defraud the United States, which would require the Department of Justice to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump agreed with others to obstruct a lawful function of the government by deceitful or dishonest means. I’ve charged that statute before when I was a federal prosecutor in the context of a dishonest tax avoidance scheme.

At the core of any fraud prosecution is proving the defendant’s dishonesty and intent to defraud beyond a reasonable doubt. That’s why Trump’s state of mind — in particular, proof regarding whether he believed what he was peddling — is so important. And why his rather complicated state of mind presents serious problems for prosecutors.

Some have suggested that prosecutors can sidestep this problem by relying on a willful or deliberate ignorance theory. In certain circumstances, the law recognizes that a defendant’s deliberate attempts to avoid knowledge of an incriminating fact demonstrates their knowledge of that fact. For example, if someone approaches you a few miles from the U.S. border and offers you $5,000 to drive a U-Haul across the border, your deliberate refusal to look at what’s

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