“What they did was so illegal, at a level that you’ve rarely seen before,” Trump said in November 2021. “Now, in all fairness, it looks to me like this is just the
What to know about the Trump indictment on the eve of his court appearance
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Chris Christie explains why he thinks Trump skipped debate
Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie talks with CNN’s Phil Mattingly about why he believes Donald Trump skipped the third Republican debate.
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READ: Trump indictment related to hush money payment
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News outlets will not be allowed to broadcast former President Donald Trump’s arraignment on Tuesday in a New York state court, a judge said Monday night, but he will allow some photographers to take pictures in the courtroom before the proceedings formally begin.
Acting New York Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan rejected the request by several media organizations, including CNN, for permission to broadcast the historic proceedings. Trump’s arraignment — like most arraignments in the Manhattan courthouse — is a public proceeding, but news cameras are not usually allowed to broadcast from inside the courtroom.
However, the judge is allowing five pool photographers to take still photos at the beginning of the proceedings “until such time as they are directed to vacate the jury box by court personnel.”
Earlier on Monday, Trump’s lawyers urged the judge to reject the media’s request for live cameras in the courtroom. The Manhattan District Attorney’s office told the judge they didn’t have a position.
The media outlets that tried to get cameras into the courtroom argued that “the gravity of this proceeding … and, consequently, the need for the broadest possible public access, cannot be overstated.”
Trump is now in Manhattan ahead of the arraignment. A grand jury indicted the former president last week.
The arraignment is also expected to bring the unsealing of the criminal charges against Trump, which have not yet been seen by his lawyers or the public.
The indictment stems from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s investigation into hush-money payments, made during the 2016 presidential campaign, to women who claimed they had extramarital affairs with Trump, which he denies.
Trump denies all wrongdoing and his lawyers said last week that they’ll fight to get the charges dropped.
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Nordstrom. Neiman Marcus. TJ Maxx. And now, Sears and Kmart.
Sears Holdings, the company that owns retail stores Sears and Kmart, reportedly said this weekend that it would remove 31 Trump-branded items from its website.
The company pulled the products as part of a plan to focus on its “most profitable items,” Sears spokesman Brian Hanover told Reuters.
Hanover told the news organization that items in the Trump Home line of furnishings were removed from the company’s website, although they could still be purchased through third-party vendors online. Neither store carried the items in their physical stores, he said.
Searches of the Sears and KMart websites did not turn up Trump Home products, except for those sold by third-party vendors.
In a statement Monday, spokesman Chris Brathwaite distanced Sears from any political controversy and reiterated that many Trump-branded products are still available through third-party sellers.
“In this case, certain products were removed from our websites that included a very small number of Trump products,” he said. “The headlines do not do justice to our business or this specific brand of products that we offer through our marketplace sellers.”
Brathwaite added that the company prefers to focus on its business and “leave the politics to others.”
Related: Is Ivanka Trump’s brand losing its bling?
The move makes Sears the latest to ditch products bearing the Trump name.
Earlier this month, Nordstrom (JWN) cited brand “performance,” not politics, as the reason why it decided to stop carrying Ivanka Trump’s clothing and accessories label.
President Trump knocked the department store on Twitter in retaliation. Nordstrom stock jumped 7% in the first two days following the tweet.
Other stores have also sought to distance themselves from Ivanka Trump’s brand.
Neiman Marcus removed the brand landing page from its website, and declined to tell CNNMoney whether it intended to keep Ivanka Trump products in stores or resume online sales in the future.
TJX Companies (TJX), the company that owns TJ Maxx and Marshalls, also said that it had recently told workers not to highlight the first daughter’s brand in stores.
And retailer Belk said last week that it planned to pull Ivanka Trump’s products from its website, but would continue to offer the line in its flagship stores.
Ivanka Trump’s clothing and accessories line has taken a hit in recent months.
Online sales of her brand dipped 26% in January compared to a year earlier, according to Slice Intelligence, a retail analysis firm. Slice studied the brand’s sales on five online stores: Nordstrom, Amazon, Zappos, Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s.
Online sales of Ivanka’s brand had surged in late 2015, and last month’s numbers appear to be more of a “return to reality,” according to Taylor Stanton, Slice’s marketing and communications manager. The brand’s dip in performance was abnormal in light of an uptick in 2016 online sales in the apparel and accessories category, said Jack Beckwythe, a Slice analyst.
Related: Kellyanne Conway unrepentant for Ivanka Trump plug
The Ivanka Trump brand has defended its performance.
Rosemary Young, senior director of marketing at Ivanka Trump, told CNNMoney last week that the brand was growing and experienced “significant year-over-year revenue growth in 2016.”
“We believe that the strength of a brand is measured not only by the profits it generates, but the integrity it maintains,” Young said.
Retailers like Bloomingdale’s, Amazon (AMZN), Lord & Taylor, Macy’s (M) and Zappos all still carry Ivanka Trump products.
Ivanka Trump has taken a leave of absence from her namesake company since her father won the presidency. She has no formal role in the administration but is expected to have a voice on issues such as women’s empowerment and child care.
–CNNMoney’s Jackie Wattles contributed to this story.
CNNMoney (New York) First published February 12, 2017: 3:35 PM ET
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“What they did was so illegal, at a level that you’ve rarely seen before,” Trump said in November 2021. “Now, in all fairness, it looks to me like this is just the early building blocks.”
By February of this year, he was going even further. “It looks like this is just the beginning, because, if you read the filing and have any understanding of what took place, and I called this a long time ago, you’re going to see a lot of other things happening, having to do with what, really, just is a continuation of the crime of the century,” Trump told Fox News. “This is such a big event, nobody’s seen anything like this.”
All of which makes the news that the Durham probe appears to be wrapping up its work all the more impactful. CNN reported that one of the top prosecutors working with Durham has left the Justice Department for a job in the private sector. And The New York Times reported that a grand jury empaneled by Durham has expired, with no plans for another one to be revived.
To date, the Durham probe has led to three prosecutions — none of which even come close to the grandiose claims made by Trump that Clinton and her associates would somehow be implicated in the investigation. As CNN noted:
“There are reports that Durham’s team also looked into a wide range of other matters that … Trump has publicly complained about — without bringing any charges. This includes potential wrongdoing by the CIA and other parts of the US intelligence community, on topics related to Russia’s pro-Trump interference in the 2016 election.”
It’s also worth remembering here what the FBI’s original counter-intelligence investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election actually found: That Russia actively sought to meddle in our election, with the express purpose of helping Donald Trump and harming Hillary Clinton. They did so because they believed Trump would be better for their interests.
That was the conclusion of not just special counsel Robert Mueller, who conducted a probe into the matter, but also of a bipartisan report from the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Now it’s worth noting that the Durham probe is not, in fact, over just yet. And that we have not seen the final report that Durham will produce on his findings. (It will be up to top Justice Department officials how much of the final report is made public. Attorney General Merrick Garland has said he would like to release “as much as possible.”)
So, it’s not over until it’s over — and all that.
But what seems plain is that all of Trump’s hype of the Durham probe has been empty. Three low-level prosecutions is not the “crime of the century,” as Trump has called it. Nothing that has come out to date suggests that Hillary Clinton or anyone remotely in her orbit had anything to do with the start of the FBI’s counterintelligence operation to look into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election.
These facts will, of course, not get in the way of Trump’s continued obsession. He has, of late, used his Truth Social platform to villainize the Department of Justice and, if the Durham probe winds up being a total nothing burger, will likely insist that it’s because the department has been weaponized against him.
His proof of that claim? Nonexistent. But that won’t keep his base from believing him. Just like they did about the Durham probe being the thing that would blow the lid off of the whole grand conspiracy of people out to get him — or something.
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The Dow, S&P 500, Nasdaq and Russell 2000 each hit new all-time highs Monday.
Investors are giddy with excitement and they clearly believe that both big blue chip multinationals and smaller companies that do most of their business in the U.S. will continue to thrive.
So is this the Donald Trump rally? Or the Janet Yellen rally?
Some strategists believe Trump’s stimulus plans and talk of killing many burdensome regulations are the reasons stocks are soaring.
Or perhaps this is better characterized as a continuation of the Barack Obama rally instead?
You could argue that POTUS 44 has dealt POTUS 45 a pretty good hand.
The solid job market and overall economy that Trump inherited may be the reason consumers and businesses are so confident.
But investors (and financial journalists) are often quick to give the president more credit — and blame — than they probably deserve for the performance of the stock market.
RBC strategist Jonathan Golub pointed this out in a report on Monday, one that was aptly titled “Message to Market: It’s Not All About Donald.”
Related: Trump isn’t killing the bull market
Golub noted that the S&P 500 rose nearly 7% from late June through Election Day — a time when most polls were predicting that Hillary Clinton would be the next president.
But stocks have continued to rally since then, rising another 8% since Trump pulled off the upset (at least to the mainstream media and Wall Street) victory.
You can’t have it both ways. It makes no logical sense to suggest that stocks rallied because investors believed Trump would lose and that they continued to rally because Trump didn’t lose.
Bond yields have also been rising since Trump won, a phenomenon that many investors have attributed to the likelihood of stimulus from the president and Republican Congress.
Yet Golub points out that the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury was going up during the late summer as well.
Of course, many investors were expecting stimulus from Clinton too.
Yet once again, many investors are claiming that Trump is the catalyst for something that not only was going on before he was elected, but was happening because many thought he would lose.
Related: Stocks have avoided a 1% dive for an unusually long period of time
So it’s odd that Trump is being cited as the main reason for a market rally that began months before anyone felt he could win.
What’s really going on? The one constant during the past few months is the Federal Reserve.
Yes. the markets are reacting to Washington. But they are paying closer attention to Janet Yellen, not the White House.
The Fed made it crystal clear before the election that it would probably raise interest rates in December and do so a few more times in 2017 regardless of who won the race for president.
The good news for investors is that the U.S. economy seems to be growing steadily, but does not appear to be at risk of overheating.
Related: Here’s why the world’s largest money manager is worried
The most recent jobs report showed that wages grew at a decent rate of 2.5% annually. But that’s not nearly high enough to spark fears of runaway inflation and lead the Fed to aggressively raise rates.
Even if Yellen and the Fed hike rates three times this year, they are likely to do so by just a quarter point every time. That would push the Fed’s key short-term rate to a range of 1.25% to 1.5%.
That’s still extremely low. At those levels, stocks would still be more attractive than bonds. Corporate earnings should be able to keep rising at a healthy clip. And consumers would probably keep spending.
So investors would be wise to keep a close eye on Yellen and not just have a myopic focus on the president,
With that in mind, Yellen is set to testify in front of Congress on Tuesday and Wednesday. And what she says about the timing and magnitude of future rate hikes could wind up keeping the rally going full steam ahead — or stopping it dead in its tracks.
CNNMoney (New York) First published February 13, 2017: 12:30 PM ET
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