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A federal appeals court has upheld the conviction of a Republican operative who had been pardoned by Donald Trump in the waning days of his presidency.

The District of Columbia Circuit Court rejected an appeal by Jesse Benton, a former senior aide to Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Rand Paul, of his November 2022 conviction for orchestrating a scheme to conceal a $100,000 donation from a Russian national to his GOP consulting firm — and pocketing most of it.

Russian businessman Roman Vasilenko wired the money under his own name to the consulting firm, but Benton kept $75,000 for himself and gave $25,000 under his name to the presidential campaign for Trump, who posed for a photo with Vasilenko. Benton then filed a false report with the Federal Election Commission to conceal the source of the funds, the court found.

The Trump campaign was not aware of the true source of that donation.

Benton had appealed the conviction, saying Trump's 2020 pardon should have prevented the jury from hearing about his previous election crimes before convicting him of the newer charges.

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However, prosecutors argued that the unusual manner in which Trump handed out pardons by sidestepping the Justice Department's Office of the Pardon Attorney should have allowed them to present evidence of Benton's previous conviction for bribing an Iowa politician to switch his endorsement in 2011 to Ron Paul's long-shot presidential campaign.

The 45-year-old Benton, who is married to Ron Paul's granddaughter, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for that straw donor scheme.

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Details never before made public are expected to be admissible in Donald Trump's latest New York trial — and onlookers are expecting them to be revealing.

New York Times investigative reporter Sue Craig said she was "struck" by the "new information" revealed in Monday's opening statements, which includes a series of text messages from National Enquirer reporters involved in investigating the stories of adult movie actress Stormy Daniels and ex-Playboy model Karen McDougal, who claimed to have had affairs with Trump.

One of the text messages, Craig said, read: "What have we done?"

Trump's latest trial kicked off in earnest Monday as each side delivered their opening speeches over Trump's 34-count felony indictment over the hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels.

"We've heard about text messages that went back and forth with the National Enquirer when they went out to see Karen McDougal, one of the women who had a relationship with Donald Trump," Craig said.

"They were trying to confirm if the story was true."

Craig noted that one of the lawyers representing McDougal was involved in election night texting with somebody at the tabloid, which was previously unknown.

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"We'll see a lot of that come through. And David Pecker was not on the stand for very long, but just hearing the details that we got, the idea that ... reporters were given about $10,000 to get that story," recalled Craig.

"And I wasn't clear if that included payment to somebody or expenses and payment, but anything above that, he would have to sign off on it. What that told me was the payments that went to Karen McDougal, that went to Stormy Daniels, were unusual. They were high."

She referenced a Trump doorman who was paid $30,000 to stay quiet about a possible Trump love child. McDougal was given $150,000, while Daniels was given $130,000.

During the second half of the show, Lawfare's Anna Bower agreed with the assessment that there was new information that dropped and there will likely be even more. There is some conversation about what will ultimately be admissible out of that information that is new.

"We heard a lot about phone records the prosecution intends to introduce," Bower said. "So, I think that we certainly will see new evidence. But the question is — there were these questions about whether it would be admissible for hearsay reasons."

See the video below or at the link here.

Hearing prosecutors read the 'Access Hollywood' words was 'cringier' than Trump's voice youtu.be