Donald Trump Scrambles to Assemble a Legal Team

Trump fights charges with politics

Donald Trump, who last week became the first former president to face federal charges, arrived in Florida before his scheduled first appearance tomorrow in federal court on criminal charges of mishandling sensitive national security documents and seeking to thwart the government’s efforts to reclaim them.

My colleagues reported that Trump is planning to spend tonight at his Doral resort in Miami, where he and his legal team will conduct last-minute interviews with lawyers to represent him in the case. (One of his current attorneys could be a key witness.)

His defense against the federal prosecution, which is likely to play out during his campaign for president, is likely to focus more on the politics of charging a former president than on the facts of the case. In recent days, Trump has been quick to place blame for his indictment on Democrats, the “Deep State,” and the Justice Department — which he described as “a sick nest of people that needs to be cleaned out immediately.”

Some of Trump’s allies have taken the political attacks even further, portraying the charges as an act of war and calling for violent retribution. It is unclear, in the end, what a jury of Floridians will make of it all; even some reliable Republicans there have complicated feelings about the former president.

NATO aims to be a war-fighting alliance again

Twenty-four NATO countries — including Finland, the alliance’s newest member — participated today in giant air force drills in Germany, which called them the largest deployment of aircraft in the alliance’s history.

The training comes as fighting escalates in Ukraine, where Kyiv’s forces are mounting an offensive to reclaim territory captured by Russia. More than 250 aircraft and 10,000 personnel are taking part in the two-week exercises, which one expert described as a “signaling” campaign to President Vladimir Putin of Russia.

“A lot of what today was, was to show Russia that it’s ready,” said my colleague Lara Jakes, who reported from an air base in Wunstorf, Germany. “This was a war game that was supposed to look exactly like the response should a NATO state be attacked.”

JPMorgan will pay $290 million to Epstein’s victims

JPMorgan Chase, America’s largest bank, said today that it had reached a settlement with sexual abuse victims of Jeffrey Epstein, the deceased financier, after weeks of embarrassing disclosures about its longstanding relationship with him. The bank is expected to pay $290 million to resolve a lawsuit over claims it ignored warnings about Epstein.

The end of an era in Italy

Whatever people in Italy thought of Silvio Berlusconi — the brash media mogul who revolutionized Italian television and then became the country’s most polarizing and prosecuted prime minister — they all recognized his outsize influence. He left an imprint, or a bruise, on almost everything he touched.

How noise could take years off your life

The world has plenty of noise we can’t tune out — shrilling sirens, barking dogs, blazing jets and clacking jackhammers — all of which affects us more than we might think. A growing body of research suggests that chronic noise is an unrecognized health threat.

Unpleasant noises are relayed to the stress detection center in your brain, and they can trigger a cascade of reactions that over time can lead to inflammation, hypertension and plaque buildup in arteries — increasing the risk of heart disease, heart attacks and stroke. Here’s how to check noise exposure wherever you live, work or gather.

Some statues just can’t get a head

As often as not, the ancient statues on display in the world’s most famous and frequently visited museums have lost their heads. It’s similarly common to see a severed statue head on display.

The explanations for the separations are aplenty, including wear and tear, smugglers looking to sell two pieces rather than one and ancient insurgents who decapitated statues to undermine the authority of rulers.

Many museums have sought to reunite the headless torsos with wayward heads, or vice versa. But finding a match can be like finding a needle in a haystack.

Have a complete evening.