‘HUSH’ CASE REVISIT
Is Don off hook?
Donald Trump faces an uphill battle as he attempts to nix his hush-money case using the Supreme Court’s bombshell ruling granting presidents immunity for “official acts,” legal experts say.
The high court’s Monday decision dealt a crushing blow to the federal electioninterference case against the 78-year-old Republican — but his bid to overturn his Manhattan conviction in light of the ruling is a long shot.
What is Trump arguing?
Trump’s lawyers are arguing that prosecutors in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office improperly allowed jurors to hear evidence from Trump’s time in the White House, including key testimony from his former top aide Hope Hicks.
Hicks testified that Trump, in a 2018 conversation when he was president, felt “it was better to be dealing” with sex allegations from porn star Stormy Daniels at that time than before the 2016 election.
The testimony was “devastating” evidence that the hush money to Daniels was part of an illegal “conspiracy” to hide her story from voters in 2016, prosecutor Josh Steinglass said in his closing statement.
Could his conviction be overturned?
Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan has left open the possibility that he could side with Trump and vacate the jury’s May 30 verdict finding the ex-president guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
But legal eagles said it’s likely Merchan will rule that Trump’s covering up the Daniels hush money payment throughout 2017 — including by signing checks to Michael Cohen while sitting in the Oval Office — is not part of a president’s official duties.
When will he be sentenced?
Merchan, after prosecutors agreed to a delay, moved the July 11 sentencing date to Sept. 18.
“This is an example of the court and the prosecution trying to be fair and hear out the claims that he has in order or not to have an appellate issue,” Duncan Levin, a criminal defense lawyer and former federal prosecutor, told The Post. “But none of the claims are likely to actually change the outcome.”
What sentence does he face?
Trump faces up to four years in prison on his felony convictions.
But given that the realestate mogul was found guilty of nonviolent crimes and has never been convicted before, experts say he’s unlikely to get hard time and is more likely to receive probation or community service — or delay a prison sentence pending appeal.
If Trump wins the election in November, he wouldn’t serve any theoretical time behind bars until he leaves office, according to experts.
But since the hush-money case is a state case, he would have no power to pardon himself.
No more taking out the trash or doing the dishes, now kids will get allowances for appearing on social media.
In Illinois, an amendment to the state’s Child Labor Law went into effect Monday requiring that children who appear on their parent or guardian’s YouTube or TikTok be paid for appearances.
The bill says that children under the age of 16 should receive 15% of an influencer’s gross earnings if they appear in at least 30% of monetized content online.
Mothers, fathers or minders must be responsible for putting the earnings into a trust account.
The law also states that the child is allowed to request the deletion of content featuring themselves, and should the adult not comply, the minor has the legal right to sue for damages.
Mommy vloggers and “sharenters” — a term coined to describe parents posting their kids’ milestones online — with more than 1 million followers can earn $20,000 from sponsored content, while those with smaller followers can still earn a few thousand from a single post.
‘Going after pocketbooks’
Shreya Nallamothu, 16, who has been credited with bringing this issue to local legislators in Illinois, said she “kept seeing cases of exploitation” the more she researched.
“Especially for very young children who maybe don’t understand what talking to a camera means and they’re not able to conceptualize what a million people looks like, they don’t understand what they’re putting out into the Internet for profit and that it’s not going to be able to go away and that their parents are making money off of it,” she told “Good Morning America.”
Carolyn Jarrett, a mother and the cofounder of social media marketing agency Oak Street Social, said “going after people’s pocketbooks” is a powerful tactic to get people to wake up, reflect on their behavior and spark conversation.
“I understand where it could go south,” Brooke Raybould, a mother to four boys and a content creator, told “GMA.” “And we need certain bodies to make sure that people are making the ethical decision.”
Raybould boasts more than 702,000 followers on Instagram, where she regularly posts content featuring her husband, sons and their day-to-day life as a family.
In just two years of growing her digital following, she was raking in more than six figures a year, which she says feels as if she had “struck gold”: She can be home and spend time with her kids while also making “a decent living” from sharing her life.
‘Fun for me and challenging’
“It kept me doing something in addition to motherhood that was fun for me and challenging and fueling that entrepreneurial spirit,” she said, calling it “a dream.”
While her home state of Virginia has not enacted laws similar to Illinois, she can understand why such regulations are being put into place.
Raybould likens her social media presence to running a small business, and says its “very rare” that her sons help her with more than 15 minutes of content.
‘I ask them if it’s OK’
“I tell them, ‘Mommy does this, we do this, I share it with other moms,’ ” she explained. “I periodically ask them if they feel comfortable, if it’s OK, and they’re very positive.”
Chris Chin, a father of two who uploads YouTube videos of him and his son playing video games online, compares his content to that which parents capture at their child’s various activities.
YouTube, he said, is “just like any other activity that a kid does,” likening it to parents enrolling their kids in competitive sports in the hopes that someday they’ll earn money from it.
“It’s no different than, say, a parent filming their kid playing hockey or soccer and posting it, right? It’s just now we’re playing video games instead,” he told “GMA,” adding that the pair only film themselves playing video games for half an hour. “And that’s like our bonding moment, too.”
Parent influencers, however, have to meticulously monitor what information about their child is put online, although neither Chin nor Raybould have faced an issue with privacy.
Raybould, for one, does not post in realtime and refuses to share her kids’ harder moments.
“I feel like if my kids ever decided they didn’t want to be part of it . . . and even if I decided to stop one day, I feel like I could pretty quickly just stop,” she told “GMA.”
“That gives me hope for my kids, too, that it’s not like they’re a celebrity’s child. They’re a content creator’s child, and when they grow up, they’ll have their own thing.”