Trump World: Prosecutors at the New York criminal trial of the Trump organization said the former president personally approved schemes to dodge taxes by both employees and his company.

 Joshua Steinglass yesterday told the jury during closing arguments that Trump signed a document lowering the pay of an executive to correspond with the equivalent sum of perks unreported for tax purposes.  “That’s what this document shows,” Steinglass said of the pay and perks that executive  Matthew Calamari had received.

  The defense objected to what Steinglass said, and the judge sustained the objection, but the jury had already heard what the prosecutor said.

  Prosecutors need to convince the jury that the unreported perks like free apartments and school tuition helped lower taxes for both the involved employee and the company in order to prove criminal fraud by the Trump organization.

  The jury is expected to start deliberations on Monday.

Tweet That: Racist attacks, slurs against gay men, and antisemitic posts  have increased dramatically since Elon Musk took over Twitter and declared it once again open for “free speech,” researchers have found. The attacks on Black people have more than doubled, according to the Center for Countering Digital Hate and the Anti-Defamation League.

  Musk has welcomed back accounts associated with the Islamic State terrorist group and QAnon, they say.

  “Elon Musk sent up the Bat Signal to every kind of racist, misogynist and homophobe that Twitter was open for business,” Imran Ahmed, the chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, told The NY Times. “They have reacted accordingly.”

  Musk, meanwhile, is touting a big Twitter dump about Hunter Biden.

The War Room: Ukraine has banned the activities of religious organizations “affiliated with centers of influence” in Russia and said it would examine the links between the Ukrainian and Russian Orthodox churches.

  Ukraine has been worried for some time that the Russian Orthodox churches may have been acting as a fifth column within the country Russia invaded. A law has been drafted that would make it impossible for religious organizations based in Russia to operate in Ukraine.

On the Pitch: The US plays the Netherlands today at the World Cup in Qatar in what could be one of its toughest matches so far. The Dutch are a soccer power. Game time is 10 am EST.

The Long Count: The Colorado Secretary of State has ordered a recount in the congressional race that the firebrand Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert won by just 550 votes over Adam Frisch. State law requires a recount when the difference is .5 percent or less.

  Frisch said he didn’t think there was much chance of the recount changing the result.

 The Obit Page: Allen Kay, the advertising genius who used a monk character to sell Xerox copiers, has died at age 77.

  For the 1976 Super Bowl, Kay created the ad in which “Brother Dominic” is writing a manuscript by hand and is suddenly asked for 500 copies. He takes it to a friend with a Xerox machine, then presents the copies to his fellow monks who proclaim, “It’s a miracle.”

  But more recently Kay coined the phrase that became the slogan of caution in New York city after the 911 attacks; “If you see something, say something.”

The Spin Rack: A jury in California has begun deliberations in the sexual assault trial of former movie producer Harvey Weinstein, who’s already in prison for his conviction on similar charges in New York. — Police in Huston have arrested the  33-year-old owner of a strip club on a murder charge for the shooting of rap musician Takeoff last month outside a bowling alley.  — Leaders of the G7 countries and allies have agreed on a $60 a barrel cap to be paid for Russian oil, which was trading at $64 yesterday. The agreement is intended to prevent Russia from profiting off the instability created by its war on Ukraine. — An American woman was killed and four other passengers injured when a  giant “rogue wave” hit the Viking Polaris cruise ship sailing near the southernmost tip of South America on an Antarctic cruise. The 62-year-old woman was hit by broken glass when the wave shattered cabin windows. 

Below the Fold: The Air Force yesterday unveiled its newest stealth bomber, the B-21 Raider, in Palmdale, California. The Air Force claims the B-21 can hit targets “anywhere in the world” while evading detection even though they showed it to the press, proving that while it is advertised as undetectable, it can be detected by the human eye. 

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