EDITORIAL: Views from the nation's press

Oct. 29—The New York Daily News on how Donald Trump's attorneys are abandoning their client for the truth and the law:

Roy Cohn, the evil, crooked, disbarred New York lawyer, who mentored a young Donald Trump and taught him many of the nasty ways to bully, cheat and lie, was loyal to his client, but he still would absolutely sell out Trump to save himself from prison.

The moral, for an immoral man, is that a lawyer who engages in a crime with a client has no protection from prosecution.

And so many of Trump's other attorneys have been lining up to rat out the rat in chief, as we saw vividly Tuesday, first with a morning guilty plea by lawyer Jenna Ellis before an Atlanta judge in the Georgia election interference criminal case. The afternoon saw disbarred New York lawyer Michael Cohen, Trump's one-time fixer, spilling the beans before a Manhattan judge in state Attorney General Tish James' civil case over Trump's fake valuation of his holdings.

Ellis' plea, in the wide-ranging conspiracy indictment against Trump et al brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, was the third by a Trump lawyer in that case. Last week, Sidney Powell switched sides and then so did Ken Chesebro.

Powell and Chesebro are also two of the six unnamed co-conspirators in Special Counsel Jack Smith's federal indictment of Trump brought in Washington. Ellis was evidently too small a fish for Smith.

A very big fish is Mark Meadows. He is no lawyer, but as Trump's White House chief of staff was the top of the food chain during those nightmare years. Meadows has cut his own deal with Smith to testify, ABC News reported Tuesday. Tellingly, Meadows is not one of the half dozen co-conspirators and can provide a road map to Smith.

Trump trusted his lawyers, going back 50 years when Cohn was first retained after the Nixon Department of Justice accused the Trump family real estate business of illegally discriminating against minority renters of their apartments. The charges were true, but Cohn concocted a phony suit against DOJ. Misusing the legal system was Cohn's specialty and Trump learned well.

Trump trusted Cohen to do his dirty work, like arranging the $130,000 hush money payment to Stormy Daniels, which landed Cohen in trouble. After he was convicted of federal felonies and disbarred in 2019 — by the same Manhattan appellate court that disbarred Cohn two months before he died in 1986 — Cohen told Congress about Trump's false bookkeeping before Cohen reported to prison.

Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance was listening to Cohen's testimony and started a criminal probe. In 2022, new DA Alvin Bragg wrongly dropped the prosecution, but Tish James picked it up on the civil side.

Trump has already been found guilty. The ongoing trial downtown will establish the size of his financial penalty. The four pending criminal cases (by Willis, Smith and the document case by Smith and the hush-money payments by Bragg) could put Trump in prison.

There's another New York lawyer, whose law license has been suspended by that same appellate court, Rudy Giuliani. He is Smith's co-conspirator No. 1 and also a target of Willis. It was U.S. Attorney Giuliani who helped bring down Cohn in 1986 by forcing him to pay $7 million in taxes, interest and penalties for nearly three decades of stiffing the IRS.

Giuliani should save himself and rat out Trump.

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The Las Vegas Review-Journal on how Hamas rocket launch sites are near mosques, schools:

A few days after releasing two American hostages, Hamas freed two elderly female Israeli captives on Sunday. But 230 more innocent civilians — including 10 Americans — remain in the terrorist group's hands.

CNN also reports that the United States is "seeking to delay an Israeli ground offensive in hopes of getting more hostages out and aid into Gaza, according to two sources briefed on discussions." Ensuring the safety of innocents in captivity and providing humanitarian aid to the suffering are worthwhile goals. But ultimately, it is up to Israeli officials to choose their preferred course of action in response to the brutal and murderous attack of Oct. 7.

Israel is not dealing with a traditional modern enemy. Hamas makes it a policy to target Israeli civilians — hence the hostages — and will casually sacrifice Palestinian lives by provoking retaliation. On Monday, the Israeli Defense Forces released satellite images of Hamas rocket launch sites near schools, mosques and civilian buildings.

According to the Daily Mail, two sites "were located a stone's throw away from each other, one in the garden of a mosque, and another mere feet away from a kindergarten. A third was seen across the road from a UN building in Gaza and a fourth was located opposite the Manfaluti Secondary School for Boys."

This is a calculated effort to put children and others in harm's way for propaganda purposes.

"Geolocation of the images provided by the IDF confirmed the locations given were correct," the Daily Mail noted, "and analysts pointed out that previous satellite images taken in September did not show any launch sites — suggesting that they would have been recently constructed."

Hamas wants to pin civilian casualties on the Israelis, yet seeks without remorse to harm noncombatants. While Israel takes pains to minimize the deaths of innocents, Hamas indiscriminately shoots rockets into Israel and reacts to deaths with glee. Let's never forget who is responsible for the 1,400 Israelis who were savagely murdered two weeks ago.

Since the Oct. 7 terrorist incursion, Hamas has fired thousands of rockets into Israel, many from these civilian locations, putting those nearby at risk. This abominable tactic of hiding behind the innocent appears to have resulted in scores of deaths when a rocket launched from Gaza exploded prematurely near a hospital last week. Hamas tried to blame Israel for the deaths.

Those who engage in moral relativism when it comes to this conflict are toiling in the service of evil. Israel has the right to defend itself against those who overtly seek its destruction. The back-channel negotiations for humanitarian aid and the release of hostages should continue, but Israel's looming ground invasion remains wholly justified.