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Chris Christie gave his best audition to become Donald Trump’s attorney general Tuesday, putting Hillary Clinton on mock trial before a riled-up audience at the Republican National Convention, reports The New York Daily News.

The New Jersey governor relied on his experience as a former U.S. attorney “to present a case on the facts against Hillary Rodham Clinton,” courtroom-style, encouraging the captivated crowd to act as a “jury of her peers.”

The report by Adam Edelman says Christie made the GOP-loved case against Clinton’s “failures” in Libya, Syria, Nigeria, Iran and China, following each argument with the question: “Guilty or not guilty?” The crowd responded to each question with chants of “Guilty” and “Lock her up.”

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A conservative watchdog group was temporarily blocked on Tuesday from interviewing former State Department officials under oath in what would have been the third lawsuit over Hillary Clinton’s emails to progress to that stage, The Hill is reporting.

The ruling delays Judicial Watch’s effort to interview officials as part of an open records lawsuit related to Clinton’s use of a private server for her personal email account when she was secretary of State. The judge told Judicial Watch to finish interviews in two other ongoing cases first.

“To avoid duplicative discovery and unnecessary expenditure of public funds, the court will stay this case pending the completion of discovery in those other cases,” Walton ordered.

“The ruling gives some relief to the State Department and Clinton, which have both been the subject of intense scrutiny over the bespoke email setup that the former secretary of State used throughout her time in the Obama administration,” wrote Julian Hattem.

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Donald Trump’s attacks on a federal judge overseeing a pair of lawsuits against him have set off a wave of alarm among legal experts, who worry that the ­Republican presidential candidate’s vendetta signals a remarkable disregard for judicial independence, reports The Washington Post.

Jose A. DelReal and Katie Zezima say that attitude, many argue, could carry constitutional implications if Trump becomes president.

U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is handling two class-action lawsuits against Trump University in San Diego, has been a Trump target since the judge ordered the release of embarrassing internal documents detailing predatory marketing practices at the for-profit educational venture; that case is set to go to trial after the November election.

“Having a presidential candidate embroiled in litigation totally unrelated to the political system . . . that is what is so novel about this. And then you add to this the personal criticism,” Arthur Hellman, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh, told the Post. “It’s personal all the way, and that’s what makes this different.

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Videos of Hillary Clinton’s former aides and others giving depositions in a lawsuit related to her private email set-up will be kept secret, at least for now, a federal judge ruled Thursday, according to a report by Politico.

Josh Gerstein wrote that U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan granted a request from former Clinton Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills that the deposition recordings be kept from the public because of the potential they could be used for partisan purposes or perhaps used in attack ads against Clinton, the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination.

“The public has a right to know details related to the creation, purpose and use of the clintonemail.com system. Thus, the transcripts of all depositions taken in this case will be publicly available. It is therefore unnecessary to also make the audiovisual recording of Ms. Mills’ deposition public,” the judge wrote.

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Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail system while she was secretary of state violated State Department rules, the agency’s Inspector General concluded, according to a report published by Bloomberg.

“The audit by the State Department’s independent investigator found no evidence that she requested guidance or approval to conduct official business via personal e-mail on a private server — and concluded the agency likely wouldn’t have granted the request,” wrote Billy House and Laura Litvan. “The Inspector General also faulted the State Department’s handling of electronic records and communications beyond Clinton’s tenure.”

In its conclusion, the Office of the Inspector General wrote: “Longstanding, systemic weaknesses related to electronic records and communications have existed within the Office of the Secretary that go well beyond the tenure of any one Secretary of State.”

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Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has tapped lawyer A.B. Culvahouse Jr., a longtime Washington fixture, to help vet his potential running mates, says a Bloomberg report that cites people familiar with the campaign.

Culvahouse ran the vetting process for Republican presidential nominee John McCain in 2008 that ultimately selected Sarah Palin.

“Trump has said publicly that he’s relying on multiple people to recommend vice presidential picks, including campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and one-time rival Ben Carson, though neither has the legal qualifications that are essential to the vetting process,” the report says.

“During five elections, Culvahouse has both helped potential running mates deal with the intrusive vetting process and served as the vetting interrogator. He has a reputation for being very deliberate in establishing the credentials of potential candidates, and their pitfalls,” wrote Kevin Cirilli and Jennifer Jacobs.

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A federal judge in San Diego said he wanted a trial by the middle of this year in a lawsuit against Donald Trump over the now defunct Trump University, according to a report by ABC News. That was before the real estate mogul appeared headed for the Republican presidential nomination.

“U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel is expected to address the trial’s timing at a hearing Friday in San Diego. Trump’s lawyers, who have put the candidate on a list of witnesses who may testify, have signaled opposition to a trial while Trump is in the race,” the report says.

“This will be a zoo if it were to go to trial,” Trump lawyer Daniel Petrocelli said at a hearing in March.

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Donald Trump has made another new significant hire as he prepares for the possibility of a contested convention, bringing William McGinley, a prominent Republican political attorney and a veteran of past delegate battles, into his campaign, reports Politico.

“In 2012, McGinley served as counsel to the convention’s rules committee and he is currently a partner at Jones Day, the same law firm as Don McGahn, Trump’s top political attorney. McGinley is expected to travel to Florida this week, POLITICO has learned, where Republican National Committee members are gathering for their spring meeting amid an ongoing fight over the rules that will govern the convention,” according to the report.

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Donald Trump’s campaign lawyer, Donald F. McGahn II, the former chairman of the Federal Election Commission and a partner in Jones Day, will be instrumental in helping the candidate navigate the labyrinthine delegate and convention rules as the Republican presidential nomination fight enters the home stretch, according to a profile published by The Washington Post.

“For a while, McGahn’s colleagues at Jones Day either didn’t know the firm was representing Trump or didn’t mind. That changed late last month when McGahn organized a meeting between the candidate and more than a dozen lawmakers at the firm’s Washington office,” the report says.

A recent report by David Lat, a former federal prosecutor who runs the blog Above the Law and closely monitors the chatter within the nation’s white-shoe legal shops, quoted a number of his Jones Day sources, anonymously, saying that they were deeply embarrassed by the Trump affiliation.

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The FBI’s upcoming interview of Hillary Clinton will be a turning point in the race for Democratic nominee, especially since Clinton won’t be able to speak to FBI director James Comey and his agents in the same manner her campaign has communicated with the public, writes H.A. Goodman in the Huffington Post.

The questions could include: “Why didn’t you know that intelligence could be retroactively classified?” and “Did President Obama or his staff express any reservations about your private server?”

Others could include: “How was your private server guarded against hacking attempts?” and “What was the political utility in owning a private server and never using a State.gov email address?”

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Donald Trump’s campaign for the Republican presidential nomination rests on the notion, relentlessly promoted by the candidate himself, that his record of business deals has prepared him better than his rivals for running the country. But an examination of legal maneuvers around a 46-story luxury Trump condominium-hotel in Lower Manhattan provides a window into his handling of one such deal and finds that decisions on important matters like whom to become partners with and how to market the project led him into a thicket of litigation and controversy, writes Mike McIntire for The New York Times.

The buyers of some units asserted that they had been defrauded by inflated claims made by Trump, his children and others of brisk sales in the struggling project. Contrary to his claims that he rarely settles litigation, he and his co-defendants settled the case in November 2011, agreeing to refund 90 percent of $3.16 million in deposits, while admitting no wrongdoing.

A separate lawsuit claimed that Trump SoHo was developed with the undisclosed involvement of convicted felons and financing from questionable sources in Russia and Kazakhstan, the report states.

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Donald Trump’s prediction that the U.S. economy was on the verge of a “very massive recession” hit a wall of skepticism from economists who questioned the Republican presidential front-runner’s calculations, reports Reuters.

In a wide-ranging interview with the Washington Post published on Saturday, the billionaire businessman said a combination of high unemployment and an overvalued stock market had set the stage for another economic slump. He put real unemployment above 20 percent, Reuters said.

“There is a very low probability of a massive recession, less than 10 percent,” said Sung Won Sohn, an economics professor at California State University Channel Islands in Camarillo. “If it happens, it would be because of what is happening overseas, especially in China and Europe.”

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The colorful litigator who represented the late “D.C. madam” Deborah Palfrey and threatened this week to release call logs of his former client that he says are “very relevant” to the 2016 presidential election says those records already are digitized and posted online, reports U.S. News.

The report says Montgomery Blair Sibley threatened that the records will become public if he fails to reset a 72-hour countdown clock, which could cut short his soft two-week ultimatum for federal courts to consider lifting a 2007 gag order that covers the records, lest he deem that order void.

“The records are stored on four servers around the world, Sibley says, and dozens of reporters will receive a website link if the clock is not reset. He says he loaded the information online in January, when he decided to publicly claim the records are relevant to the presidential race,” writes Steven Nelson.

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Four of Hillary Clinton’s closest aides appear to have adopted an unusual legal strategy, hiring the same ex-Justice Department attorney to represent them in the FBI’s investigation of Clinton’s private email server, reports Politico.

“The united front suggests they plan to tell investigators the same story — although legal experts say the joint strategy presents its own risks, should the interests of the four aides begin to diverge as the probe moves ahead,” writes Rachael Bade.

She explains that the aides’ decision to use a so-called “joint-representation” or “common-defense” strategy suggests the staffers believe they’re in this together and are unlikely to turn on each other.

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Less than 24 hours after Donald Trump threatened to sue for votes ahead of a potentially contested GOP nominating convention, a move that could foreshadow a new phase in the GOP’s ugly primary fight, his campaign backed down, reports Time.

A Trump senior advisor later said that Trump’s “lawsuit” was not in fact meant for a court of law, but for the Republican National Committee’s committee on contests — which under GOP rules hears complaints over the allocation and selection of delegates.

“It’s clear why. Election lawyers and party operatives said challenges to the arcane state-by-state delegate selection rules being used to outfox Trump would face an unwelcome reception in court,” the report says.

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Trump University isn’t the only Donald Trump endeavor that has landed in court, reports Mother Jones magazine.

“The tycoon has launched — or lent his name to — a slew of business ventures that have yielded frustrated customers and investors who have sought legal recourse. There are hundreds of lawsuits extending over 43 years that name Trump or one of his businesses,” says the magazine.

The report includes a list of some of those legal skirmishes that began when Trump joined his father’s business and continue through his run for the GOP nomination, such as Trump Management, Trump Tower, Trump’s Atlantic City casinos, Trump SoHo, Trump Baja, Trump Model Management, and more.

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As Donald Trump rolls through the political calendar, his campaign has already begun focusing on a new battle that may have a broader set of consequences — finding delegates who will be loyal to his cause at the Republican National Convention, reports ABC News.

“Part of the battle has come in the form of emails to delegates and supporters trying to lock down crucial votes. The other half is a five-person task force that has been quietly being trying to amass the 1,237 votes needed,” the network reports.

“Emails obtained by ABC News show the Trump campaign calling on supporters in Michigan to watch for precinct-level delegates who may defect to a rival candidate during a contested convention”

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“By paying those (legal) fees, wouldn’t you be rewarding and encouraging violence?” asked host George Stephanopoulos.

“No, no I didn’t say that. I haven’t looked at it yet, and nobody’s asked me to pay for fees, and somebody asked me a question and I haven’t even seen it, so I never said I was going to pay for fees,” the Republican front-runner said, at first denying what he has said both during a campaign rally and on Sunday during an interview, according to the report on CNN.

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ABC News is reporting that Donald Trump and his campaign are not expected to face inciting a riot charges in connection with a violent incident at a rally in Fayetteville, NC.

The Cumberland County Sheriff’s office had been investigating the real estate mogul and his campaign but decided “that the evidence does not meet the requisites of the law as established under the relevant North Carolina statute and case law to support a conviction of the crime of inciting a riot,” the report says, quoting from a sheriff’s department statement.

A man who attended the rally last weeek allegedly sucker-punched a protester in the face as he was being escorted out of the venue. John Franklin McGraw, 78, faces charges of assault and disorderly conduct.

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