Skip to main content

Trump’s lawyer brought a gaming laptop to $250M fraud trial

We’ve seen gaming laptops in classrooms and out in the wild on public transportion, but we’ve never expected to spot an Asus ROG laptop in a courtroom — especially in the hands of an attorney representing former President Donald Trump. Still, there it was, with RGB lighting changing colors all throughout the first day of Trump’s $250 million fraud trial in New York.

The unidentified laptop in question belongs to Alina Habba, one of Trump’s attorneys, and it was first spotted by Ryan Rigney, a marketing director at a game development company called Odyssey Studio. Rigney took to Twitter to share his findings, claiming that we’re looking at an Asus laptop with an Nvidia RTX 2070 Ti inside. The RTX 2070 Ti doesn’t exist, so Rigney is most likely talking about the RTX 2070 Super.

Recommended Videos

gamer lawyer brought the 2070ti asus laptop with the blue underglow to the court hearing pic.twitter.com/0wDoSJKz3P

— Ryan K. Rigney (@RKRigney) October 2, 2023

Please enable Javascript to view this content

This very well might be true. Kotaku pins the laptop as the Asus ROG Strix G17 G712, and although I’ve done a fair bit of digging, a lot of the Asus ROG lineup looks very similar from the back. One thing is for sure — this isn’t a workstation kind of laptop, like the Lenovo ThinkPad seen on the left side of the photograph. This is a gaming laptop with the fancy lighting to match, and Habba hasn’t even disabled the cyclical color changes, letting the Asus logo softly transition from blue to green, orange, red, and more.

If this is the 2021 ROG Strix G17 G712, it’ features a 17-inch 144Hz IPS display, a 10th-Gen Intel Core i7 processor with a boost clock of up to 5.1GHz and eight cores, an Nvidia RTX 2070 Super graphics card, and 16GB of DDR4 RAM. Not too shabby for a laptop being used in a courtroom.

Of course, this invites some speculation — is this a personal gaming laptop that doubles as a work machine, or did Habba simply pick out something that was powerful enough for her needs? It’s easy to buy a gaming laptop based on specs alone. Productivity-oriented laptops often don’t have a discrete graphics card, or are generally weaker in that department, and may prioritize a thin and light design over specifications. Sometimes, buying a gaming laptop is just a better deal.

With Nvidia’s RTX 40-series laptops, it’s hard these days to find a notebook that fits the quota of “reasonably priced” and “powerful.” Acer’s recent laptops come in at just under $1,000, but those are equipped with an RTX 4050. Habba’s equivalent would likely be more expensive; even now, it retails for $1,700. If you want to see how the current model performs, make sure to read our Asus ROG Strix G17 review.

One thing is for sure — Asus just received some unintended marketing in front of a whole new audience.

Monica J. White
Monica is a computing writer at Digital Trends, focusing on PC hardware. Since joining the team in 2021, Monica has written…
Asus’ latest monitor is a treat for both esports and AAA games
Asus ProArt monitors.

Asus has just announced several new monitors, some of which might end up on our list of the best gaming monitors next year. One of the more interesting picks is the ROG Strix XG32UCG, which lets you choose between 4K and 1080p depending on the game you want to play. There's also a new ProArt display with an impressive 6K panel that packs pixel density to the max at just 32 inches.

The ROG Strix piqued my interest. It's not Asus' first dual-mode monitor. We've already had the chance to review the ROG Swift PG32UCDP, which is also a dual-mode display, but it has brought some changes. For starters, the previous venture into adjustable refresh rate and resolution was an OLED monitor, and this one sports a Fast IPS panel.

Read more
You could buy a gaming laptop for the price of this AMD handheld
The OneXFly F1 Pro console.

The first gaming handheld to feature one of AMD's best processors is finally here, but it's going to be a tough sell. The OneXFly F1 Pro comes with a host of impressive features, from an OLED screen to the powerful Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 APU. It could undoubtedly beat the Steam Deck and various other rivals. The downside? You might as well just buy a gaming laptop, and a good one, too -- because this one's pretty expensive.

The OneXFly F1 Pro (first spotted by VideoCardz) is a brand-new gaming handheld made by OneXPlayer, a Chinese company. The mini PC comes with all the bells and whistles you could wish for in a new handheld. There's a 7-inch 1080p OLED screen with a 144Hz refresh rate; LPDDR5X RAM with speeds of up to 7,500MHz; and up to 4TB of PCIe 4.0 solid-state drive storage.

Read more
Here’s your chance to win this Gigabyte gaming laptop — a $1,300 value
GIGABYTE 16" Gaming Laptop Giveaway

I remember the days when a gaming laptop, or any laptop really, couldn't hold up against the power and performance of even a low-grade desktop PC. Not that I'm saying I'm older -- I'm middle-aged -- but there was definitely a time when laptops were not what you wanted to use for gaming unless you absolutely had to. That's no longer the case. Today, there are some incredibly powerful laptops that free you to play from just about anywhere, and that's not even including modern PC handhelds. A great example of this is the Gigabyte G6X 9KG gaming laptop which has a GeForce RTX 4060 and supports full ray tracing and Nvidia DLSS. It has enough power to run Black Myth: Wokung without issues and allow me to reiterate, that's possible on a laptop. Pretty impressive.

The best part, however, is that it won't drain your money. The Gigabyte G6X 9KG gaming laptop is only $1,300, but it also offers 32GB of RAM and 1TB of SSD storage. Better yet, it has user-upgradeable options, as well, so it's flexible and customizable. Today's your lucky day. You have the chance to win this beast directly from Gigabyte. To enter, all you have to do is follow the tasks provided. To do that, or if you want to learn more about this particular Gigabyte gaming laptop, head below.
Learn more about the Gigabyte 16-inch G6X 9KG gaming laptop

Read more