The judge presiding over Donald Trump’s trial fined him $1,000 this Monday for once again violating his gag order and sternly warned the former president that additional violations could result in jail time.
The fine marks the second time since the trial began last month that Trump has been sanctioned for violating the gag order, which prohibits him from making inflammatory comments about jurors, witnesses and others closely associated with the case. Last week he was fined $9,000, $1,000 for each of the nine violations.
“It seems that $1,000 fines do not serve as a deterrent. Therefore, in the future, this court will have to consider a prison sentence,” Judge Juan M. Merchán said before jurors entered the courtroom. Trump’s statements, the judge added, “threaten to interfere with the fair administration of justice and constitute a direct attack on the rule of law. “I can’t let that continue.”
The violation in this case arises from an April 22 interview with Real America’s Voice in which Trump criticized the speed with which the jury was chosen and claimed it was packed with Democrats.
“That jury was chosen very quickly: 95% Democrats,” Trump said at the time. “The area is mostly all Democratic. It is thought to be simply a purely Democratic area. It is a very unfair situation, what can I tell you.”
Trump leaned forward in his seat, glaring at the judge as he handed down the ruling. When the judge finished speaking, Trump shook his head twice and crossed his arms.
However, while Merchan warned of jail time in his most direct and direct warning, he also made clear his reservations about a measure he described as a “last resort.”
“The last thing I want to do is put you in jail,” Merchan said. “You are the former president of the United States and possibly the next president as well. There are many reasons why incarceration is truly a last resort for me. Taking that step would be detrimental to these proceedings.”
New week testimonials
Meanwhile, testimony resumed Monday when prosecutors called Jeffrey McConney, former comptroller of the Trump Organization, to the stand.
He retired from the company last year after 36 years after he was granted immunity to testify for the prosecution in the Trump Organization’s criminal tax fraud trial in New York, where he admitted breaking the law to help other executives. to evade taxes on profits paid by the company. The company was convicted and is appealing.
The testimony follows an inside-court account given to jurors Friday about Trump’s reaction to a politically damaging recording that emerged in the final weeks of the 2016 campaign.
Hope Hicks, a former White House official and longtime top aide, was by far the closest Trump associate to take the stand as a witness in the Manhattan trial.
His testimony was designed to give jurors a privileged view of a chaotic and crucial stretch of the campaign, when a 2005 recording showing Trump talking about sexually subduing women became public and when he and his allies tried to prevent disclosure. of other alleged victims. potentially embarrassing stories.
That effort, prosecutors say, included hush payments to a porn actor and a Playboy model who said they had sexual encounters with Trump before he entered politics.
“I had the good sense to believe that this was going to be a massive story and that it was going to dominate the news cycle for the next few days,” Hicks said of the “Access Hollywood” recording, first revealed in an October 2016 report in Washington. Post story. “This was a damaging development.”
The trial entered its third week of testimony Monday, with prosecutors moving toward their star witness, Michael Cohen, Trump’s former attorney and personal fixer who pleaded guilty to federal charges related to hush money payments. Cohen is expected to undergo tough questioning from defense attorneys seeking to undermine his credibility with jurors.
Trump faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection with payments made to smother potentially embarrassing stories. Prosecutors say Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, reimbursed Cohen for payments to porn actor Stormy Daniels and gave Cohen bonuses and additional payments. Prosecutors allege those transactions were falsely recorded in company records as legal expenses.
Trump pleaded not guilty and denied having sexual encounters with any of the women, as well as any wrongdoing.
So far, jurors have heard from witnesses, including a tabloid magazine editor and friend of Trump who bought the rights to several sordid stories about Trump to prevent them from coming to light, and a Los Angeles lawyer who negotiated hush payment agreements on behalf of Daniels and the Playboy model. Karen McDougal.
Trump’s lawyers have sought to undermine the prosecution’s theory of the case and the credibility of some witnesses. They have raised questions during questioning about whether Trump was possibly subject to extortion, forced to arrange payments to suppress damaging stories and spare his family shame and pain. Prosecutors maintain that the payments were intended to preserve his political viability while he sought the presidency.
The case is one of four Trump prosecutions and possibly the only one that will go to trial before the November election. Other felony indictments accuse him of conspiring to subvert the 2020 presidential election after losing to Democrat Joe Biden and of illegally hoarding classified documents after leaving the White House.
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