The New York criminal trial of Donald Trump resumed Thursday with a familiar scenario — prosecutors sparring with the former president’s defense lawyers about whether he violated a gag order prohibiting him from attacking witnesses and jurors in the case.
On Tuesday, New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan ruled that Trump violated the gag order nine times, held him in contempt of court and fined him $9,000, a relative pittance for a billionaire like Trump, as Merchan acknowledged in his order.
But Merchan also sternly warned Trump that if he continued to ignore his midtrial rulings, he could be jailed.
“Defendant is hereby warned that the Court will not tolerate continued violations of its lawful orders and that if necessary and appropriate under the circumstances, it will impose an incarceratory punishment,” Merchan said in an eight-page ruling.
On Thursday, Merchan heard arguments about four more statements Trump has made. Among them are on-camera comments from last week in which Trump disparaged the 12 jurors hearing the case as Democrats deciding his fate.
In addition, Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, attacked a key prospective witness in the case, Michael Cohen, his former lawyer and political fixer who has turned against him.
He also made a favorable comment about former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker, who testified last week about how he agreed, at Trump’s behest, to help him any way he could to win the White House in the 2016 election.
Any comments about witnesses are prohibited under the gag order.
Pecker said that his grocery store tabloid paid $150,000 for the rights to a claim by Karen McDougal, a former Playboy Playmate of the Year, that she had a monthslong affair with Trump, but that it was a story Pecker had no intention of publishing in the Enquirer.
After Merchan’s contempt of court ruling Tuesday, Trump on his campaign website issued an appeal for campaign donations, saying the “Democrat judge just ruled against me.”
The gag order does not prohibit the 45th U.S. president from attacking Merchan.
Trump, in the first trial of a former U.S. president, is accused of falsifying his business records to hide a $130,000 hush money payment to porn film star Stormy Daniels to hide her claim of a one-night tryst with Trump in 2006. Prosecutors say the payment was to keep the information from voters before the 2016 election.
Trump has denied the two women’s claims of affairs with him and all 34 charges in the New York case.
Even as Merchan ruled against Trump in the first contempt case, the judge warned Cohen and Daniels about their ongoing taunting public social media posts against Trump. The judge said if Cohen and Daniels continue to attack Trump, he might loosen restrictions on Trump from attacking them in response.
When testimony resumes on the 10th day of what could be a six-week trial, prosecutors will again question Daniels’ lawyer, Keith Davidson, who negotiated her hush money payment.
Davidson has testified about his contentious dealings with Cohen in negotiating the payments with Daniels and McDougal and said the Trump aide appeared at one point to be backing out of completing the deal on Daniels, just before the election.
Ultimately, Cohen made the payment out of his personal home equity line of credit and was reimbursed by Trump in 2017 after he became president.
The repayments to Cohen are at the center of the criminal charges against the 77-year-old former president, who said the payments to Cohen were for legal work and not the hush money that went to Daniels.
