After the hush money judge decided that the former president had broken the gag order for the tenth time, he issued Trump his strongest warning to date—that further infractions might result in jail time.
Only a few days after ruling on an earlier batch of gag order violations, Judge Juan Merchan ordered Trump to pay $1,000 on Monday for insulting jurors in his historic criminal trial.
“Defendant is hereby put on notice that if appropriate and warranted, future violations of its lawful orders will be punishable by incarceration,” Merchan wrote .
Trump, however, only gained a partial victory when the court decided that the prosecution had not proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump had broken his gag order in three more utterances.
Trump is prohibited by the gag order from insulting juries, witnesses, prosecutors, court employees, or the judge’s family. It doesn’t stop him from criticizing Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) or the judge himself.
As the presumed Republican nominee goes on to become the first former U.S. president to face a criminal trial, Trump has attacked the limitations, claiming they infringe upon his First Amendment rights to respond to political attacks.
As of right now, the judge has determined that Trump has broken his gag order ten times in all, and each infraction will cost him $1,000. In an effort to “minimize disruptions” to the trial, the prosecutors had stated that they were not yet seeking jail time; however, the judge made it apparent in his decision that fines are ineffective.
The judge informed Trump that although locking you up is the last thing she wanted to do, “at the end of the day I have a job to do.”
“Your continued violations constitute a direct attack on the rule of law,” Merchan stated.
In contrast to the last series of infractions, which included nine posts on Truth Social and Trump’s campaign website that were made public through jury selection, the most recent round implicated the former president’s statements made after the testimony began.
Trump’s remarks during two media interviews, a campaign stop, and the courthouse corridor were all targets for the prosecution.
At one of those four instances—on April 22, in an interview with the conservative station Real America’s Voice, when Trump implied he wouldn’t be able to obtain a fair trial in deep blue Manhattan—the judge determined that Trump had broken his gag order.
“That jury was picked so fast — 95 percent Democrats,” Trump stated. “The area’s mostly all Democrat. You think of it as a — just a purely Democrat area. It’s a very unfair situation, that I can tell you.”
During the hearing, prosecutor Chris Conroy argued that any comments Trump makes regarding the jury could jeopardize the outcome of the trial.
Trump’s attorneys have taken issue with Cohen’s repeated comments on the former president on social media, claiming the former is only defending himself against political criticism.
Trump was supported by Merchan, who concluded that there was insufficient evidence to prove that Trump’s remarks “were not protected political speech made in response to political attacks by Michael Cohen.”
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Regarding Pecker, Trump said on April 25 that the witness is a “nice guy.” Pecker was scheduled to take the witness stand in a few hours. According to the prosecution, the remark carried an implicit warning.
Despite Trump’s appeal, the gag order is still in place as of right now, citing First Amendment violations. According to his lawyers, he is not “willfully” breaking the order.
Trump’s lawyers cited President Biden’s comments from the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Thursday to refute the order. The president made a lighthearted reference to Stormy Daniels, the adult film actress who is at the center of the case, when he lamented that Trump had recently encountered “stormy weather.”
According to the Trump lawyer, the speech gag order prevents the former president from reacting to Biden’s criticisms “in the way that he would want to.”
In the New York criminal trial, the former president is accused of 34 counts of falsifying business documents. The trial revolves around a hush money agreement he struck with an adult film actress prior to the 2016 election in order to hide an alleged affair. Trump has denied the affair and entered a not guilty plea.
