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A New York judge on Tuesday held former President Donald Trump in contempt of court and fined him $9,000 for violating the judge's gag order prohibiting Trump from criticizing potential witnesses at his criminal trial.
New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan rejected claims by the country's 45th president that he was merely responding to political attacks against him when he assailed two key likely witnesses at the trial: Michael Cohen, his onetime lawyer and political fixer, and porn film star Stormy Daniels.
Merchan described as "counterintuitive and absurd" Trump's claims that reposts of supporters' comments on the former president's Truth Social media platform did not amount to a violation of the gag order.
In addition to finding him in contempt, Merchan ordered Trump to remove nine offending Truth Social posts, which he did a short time later.
The gag order bars Trump from criticizing witnesses, jurors and other key figures in the trial, but not Merchan himself or the prosecutor who brought the case, Alvin Bragg. Trump has often taken aim at both.
At the end of Tuesday's testimony, Merchan said he would hear arguments Thursday from prosecutors that Trump violated the gag order on four other occasions.
Trump has repeatedly complained during breaks in the trial and at political rallies that the gag order violates his constitutional right of free speech. After leaving the courtroom on Tuesday, he claimed that Merchan was biased against him and said the trial was keeping him from campaigning to reclaim the presidency.
With the trial in recess on Wednesday, Trump is heading to the Midwest for campaign stops. He is the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential candidate in the November election and all but certain to again face President Joe Biden, the Democrat who defeated him in 2020.
Shortly after Merchan held the former president in contempt at the outset of Tuesday's session, Trump's campaign began fundraising off the ruling, with Trump sending an email to supporters claiming, in all caps, that a "liberal judge just silenced me."
Merchan said in an order that he was "keenly aware of, and protective of, Defendant's First Amendment rights," but he warned Trump that he would not hesitate to jail him if he continues to violate his orders. In a separate decision, Merchan said that the trial would be recessed on May 17 at Trump's request so that he could attend his son Barron's high school graduation in Florida.
Trump is the first former president to face criminal charges and the threat of imprisonment if convicted.
He is accused of falsifying business records to hide a $130,000 hush money payment to Daniels just ahead of his successful 2016 run for the presidency to keep voters from learning about her claim of a one-night tryst with him a decade earlier. Trump has denied the affair and all 34 charges in the New York case.
As the trial resumed Tuesday, one of Trump's sons, Eric Trump, was in the courtroom for the proceedings. This marked the first time a member of Trump's family had been present in the hush money case.
The defense appears to be trying to cast Cohen as a lone wolf, operating on his own, independent of any demands from Trump, to try to convince the jury that Trump himself was not involved in trying to influence the outcome of the 2016 election with the hush money payment.
Trump has claimed that the money he gave Cohen was for legal work, not a reimbursement for the money Cohen paid to Daniels.
Banker Gary Farro, who set up a Cohen account to facilitate the hush money payment to Daniels, and Keith Davidson, Daniels' attorney, both cast Cohen as difficult to deal with.
But Davidson undercut the defense contention that Cohen was acting on his own. Davidson told the jury that when he was negotiating the payment to Daniels, he believed that Cohen "was the personal attorney or general counsel for Donald Trump and that this story involved his client, that that was his interest in the story."
Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass has prodded several witnesses to say that when Cohen referred to "my guy" or "the boss" in demanding that something be done, Cohen was always referring to Trump. Davidson said it led him to believe that Cohen could not act on his own.
"It was part of his identity," Davidson said, "and he let you know it, every opportunity he could, that he was working for Donald Trump."
Cohen was convicted of violating campaign finance laws in connection with the payment of the hush money to Daniels and other offenses, including perjury, and served 13 ½ months in prison and a year and a half in home confinement.
Because he once served Trump with extraordinary loyalty before turning against him, he could well be the single most important witness at the trial.
Davidson told the jury he also arranged another hush money payment, $150,000 to Karen McDougal, Playboy magazine's 1998 Playmate of the Year, to silence her ahead of Trump's 2016 run for the presidency. McDougal claims she had a monthslong affair with Trump in 2006 and 2007.
Last week, David Pecker, a former publisher of the National Enquirer tabloid and a longtime Trump friend, testified that his publication bought the rights to McDougal's story for the express purpose of killing it to help Trump in the election.
Trump has denied the affair, but Pecker testified that Trump at one point called McDougal "a nice girl." After he became president, Pecker said Trump asked about her well-being as he and Pecker walked the White House grounds in mid-2017.
Davidson described for the jury text messages he had with National Enquirer editor Dylan Howard, in which Davidson told Howard: "I have blockbuster Trump story." In his reply, Howard asked, "did he cheat?" on Melania, Trump's wife.
Davidson told Howard that McDougal's story "should be told" and Howard responded, "I agree."
But Pecker told the jury last week that National Enquirer had no intention of publishing embarrassing information about Trump. During four days of testimony, Pecker said he agreed at an August 2015 meeting at Trump Tower in New York with Trump and Cohen to do whatever he could to help Trump win the presidency. Prosecutors are calling the meeting the "Trump Tower conspiracy."
Pecker said he published favorable stories about Trump, embellished negative ones about his opponents, and sometimes bought negative information like the McDougal story with the intent to kill it, a practice that came to be known as "catch and kill."
Trump is facing three other criminal indictments, including two accusing him of illegally trying to upend his 2020 loss to Biden.
But because of his lawyers' legal challenges in the other three cases, the New York trial may be the only one he faces before the 2024 election.
The trial could last another five weeks before the jury considers the case.