It was deja vu for Donald Trump at his Manhattan criminal trial this week in more ways than one.
Six months ago a New York judge threatened to throw a former US president in prison for violating a gag order. Remarkably, in a courthouse up the street just six months later, Trump was again threatened with jail time.
“The defendant is hereby warned that the court will not tolerate continued willful violations of its lawful orders and that if necessary and appropriate under the circumstances, it will impose an incarceratory punishment,” Judge Juan Merchan, who is overseeing Trump’s criminal hush-money trial, wrote when ruling Trump had violated his latest gag order.
On Tuesday, the former president was hit with a $9,000 fine and held in contempt of court, a crime that appears on a criminal record, for violating Merchan’s gag order. Under the gag order, Trump cannot publicly speak about prosecutors, witnesses, jurors, court staff and their relatives. Prosecutors argued that Trump had violated the order 10 times. Merchan ruled that he had nine violations.
Though this is the second New York trial Trump is attending – and this time, it is criminal not civil and his attendance is not optional – it appears the former president has not learned many lessons from his fraud trial about appeasing judges.
Trump faces 34 felony counts for falsifying business records, allegedly marking a hush-money payment as legal service fees on business records. The $130,000 payment was made to the adult film actror Stormy Daniels to cover up her story of an alleged 2006 affair with Trump during the 2016 election. While his criminal case is being heard by a jury, if he is found guilty, Merchan will decide his sentence, which could include prison time.
The trial wrapped up its third week, its second week of testimony. Seven witnesses have testified so far. It is unclear whether Trump will testify. But it is clear that he will test Merchan’s tattered patience to its limits.
Prosecutors on Thursday said Trump had already violated the gag order another four times, twice for comments about Michael Cohen, Trump’s former consigliere turned bete noir and an upcoming witness in the case, along with one comment about the jury and another on David Pecker, the former CEO of American Media Inc (AMI) and publisher of the National Enquirer, who testified in the trial last week. Prosecutors said they were not seeking imprisonment, which would delay proceedings, but were seeking further fines. Merchan has not ruled on these additional gag order violations.
Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche reiterated that Trump was responding to attacks levied against him.
“Everybody can say whatever they want, except President Trump,” Blanche said.
As if these shades of trials past were not enough, Trump on Thursday found himself yet again in a courtroom, listening to the voice of Michael Cohen.
It’s been over six months since he sat a few feet away from Cohen when his former fixer, once his most loyal follower, testified against him during his fraud trial. And on Thursday, Cohen’s voice once again echoed in a courtroom.
“I need to open up a company for the transfer of all that info regarding our friend, David,” Cohen said in an audio recording from 2016, presumably referring to Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer who helped him facilitate hush-money payments during the 2016 election.
Though Cohen himself was not in the courtroom, his presence loomed large during the testimony of witnesses. Cohen served as an intermediary between Pecker and Trump, and Cohen was the one who ultimately paid Daniels off to kill her story.
So far, the trial’s two biggest witnesses, Pecker and Keith Davidson, a former lawyer for Daniels and Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model who Pecker paid $150,000 to keep quiet about her alleged 2006 affair with Trump, both emphasized the key role Cohen played in quashing the stories.
It is unclear when prosecutors will call on Cohen to testify, but they are already gearing up for attacks on his reliability as a witness. Cohen in 2018 was sentenced to three years in prison for crimes related to Trump, including violating campaign finance laws and lying to Congress.
In March, a federal judge denied Cohen’s request for early release from court supervision, calling into question Cohen’s honesty in court. When testifying at Trump’s fraud trial in the fall, Cohen said that he did not commit tax evasion, even though he pleaded guilty to the crime in 2018.
Trump’s lawyers have already suggested they are ready to attack the star witness’s credibility, attempting to paint Cohen as a disgruntled former employee out for revenge. But prosecutors on Tuesday seemed to want to get ahead of their attacks.
When Davidson was on the witness stand on Thursday, prosecutors had him tell the jury about a 2016 phone call he had with Cohen after the election.
“Jesus Christ, can you believe I’m not going to Washington?” Davidson recalled Cohen telling him. “After everything I’ve done for that fucking guy, I can’t believe I’m not going to Washington.”
Though prosecutors had Davidson confirm that Cohen was, in fact, a disgruntled employee, he and other witnesses have also corroborated that Cohen played a key role in quashing the negative stories about Trump and managing the hush-money payment at the center of the case.
And even if Trump’s lawyers are aggressive with Cohen on the stand, as they were during his testimony last fall, prosecutors this past week made clear they have additional evidence to help make their case.
“Would you break away from the entire, we’ll call it, Trump doctrine? Would you go completely rogue?” Cohen lamented to Davidson in a 2016 audio recording. “Nobody’s thinking about Michael.”
As we head into week four of Trump’s criminal trial, Cohen can rest assured that plenty of people are thinking about Michael. Especially Donald Trump.
