The judge in Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial hit the former president with a $5,000 fine after threatening to throw him in jail for breaking the gag order in the case.
Back on 3 October, Judge Arthur Engoron imposed a gag order on Mr Trump after he made a post on his Truth Social site doxing and disparaging his law clerk.
Mr Trump was ordered to delete the post and was placed under a limited gag order over any future related posts or comments.
Under the order, the former president is banned from “posting, emailing or speaking publicly” about any members of the judge’s court staff.
While the former president complied by deleting the post from Truth Social, Meidas Touch reported on Thursday that he kept a screenshot of the identical post up on his website – meaning he possibly violated the gag order.
The post was deleted from his website hours after Meidas Touch reported on the possible violation.
In court on Friday morning, the judge instantly brought up the issue and accused Mr Trump of a “blatant” violation of the gag order.
He threatened to hit Mr Trump with fines or even jail time over the matter.
“In the current overheated climate, incendiary comments can and in some cases already has, led to serious physical harm and worse,” he said, per The Daily Beast.
“I will now allow the defendants to explain why this blatant violation of the gag order would not result in serious sanctions, including financial sanctions and/or possibly imprisoning him.”
The judge also revealed that, back on 3 October, he spoke directly with Mr Trump off the record about the attack on the court clerk – and that the former president himself had assured him just 10 minutes later that the offending post was gone.
“Despite this clear order, last night I learned that the subject of the offending post was never removed from the website donaldjtrump.com, and in fact had been on that website for the past 17 days. I understand that it was removed late last night, but only in response to email from this court,” he said.
Mr Trump was not present in court to face the judge’s wrath head-on.
But his defence attorney Christopher Kise quickly jumped to his defence, insisting that it was an accident and that the 2024 presidential hopeful’s “campaign machinery” had simply forgotten to remove the web page.
“There was no intention to evade or circumvent or ignore the order,” he said.
“I assure you that. I just know that this is a very large machine and this is one of the reasons, frankly, I don’t have social media.”
He added that the post had since been taken down. “And we don’t have any other… there were no subsequent postings,” he added.
Judge Engoron pushed back on the claim that Mr Trump’s campaign is to blame, saying “I will take that under advisement, but… Donald Trump is still responsible for the large machine”.
Hours later, the judge fined Mr Trump $5,000 but declined to hold him in contempt - for now.
The civil fraud case, brought against the former president by New York Attorney General Letitia James, alleges that Mr Trump and his company deceived banks, insurers and others by massively overvaluing his assets and inflating his net worth on his financial statements.
Mr Trump says his assets were actually undervalued and maintains that disclaimers on his financial statements amounted to telling banks and other recipients not to accept his numbers but to check them out for themselves.
In a pretrial decision last month, Judge Engoron ruled that Mr Trump and his company committed years of fraud by exaggerating the value of his assets and net worth on his financial statements.
The judge ordered that a court-appointed receiver take control of some of Mr Trump’s companies, putting the future oversight of Trump Tower and other marquee properties in question.
Former President Donald Trump sits in the courtroom with his legal team— (AP)
An appeals court has since blocked enforcement of that aspect of the ruling for now.
The trial now concerns six remaining claims in the lawsuit, including allegations of conspiracy, insurance fraud and falsifying business records.
Mr Trump, who is currently the front-runner in the Republican presidential primaries, is facing a number of criminal indictments, at both the federal level and in state cases in New York and Georgia.
