Judge finds Trump violated gag order again, threatens jail

The third week of Donald Trump’s hush-money trial started with a bang when the judge threatened to jail the former president.

Former US president Donald Trump outside court on Monday. Picture: AFP

The third week of Donald Trump’s hush-money trial started with a bang when the judge threatened to jail the former president, then took a procedural turn when prosecutors began walking the jury through the business records at the heart of their case.

Before jurors entered Monday, Justice Juan Merchan ruled Trump had violated his gag order for a 10th time and fined him $1000 for claiming in an interview that the jury was mostly Democrats and that it was picked too quickly.

“Going forward, this court will have to consider a jail sanction,” Merchan said, looking directly at Trump, who was seated at the defence table. The judge said the last thing he wanted to do was jail a former and possibly next president, but that the violations were a direct attack on the rule of law.

Trump is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee and has been juggling attending his trial in New York — which he is required to do — with campaigning for president.

The gag order bars Trump from attacking potential witnesses and jurors, in addition to prosecutors, court staffers and their families.

The day’s first witness, former Trump Organisation executive Jeff McConney, took the stand to walk jurors through a series of company records that prosecutors have alleged constitute core evidence of the 34 felony charges Trump faces.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has alleged Trump directed the false records — 11 invoices, 12 general ledger entries and 11 checks — to cover up a hush-money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels. During the trial, prosecutors have portrayed Trump as being at the centre of a criminal conspiracy to influence the 2016 election by taking negative stories off the market, including Daniels’s allegation of an affair with Trump. The business records have been barely mentioned.

Trump has pleaded not guilty and denied the affair. He has accused Bragg, a Democrat, of being politically motivated.

Over several hours, a prosecutor walked McConney through some of the records. McConney, who served as the Trump Organisation’s controller, was involved in co-ordinating and tracking payments of company expenses.

A series of invoices, displayed on screens throughout the courtroom, referred to reimbursements due to former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen as a legal retainer. Prosecutors have alleged this is false, and that Cohen was reimbursed for paying off Daniels.

“Did you ever see a retainer agreement?” asked prosecutor Matthew Colangelo. “I did not,” McConney replied.

During cross-examination, a lawyer for Trump asked McConney if the former president had asked him to make the business records in question. McConney said he hadn’t talked to Trump.

McConney, who previously testified in the Trump Organisation’s 2022 tax-fraud trial, has a rocky relationship with the prosecutors and the judge. At the tax-fraud trial, which led to the company’s conviction, Merchan declared McConney a hostile witness after finding his answers evasive.

The Trump Organisation is paying for McConney’s lawyer in the case. Throughout McConney’s testimony, Eric Trump, one of Donald Trump’s sons, and several of the former president’s advisers, including lawyer Alina Habba, looked on from the courtroom gallery.

By late morning, juror attention had flagged, with many looking down or around the courtroom. The panel last week had stared intently at former Trump aide Hope Hicks and former Daniels lawyer Keith Davidson, both of whom allowed prosecutors to build a narrative of Trump’s alleged efforts to take negative stories off the market in advance of the 2016 election.

Earlier in the day, the judge issued a decision on Trump gag-order violations and said that the financial penalties had no impact on the billionaire.

“Because this is now the 10th time that this court has found defendant in criminal contempt, spanning three separate motions, it is apparent that monetary fines have not, and will not, suffice to deter Defendant from violating this court’s lawful orders,” Merchan said in the ruling.

The judge has few tools at his disposal to get the former president to comply. The maximum fine allowed by law is $1,000 per violation. The judge could also jail Trump for a maximum of 30 days, although that could delay the trial and be logistically complicated.

Merchan said Trump violated the gag order in an April 22 media interview where he complained the judge was rushing the trial and that the jury pool was overwhelmingly Democratic.

“That jury was picked so fast — 95pc Democrats,” Trump said in the interview. “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.”

The Wall Street Journal