New York: The judge presiding over Donald Trump’s hush money trial has fined him $1,000 for violating his gag order and sternly warned the former president that additional violation could result in jail time.wThe fine marks the second sanction for Trump for inflammatory comments about witnesses since the start of the trial last month. He was fined $9,000 last week for nine violations.
Judge Juan M Merchan warned Monday that additional gag order violations could potentially result in jail time, though he said that was “the last thing I want to do”.
Prosecutors in Trump’s hush money trial are moving deeper into his orbit following an inside-the-room account about the former president’s reaction to a politically damaging recording that surfaced in the final weeks of the 2016 campaign.
Hope Hicks, a former White House official and for years a top aide, is by far the closest Trump associate to have taken the witness stand in the Manhattan trial.
Her testimony Friday was designed to give jurors an insider’s view of a chaotic and pivotal stretch in the campaign, when a 2005 recording showing Trump talking about grabbing women without their permission was made public and when he and his allies sought to prevent the release of other potentially embarrassing stories. That effort, prosecutors say, included hush money payments to a porn actor and Playboy model who both have said they had sexual encounters with Trump before he entered politics. “I had a good sense to believe this was going to be a massive story and that it was going to dominate the news cycle for the next several days,” Hicks said of the “Access Hollywood” recording, first revealed in an October 2016 Washington Post story.
“This was a damaging development.”