The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s New York criminal trial fined the former U.S. president $9,000 for contempt of court Tuesday and said he would consider jailing him if he continued to violate a gag order that bars him from making public statements about witnesses, jurors, and some others connected to the case.

In a written order, Justice Juan Merchan said the fine may not be enough to serve as a deterrent for the wealthy businessman-turned-politician and lamented he did not have the authority to impose a higher penalty.

“Defendant is hereby warned that the Court will not tolerate willful violations of its lawful orders and that if necessary and appropriate under the circumstances, it will impose an incarceratory punishment,” Merchan wrote.

The fine — $1,000 for each of nine online statements that Merchan said violated the order — was just short of the $10,000 penalty that prosecutors had requested for posts that insulted likely witnesses and questioned the impartiality of the jury.

Merchan will consider whether to impose further fines for other statements at a hearing on Thursday.

The judge also ordered Trump to remove the statements from his Truth Social account and his campaign website by 2:15 p.m. EDT. They were removed arpund 1:45, some 30 minutes ahead of the deadline.

Trump has argued that the gag order violates his free speech rights, and his lawyer Todd Blanche told Merchan last week that the statements at issue were responses to political attacks.

Merchan noted that Blanche was unable to provide any evidence that the expected witnesses had attacked Trump before he insulted them.

The $9,000 fine, due by Friday, is a relatively small penalty for Trump, who has already posted $266.6 million in bonds as he appeals civil judgments in two other cases.

Imprisonment, however, would be an unprecedented twist in the first criminal trial of a former U.S. president.

The ruling came at the start of the second week of testimony in the Manhattan case in which Trump is charged with falsifying business records to conceal a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels in exchange for her silence about a sexual encounter she claims she had with him in 2006.

Trump has pleaded not guilty and denied having sex with Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.

Roughly two dozen Trump supporters rallied outside the courthouse on Tuesday morning, chanting his name and waving banners that read “TRUMP 24.” A local Republican organization had called for supporters to turn out after Trump complained that few people were protesting the trial.

Trump was joined in the courtroom by his son Eric, the first time a family member has attended his criminal trial.

In other developments, testimony resumed with Gary Farro, a banker who helped onetime Trump laywer and fixer Michael Cohen open accounts, including one that Cohen used to buy Daniels’ silence. She alleged a 2006 sexual encounter with Trump.

Jurors also began hearing from Keith Davidson, a lawyer who represented Daniels and  Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal, who also peddled a story of an alleged affair with Trump, in their negotiations with the National Enquirer and Cohen. He testified that he arranged a meeting at his Los Angeles office to see whether the National Enquirer’s parent company was interested in McDougal’s story. But Dylan Howard, the Enquirer’s then editor in chief, told him the tabloid wasn’t keen on the idea because she “lacked documentary evidence of the interaction,” Davidson testified.

A month after their initial lunch meeting, Howard reached out again to Davidson, suggesting they should resume discussions about the story. At the time, Davidson warned that American Media Inc., the Enquirer’s parent company, would need to move quickly.

Davidson testified that McDougal was “teetering” at the time he sent the message and was on the verge of signing a deal to tell her story to ABC News.

Davidson said that he was playing the Enquirer and ABC News against each other to get the best deal for McDougal. The ex-Playboy model didn’t want to tell her story publicly, which would’ve been required if she went to ABC, he said.

The tabloid eventually bought the story.

Trump is charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection with the hush money payments. The detailed evidence on business transactions and bank accounts is setting the stage for testimony from Cohen, who went to federal prison after pleading guilty in 2018 to campaign finance violations and other crimes.

Last week, former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker laid out how he agreed to serve as the Trump campaign’s “eyes and ears” by helping to squelch unflattering rumors and claims about Trump and women. Pecker described how he paid $180,000 to scoop up and sit on stories.

Trump’s attorneys have suggested that he was engaged in an effort to protect his name and his family — not to influence the outcome of the presidential election.

The trial — the first of Trump’s four criminal cases to come before a jury — is expected to last for another month or more. And with every moment Trump is in court, he’s growing increasingly frustrated while the November election moves ever closer.

For his part, Trump has been campaigning in his off-hours, but he is required to be in court when it is in session, four days a week. Outside the courtroom Tuesday, he again criticized the case.

“This is a case that should have never been brought,” he said.

This report contains material from Reuters and The Associated Press.

© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.