Republican presidential candidate and former US President Donald Trump sits in the courtroom during his criminal trial on charges that he falsified business records to hide money he paid to silence porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016 at Manhattan State Court in New York City, USA. May 6, 2024.
Brendan Mcdermid | Reuters
This is developing news. Check back throughout the day for updates.
A judge issued a stern warning to Donald Trump on Monday: Stop violating the court’s orders or you’ll end up in prison.
“The last thing I want to do is put you in prison. You are the former president of the United States and potentially the next president,” Judge Juan Merchan told Trump in Manhattan Supreme Court, where the former president is sitting trial in a criminal hush money case.
“I don’t want to suggest a prison sentence,” Merchan said, “but I will if necessary.”
The ultimatum came less than a week after the judge convicted Trump of contempt of court for nine violations of his confidentiality order, which prevents him from speaking about witnesses, jurors and other parties involved in the trial.
On Monday morning, Merchan once again scorned Trump for claiming in an April 22 radio interview that the trial was “very unfair” because the jury was drawn from a field that was “overwhelmingly exclusively Democratic.”
With this claim, Trump “not only called into question the integrity and therefore the legitimacy of this process, but once again raised the specter of fear for the safety of the jurors and their families,” Merchan wrote in his ruling.
Merchan imposed the maximum fine of $1,000 on Trump for the latest violation of the gag order, giving him a total of $10,000 in fines for ten separate violations.
Trump is also hereby advised that future violations of his lawful orders, if appropriate and justified, will be punished with a prison sentence, Merchan ruled.
The judge acknowledged before handing down the sentence: “It appears that the $1,000 fines are not a deterrent.”
But he said he would not rush to take the drastic step of throwing Trump in prison for his continued contempt.
“The magnitude of such a decision is not lost on me,” Merchan said.
“There are many reasons why incarceration is really the last resort for you,” he said. “Taking this step would disrupt the process.”
“But at the end of the day, I have a job to do.”
Prosecutors then called Jeff McConney, the former longtime controller of the Trump Organization, to the stand. McConney, who worked under the company’s former chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg, had previously given emotional testimony in a New York civil trial over economic fraud against Trump.
The tense start to the fourth week of the historic trial was followed by a series of other dramatic developments, including a meltdown on the witness stand by a former top White House aide.
Trump Organization Controller Jeffrey McConney leaves the New York State Supreme Court in New York, USA, on Friday, October 6, 2023.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images
On Friday, former longtime Trump adviser Hope Hicks testified as part of a subpoena for the prosecution. She provided an insider account of how Trump and his team responded to damaging news about him during the 2016 presidential campaign. This included the infamous “Access Hollywood” video that showed Trump bragging about sexual misconduct.
“Everyone was just getting over the shock,” Hicks said as she described breaking the news to the campaign.
That tape renewed media interest in porn star Stormy Daniels’ little-known account of a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006. For most of the week, the jury heard from a lawyer who helped secure a $130,000 hush-money payment for Daniels to negotiate. That payment is at the heart of the prosecution’s case.
Former White House Communications Director Hope Hicks leaves the hearing room during a break during a closed-door interview with the House Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, June 19, 2019.
Alex Wong | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Trump is accused of 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal a refund to his attorney for the payment to Daniels. The $130,000 was paid less than two weeks before the 2016 election by Trump’s then-lawyer Michael Cohen. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg accuses Trump of concealing records of the payment to further an illegal election-influence scheme.
Hicks testified that while she was working in the Trump White House, Trump told her that Cohen made the payment without Trump’s knowledge to protect him and that he did so “out of the goodness of his own heart.”
Hicks said she believes it would be “out of character for Michael” to act out of pure kindness.
She also suggested that Trump was glad the Daniels story didn’t come to light before the election. “I think Mr. Trump felt that it was better to deal with this now and that it would have been bad if this story had come to light before the election,” she testified.
Read more about Trump’s hush money trial
As Trump’s lawyers began their cross-examination, asking her basic questions about her time at the Trump Organization, Hicks quickly burst into tears on the witness stand.
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2024-05-06 14:29:53
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