The judge overseeing former President Donald Trump’s hush money trial in New York found him guilty on Monday of violating an order barring him from making public statements which call into question the integrity and legitimacy of the trial, as well as “[raise] … the specter of fear for the safety of the jurors and of their loved ones.” If it happens again, Judge Juan M. Merchan says, he’ll have to throw Trump in prison.
Trump was fined $1,000 by Merchan for violating the order for a tenth time. Merchan noted that despite the repeated monetary fines, Trump appears unwilling to stop making remarks about the trial both in public and in rants on social media.
“Because this is now the tenth 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” wrote Merchan in the order.
Trump was being cited this time for statements about his for lawyer Michael Cohen. Cohen was a longtime fixer who flipped on Trump after allegedly being the conduit for the hush money payoff to adult film star Stormy Daniels, who Trump allegedly had an affair with prior to the 2016 presidential election. Cohen, who testified against Trump during his own trial in 2018, pled guilty to criminal tax evasion and campaign finance violations, which included facilitating the alleged payoff to Daniels.
One of the statements Trump was fined for today was made in the hallway of the Supreme Court of New York to reporters on Apr. 22 after the court let out. “When are they going to look at all the lies that Cohen did in the last trial?” Trump asked. “He got caught lying in the last trial. So he got caught lying, pure lying. And when are they going to look at that?”
Merchan also cited interviews Trump gave on the evening of the 22nd and the 23rd. In the first one, he claimed that the judge was “rushing the trial like crazy,” and that because New York’s “mostly all democrat … just a purely democrat area … [i]t’s a very unfair situation that I can tell you.”
In the second interview, Trump laid into Cohen again, calling him a “convicted liar” before stating that “he’s got no credibility whatsoever … Michael Cohen was a convicted liar … but what he did is he did some pretty bad things[.]”
Trump’s lawyers didn’t dispute that he said any of those things, but argued that they were protected political speech. The judge rejected that argument in court.
Going forward, the court will have to consider jail, Merchan said, according to reporting from Inner City Press.
“I am concerned about the ramifications of putting you in jail,” Merchan continued. “But I have a job to do, to compel respect for the dignity of the court. Your behavior constitutes a direct attack on the rule. If I need to, I will.”
Whether Trump will finally choose to obey the judge remains unclear. A jail sentence for Trump, despite the repeated warnings, would likely make him an even bigger martyr in the eyes of his fan base.
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