Donald Trump was fined US$9,000 on Tuesday for publicly attacking witnesses and jurors on the sidelines of his criminal trial in New York, where the judge threatened to incarcerate him if he did it again.
Donald Trump “is warned that the Court will not tolerate continued willful violations of its orders […] If necessary and appropriate, it will impose a prison sentence,” wrote Judge Juan Merchan in his decision rendered as soon as the proceedings resumed.
The magistrate sentenced the former president of the United States, present in the courtroom for this third week of trial, to a fine of 1,000 American dollars per violation – nine in total, the maximum allowed by law, and he ordered his attacks removed from his Truth Social network or campaign site.
Since the start of the trial, prosecutors had asked that Donald Trump be punished for his repeated violations of the ban on attacking key witnesses in the case, such as his former lawyer Michael Cohen and former porn star Stormy Daniels , or even to the jurors, whom he implies are not impartial.
Even before the judge ruled on these first violations, prosecutors raised new ones, which will be examined on Thursday, with possible new sanctions for Donald Trump.
When he arrived in court on Tuesday, the Republican presidential candidate once again presented himself as a victim of legal proceedings “led by the White House and Democratic judges and prosecutors”. And he again called on the judge, whom he regularly describes as “corrupt”, to recuse himself.
The first former president in U.S. history to face criminal trial, Donald Trump, 77, faces conviction and, in theory, up to prison time in the case, one of four in which he is indicted.
It is also probably the only one that will be decided before the November 5 election, during which he dreams of revenge on Joe Biden.
Empty shell
Donald Trump is being prosecuted for 34 falsifications of accounting documents which were allegedly used to conceal a payment to cover up a potential sex scandal in the home stretch of the 2016 presidential campaign.
A sum of $130,000 was paid to Stormy Daniels to buy her silence about a sexual relationship she claimed to have had with him in 2006, when he was already married. A relationship he denies. The prosecution speaks of a “plot” to “falsify” the election when the defense sees it as the normal functioning of democracy.
After a first week devoted to jury selection, the debates focused last week on the compelling testimony of a former tabloid boss, who set the scene for the case.
David Pecker, who owned the National Enquirer, recounted how he put himself at the service of Donald Trump’s campaign in 2016 by purchasing the exclusive rights to two other testimonies likely to cause scandals. All after a meeting in the summer of 2015 with Donald Trump and his former lawyer, Michael Cohen.
But David Pecker, who had not been reimbursed, refused to pay Stormy Daniels when his case arose.
On Tuesday, the hearings resumed with testimony from Michael Cohen’s former banker, Gary Farro. He detailed how this “difficult client”, for whom “90% of the time the requests were urgent”, had asked him to open an account for a new company, in fact an empty shell which was used to pay Stormy Daniels.
“If the client had told me that it was a shell company, I would not have opened” the account, he testified.
Michael Cohen was then reimbursed in 2017 by Donald Trump’s business group, the Trump Organization. These expenses had been recorded as “legal costs”, hence the prosecution for accounting falsifications.
At the start of the trial, the judge listed the names of around forty potential witnesses, including Michael Cohen, Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, but also Steve Bannon, one of Donald Trump’s former political strategists, or Hope Hicks, his former White House communications director.