Judge warns Trump of possible prison sentence for violating gag order
Artist: Jane Rosenberg
Donald Trump’s prosecutors are keeping their witness schedule secret to prevent the former president from targeting future witnesses in his hush-money trial in New York, they said Monday.
“The defendant violated the order restricting extrajudicial expression, and we did not want the names of the witnesses, the next witnesses, to be released,” prosecutor Joshua Steinglass told the Manhattan Supreme Court judge Court.
To avoid “disclosing” names, prosecutors tell defense attorneys who the next witnesses are the day before they testify, Steinglass said.
The public prosecutor’s office has not published the expected list of witnesses.
This adds even more tension to the dramatic trial as prosecutors one by one reveal who will be on the witness stand next.
Steinglass rejected defense claims that Trump was unfairly disadvantaged because his team was not given a full schedule of when each witness would testify.
“You’ve had the witness list and the evidence list for a long time,” he told Judge Juan Merchan after the jury went home for the day.
Steinglass said he didn’t want to give the impression that prosecutors were “somehow cornering the defense.”
Trump is bound by a gag order that prohibits him from speaking about witnesses and jurors — but Merchan has already charged him with contempt of court 10 times for violating the order.
The final contempt charges were issued Monday morning before the jury met.
Merchan warned Trump that future violations of court orders would land the former president in prison.
“The last thing I want to do is put you in jail,” Merchan told Trump. But “I will if necessary.”
As Trump left the courthouse, he appeared to indicate he had no plans to stop violating the gag order.
Republican presidential candidate and former US President Donald Trump gestures as he walks with his lawyer Todd Blanche during his criminal trial over allegations he falsified business records to hide money paid to silence porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016, in Manhattan State Court in New York City, USA, May 6, 2024.
Brendan Mcdermid | Reuters
“Frankly, our Constitution is far more important than prison… I’ll make that decision any day,” Trump said, referring to his claims that the gag order deprives him of his right to free speech.
New insights
Steinglass’ conference with the judge capped a day of testimony from Trump Organization insiders describing the secret company’s operations. They also testified about the business records that were central to District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s historic case.
Former Trump Organization controller Jeff McConney was the day’s key witness.
Read more about Trump’s hush money trial
Prosecutors repeatedly pressed him about the unusual circumstances surrounding the restitution payments the company made to Trump’s former fixer, Michael Cohen.
Trump is accused of falsifying business records to conceal reimbursements to Cohen, who paid porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 just before the 2016 presidential election to bury her claim that she and Trump had sex in 2006.
McConney testified that Cohen sent invoices that were not forwarded to the company’s legal department, even though the company’s legal department normally reviewed invoices for legal services.
He also testified that he never saw a retention agreement for Cohen in connection with these payments.
This is significant because Bragg accuses Trump of falsifying records of the Cohen refunds by reporting them as payments for legal services as part of a fee-for-service agreement.
McConney also said he was instructed to “project” the payments to Cohen to cover Cohen’s expected taxes on the money. In addition, Cohen received an additional bonus of $60,000, for a total of $420,000 in payments.
McConney testified that he could not imagine another case in which an expense reimbursement would be doubled to cover expected taxes.
Trump’s tenth contempt quote
Merchan opened the day with a stern warning to Trump: Stop violating the court’s orders or you’ll end up in prison.
The ultimatum came less than a week after the judge found Trump in contempt of court for nine violations of the same gag order.
Merchan again scorned Trump for the 10th time on Monday for claiming in an April 22 radio interview that his trial was “very unfair” because the jury was drawn from a field that was “overwhelmingly purely Democratic.”
Trump “not only called into question the integrity and therefore 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 fined Trump a maximum of $1,000 per violation, for a total fine of $10,000 for the ten individual violations.
“It appears that the $1,000 fines are not acting as a deterrent,” Merchan said.
Still, he said, he wouldn’t take the drastic step of putting Trump in prison without serious consideration.
“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.”
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2024-05-06 23:22:41
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