Judge fines Trump $9,000 for violating gag order in hush-money trial - live | Donald Trump trials
Judge finds Trump in contempt for violating his gag order, fines him $9,000
Judge Juan Merchan says that Donald Trump is fined $9,000 for violating prohibitions on commenting on witnesses.
Prosecutors had accused the former president of violating his gag order multiple times, asking the judge to fine him $1,000 per violation.
Under the gag order, Trump cannot make, or direct others to make, public statements about trial witnesses concerning their roles in the investigation and at trial, prosecutors other than the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, and members of the court staff or the district attorney’s staff.
Trump is free to criticize Merchan himself, though it will probably not help Trump win the favor over the judge, who will decide on Trump’s sentence if the jury finds him guilty.
Before the trial, Merchan extended the gag order to cover his family and Bragg’s family after Trump posted about Merchan’s daughter, who worked for a company that helped Democratic candidates with digital campaigns.
Key events
Victoria Bekiempis
Right now, prosecutor Rebecca Mangold is continuing to question banker Gary Farro about documents associated with Michael Cohen’s LLC, Essential Consultants, for which he opened a bank account.
Remember: Prosecutors said that Cohen used Essential Consultants to funnel money to Stormy Daniels’ lawyer, to bury her account for an extramarital sexual encounter with Donald Trump.
Farro, who had been Cohen’s private banker at First Republic bank, is being asked about documents related to the formation of Essential Consultants; this is providing a timeline for jurors about Cohen’s financial maneuvers related to the alleged hush-money payoff.
Gary Farro returns to the stand
Gary Farro, the prosecution’s third witness, has returned to the stand.
Farro works at Flagstar Bank as a private client adviser and was previously at First Republic, which was used by Donald Trump’s former fixer and lawyer Michael Cohen.
Judge finds Trump in contempt for violating his gag order, fines him $9,000
Judge Juan Merchan says that Donald Trump is fined $9,000 for violating prohibitions on commenting on witnesses.
Prosecutors had accused the former president of violating his gag order multiple times, asking the judge to fine him $1,000 per violation.
Under the gag order, Trump cannot make, or direct others to make, public statements about trial witnesses concerning their roles in the investigation and at trial, prosecutors other than the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, and members of the court staff or the district attorney’s staff.
Trump is free to criticize Merchan himself, though it will probably not help Trump win the favor over the judge, who will decide on Trump’s sentence if the jury finds him guilty.
Before the trial, Merchan extended the gag order to cover his family and Bragg’s family after Trump posted about Merchan’s daughter, who worked for a company that helped Democratic candidates with digital campaigns.
Judge Juan Merchan says he won’t hold the trial on 17 May so that Donald Trump can attend his son Barron’s high school graduation.
“I don’t think the May 17 date is a problem,” Merchan said.
Judge Juan Merchan has taken the bench and court is now in session.
Hugo Lowell
Donald Trump has arrived in the courtroom for his New York criminal trial with his lawyers.
Before we get started today, he has a quick word with his campaign chief, Susie Wiles, who is in the front row of seats behind the defense table, standing next to Eric Trump.
Eric Trump joins his father in the courtroom
Victoria Bekiempis
Donald Trump has walked into the courtroom; he’s wearing a dense blue suit, red tie, white shirt and what appears to be an American flag pin on his lapel.
Eric Trump is here, in the front row. His father had been standing and chatting with him for a few moments.
This is the first time a member of Trump’s family will be attending this trial.
Last week was mainly about testimony from major witness and Trump ally David Pecker.
Prosecutors had a few main goals with Pecker, who is the former CEO of American Media Inc (AMI) and CEO and publisher of the National Enquirer.
They wanted to:
Show that Pecker and Trump engaged in an illegal conspiracy to influence the 2016 election.
Establish AMI’s “catch-and-kill” pattern of purchasing negative stories about Trump to keep them under wraps.
Show how close the former Trump attorney Michael Cohen was with Trump.
Tee things up for future testimony about the falsified payments scheme that Trump allegedly used to repay Cohen for the hush-money payment to keep adult film star Stormy Daniels from telling the public about her alleged affair with Trump right before the 2016 election.
Mission accomplished, for the most part: Pecker gave them pretty much all of the above.
Read the Guardian’s Trump on Trial newsletter for more details about Pecker’s days on the stand:
But if Farro’s testimony is explosive, it’s a cherry bomb compared to what might come later in the week should the court get to hear from Donald Trump’s former Mr Fixit himself – Michael Cohen.
Cohen, a disbarred lawyer who served as Trump’s personal attorney for 12 years until 2018, has turned on his boss and is one of district attorney Alvin Bragg’s key witnesses.
The whole case, in fact, could turn on Cohen’s testimony about payments to two women: the adult film star Stormy Daniels and the former Playboy playmate Karen McDougal. It all comes down to how those payments were made, and whether they were disguised – as prosecutors claim – to violate accounting and political campaign laws.
Another disbarred lawyer named Michael – Avenatti – will feature in Cohen’s testimony, because he represented Daniels and McDougal in the transactions.
(Avenatti himself is serving five years in prison for stealing $297,000 from Daniels.)
(Oh, and obstructing the IRS.)
(And defrauding Nike of $20m.)
Here’s a little more from our own Ed Helmore on the Two Disgraced Lawyer Michaels:
Trump hush-money trial enters third week with testimony from banker who worked with Cohen
And we’re back: Donald Trump’s New York criminal trial enters its third week today, after a fallow day yesterday.
Expected today? A possible ruling on whether Trump owes at least $10,000 for violating his gag order, and more testimony from the private banker Gary Farro about dodgy financial maneuvering to hide Trump’s dirty laundry from American voters.
Farro already told the court last week that in 2015 he became the contact for Michael Cohen – then Trump’s attorney – at First Republic Bank, where he says he witnessed Cohen’s financial chicanery to protect Trump.
Prosecutors say Trump, Cohen and tabloid honcho David Pecker plotted in the summer of 2015 to bury any negative stories that could harm Trump’s run for president.
The next year, with crucially less than a month to go before the election, came the release of the infamous Access Hollywood tape, in which Trump bragged about groping women.
And a day after that – 8 October 2016 – prosecutors say Cohen learned that Stormy Daniels, the pornographic film star, was alleging an affair with Trump.
Prosecutors say Trump’s campaign feared that any additional accounts of boorish behavior could sink his chances in the general election – so, they say, Cohen set up LLCs to facilitate hush-money payments without the candidate’s fingerprints.
As evidence, they say Cohen sought to open accounts for two new companies in October of 2016. Into one of them – Essential Consultants – he plunked his own money. This was the account that wired $130,000 to Daniels’ lawyer, so she would not go public with her story.
We’ll learn more today: court is expected to resume at 9am ET.
