Trump hit with contempt fine, jail threat

Donald Trump was held in contempt of court yesterday and fined US$9000 ($15,300) for repeatedly violating a gag order that barred him from making public statements about witnesses, jurors and some others connected to his New York hush money case. If he does it again, the judge warned, he could be jailed.

Prosecutors had alleged 10 violations, but New York Judge Juan Merchan found there were nine.

It was a stinging rebuke of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s insistence he was exercising his free speech rights and a reminder he’s a criminal defendant subject to the harsh realities of trial procedure.

And the judge’s remarkable threat to jail a former US President signalled Trump’s already precarious legal standing could further spiral depending on his behaviour during the remainder of the trial.

Merchan wrote that he is “keenly aware of, and protective of”, Trump’s First Amendment rights, “particularly given his candidacy for the office of President of the United States”.

Still, he warned the court would not tolerate “wilful violations of its lawful orders and that if necessary

I’m the Republican candidate for president of the United States . . . and I’m sitting in a courthouse all day long listening to this stuff.

Donald Trump

and appropriate under the circumstances, it will impose an incarceratory punishment”.

With that statement, the judge drew nearer the spectre of Trump becoming the first former president of the United States behind bars.

“This gag order is totally unconstitutional,” Trump said as court adjourned after a day that included testimony from a Hollywood lawyer who negotiated two of the hush money deals at issue in the case.

“I’m the Republican candidate for president of the United States . . . and I’m sitting in a courthouse all day long listening to this stuff.”

Trump is used to having constant access to his social media bullhorn to slam opponents and speak his mind.

After he was banned from Twitter following the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by his supporters, Trump launched his own platform, where his posts wouldn’t be blocked or restricted.

He has long tried to distance himself from controversial messages he’s amplified to his millions of followers by insisting they’re “only retweets”.

But he does have experience with gag orders, which were also imposed in other legal matters.

After he was found to have violated orders in his civil fraud trial, he paid more than US$15,000 in fines.

Trump also is subject to a gag order in his federal criminal election interference case in Washington.

That order limits what he can say about known or reasonably foreseeable witnesses in the case and about court staff and other lawyers, though an appeals court freed him to speak about special counsel Jack Smith, who brought the case.