Trump fined again for gag order breach Further violations could lead to jail time
first and make their Scotland’s voice heard at Westminster.”
A Scottish Tory spokesperson said: “Only a vote for Stephen Kerr and the Scottish Conservatives will keep the SNP out in Angus and Perthshire Glens. Any pro-UK votes for other parties will only elect an SNP MP.”
The Courier reported it had received no confirmation that CarrEllis would move to the constituency for the General Election campaign or if she would resign her council role if elected. The paper added that Carr-Ellis was a former journalist who described herself as a Geordie and had previously worked at The Scotsman and the Sunday Herald.
A Scottish Labour spokesperson said: “Scottish Labour is committed to giving people across Scotland the chance to kick the Tories out of Downing Street and take on the divided and chaotic SNP.”
THE judge presiding over Donald Trump’s hushmoney trial has fined him $1000 (nearly £800) for violating his gag order – and sternly warned the former president that additional violations could result in jail time.
The fine marks the second sanction for Trump for inflammatory comments about witnesses since the start of the trial last month. He was fined a total of $9000 (£7172) last week for nine violations.
Judge Juan Manuel Merchan warned the former president yesterday that additional gag order violations could potentially result in jail time, though he said that was “the last thing I want to do”.
Prosecutors in Trump’s hush-money trial are moving deeper into his orbit following an inside-the-room account about the former president’s reaction to a politically damaging recording that surfaced in the final weeks of the 2016 campaign.
Hope Hicks, a former White House official and for years a senior aide, is by far the closest Trump associate to have given evidence in the Manhattan trial so far. Her testimony on Friday was designed to give jurors an insider’s view of a chaotic and pivotal stretch in the campaign, when a 2005 recording showing Trump talking about grabbing women without their permission was made public and when he and his allies sought to prevent the release of other potentially embarrassing stories.
That effort, prosecutors say, included hush money payments to a porn actor and Playboy model who both have said they had sexual encounters with Trump before he entered politics.
Hicks said of the Access Hollywood recording, first revealed in an October 2016 Washington Post story: “I had a good sense to believe this was going to be a massive story and that it was going to dominate the news cycle for the next several days. This was a damaging development.”
The trial entered its third week of testimony yesterday with prosecutors building toward their star witness, Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and personal fixer who pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the hush-money payments. Cohen is expected to undergo a bruising crossexamination from defence attorneys seeking to undermine his credibility with jurors.
Trump faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection with payments made to stifle potentially embarrassing stories.
Prosecutors say Trump’s company, the Trump Organisation, reimbursed Cohen for payments to porn actor Stormy Daniels and gave Cohen bonuses and extra payments.
Prosecutors allege that those transactions were falsely logged in company records as legal expenses. Trump has pleaded not guilty and denied sexual encounters with any of the women, as well as any wrongdoing.
So far, jurors have heard from witnesses including a tabloid magazine publisher and Trump friend who bought the rights to several sordid tales about Trump to prevent them from coming out and a Los Angeles lawyer who negotiated hush money deals on behalf of both Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal.
Trump’s lawyers have tried to chip away at the prosecution’s theory of the case and the credibility of some witnesses. They have raised questions during cross-examinations about whether Trump was possibly a target of extortion, forced to arrange payouts to suppress harmful stories and spare his family embarrassment.
Prosecutors maintain the payments were about preserving his political viability as he sought the presidency.
The case is one of four Trump prosecutions and possibly the only one that will reach trial before the November presidential election.