Trump fined for contempt in hush money trial
What happened
Donald Trump was held in contempt of court this week, fined $9,000, and threatened with jail time for attacking jurors and witnesses on social media in violation of a gag order. Before allowing Trump’s trial over 2016 payments to porn star Stormy Daniels to continue, Judge Juan Merchan fined him for nine posts on Truth Social and wrote that if he persists, “Jail may be a necessary punishment.” Trump responded by sending out a fundraising email that painted the ruling as more evidence of his political persecution. “THEY WANT TO SILENCE ME!” it said. “They think they can BLEED ME DRY and SHUT ME UP.”
The jury heard testimony from former National Enquirer owner David Pecker, banker Gary Farro, and attorney Keith Davidson, who has represented two women who claim Trump slept with them: Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal. Farro testified that Michael Cohen, Trump’s fixer, misrepresented the October 2016 transfer of $130,000 for Daniels as a real estate transaction. Davidson testified about the competition between the Enquirer and ABC for McDougal’s story. And Pecker recounted worrying about campaign finance rules. “We committed a campaign violation,” he recalled telling Cohen. Cohen, Pecker said, replied, “Jeff Sessions is the attorney general, and Donald Trump has him in his pocket.”
What the columnists said
Trump is “down to his last chance,” said Harry Litman in the Los Angeles Times. No billionaire would be scared by a piddling $9,000 fine, but Merchan’s threat to throw Trump behind bars is a different story. Other courts “have done backflips” to avoid this scenario, fearing the ensuing “political cyclone.” Will it chasten Trump, who complied with Merchan’s order to delete the offending posts? We’ll see.
Meanwhile, this “confusing farce” of a trial continues, said Andrew C. McCarthy in National Review. The arrangement to bury stories unflattering to Trump was underhanded, but “not against the law,” which has left Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg flailing to establish just what Trump’s supposed crime was. Prosecutors are painting Trump as “complicit in a conspiracy to suppress information”—except he isn’t being charged with conspiracy. Nor does Bragg have jurisdiction to charge Trump with violating federal campaign law. Don’t worry, though: He’ll keep “making it up as he goes along.”
Still, the trial has revealed enough that the defense can no longer claim the hush-up was all about “protecting Trump’s family,” said Calder McHugh in Politico. Pecker said Trump invited him to a special 2017 White House dinner to thank him for his help, and Davidson’s testimony demonstrated that he, too, knew the “catch and kill” scheme was all about the election, joking that Trump should “throw in an ambassadorship” for him. The Supreme Court’s immunity hearing last week virtually guaranteed that no other Trump trial will start before the election. The hush-money case, despite its weaknesses, is “suddenly more important than originally thought.”