The judge in Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial fined the former president $10,000 on Wednesday, saying Trump violated a limited gag order barring personal attacks on court staffers.
The fine came after Trump was called to the witness stand to explain his comment outside the courtroom about “a person who’s very partisan sitting alongside” the judge in the case, Judge Arthur Engoron.
Trump briefly took the witness stand Wednesday, raising his hand and stating his name “Donald John Trump, New York.”
Engoron asked Trump, “Did you say ‘this judge is a very partisan judge with a person who is very partisan sitting alongside of him?'”
Trump responded “yes,” but insisted he was referring to Michael Cohen, who was seated next to the judge in the witness chair.
“You sure you didn’t mean the person on the other side?” Engoron asked, referring to his law clerk Allison Greenfield, whom Trump previously disparaged in a social media post he was ordered to take down.
Weeks ago, Engoron ordered all participants in the trial not to comment publicly about his staff. The narrow gag order imposed on Oct. 3 came after Trump made a social media post maligning the judge’s principal law clerk, who sits beside Engoron in court.
The judge ordered Trump to take down that post and Trump did. But it lingered on his campaign website for weeks, prompting a $5,000 fine for Trump on Friday.
Trump and his lawyers said his comment Wednesday was about witness Michael Cohen, not the clerk.
Three of Trump’s attorneys objected to the fine, insisting that the comment was referring to Cohen, and they reiterated Trump’s claim that the judge’s law clerk was unfairly biased.
(AP)
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5 Responses
Now the grifter will appeal to his sheep for donations to pay the unfair fine
I love how lawyers are so polite. When they say, essentially, “you are a liar,” they say it politely.
The Judge’s exact words: “As the trier of fact, I find the witness is not credible.”
Wow you just called Trump a bald faced liar in public!
CTLAWYER: Spoken like a genuine TDS sufferer. Liberals, especially Jewish liberals, calling a Conservative a “grifter” are throwing rocks at their own dilapidated glass houses.
Arizona is the home of Trump derangement….the state that hired the biggest bunch of clowns in modern political history to try and prove the “election was stolen” and conducted a circus for months with their so-called “experts” running around Maricopa County looking for evidence of counterfeit ballots from China and Martians manipulating election machine software.
Arizona, Trump *is* a grifter. Just like his former BFFs the Clintons. But he has every right to criticize the judge, the lying witness, *and* the law clerk, and the judge had no right to impose the gag order or the fine. It’s unconstitutional and a far greater crime than anything Trump is charged with.