Judge warns Trump of potential jail time for violating gag order

NEW YORK: The judge in Donald Trump’s criminal trial fined him $1,000 and held him in contempt of court for a 10th time on Monday for violating a gag order and warned that further violations could land the former president in jail.

Justice Juan Merchan said the nine $1,000 fines he had imposed so far did not seem to be deterring the wealthy business mogul from violating the order, which bars him from speaking publicly about jurors and witnesses in the first criminal trial of a former US president.

“I do not want to impose a jail sanction and have done everything I can to avoid doing so. But I will if necessary,” Merchan said from the bench in the absence of a jury.Imprisonment would be an unprecedented step in the historic trial, which stems from a hush money payment made to porn star Stormy Daniels in the final weeks of the 2016 election.

After Merchan’s ruling, jurors saw bank records and heard testimony from a former Trump employee that could bolster prosecutors’ case that Trump falsified business records to cover up the hush money payment.

Trump has pleaded not guilty and denies wrongdoing.As he imposed the fine, Merchan said he considered jail time “truly the last resort” that would disrupt the trial, pose extraordinary security challenges and complicate the 2024 presidential election, in which the Republican Trump seeks to win the White House back from Democratic President Joe Biden.

But he said Trump’s “continued, willful” violations of the gag order amounted to a “direct attack on the rule of law.”Merchan imposed the 10th $1,000 fine on Monday for an April 22 broadcast interview in which the former president said: “That jury was picked so fast - 95 percent Democrats. The area’s mostly all Democrat.”