OAN’s James Meyers
8:22 AM – Monday, May 6, 2024
The judge in charge of Donald Trump’s hush money trial has fined him $1,000 for violating his gag order and warned that the 45th president could face an additional violation that could result in jail time.
The latest fine is the second sanction against Trump for inflammatory comments about witnesses since the start of the trial. He was fined $9,000 last week for nine violations.
Judge Juan M. Merchan warned Monday that any additional violations could potentially result in jail time, but said it was “the last thing I want to do.”
Hope Hicks, who was a former White House official and for years a top aide took the stand last Friday to testify.
She testified over a 2005 recording showing Trump talking about grabbing women without their permission. Prosecutors claimed that Trump’s allies also sought to prevent the release of other potential stories, which they said included hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels and playboy model Karen McDougal.
“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,” Hicks said of the “Access Hollywood” recording, first revealed in an October 2016 Washington Post story. “This was a damaging development.”
Meanwhile, the trial is now entering its third week of testimony Monday with prosecutors building a case toward witness Michael Cohen, who was Trump’s former lawyer.
Currently, the former president is facing 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection with payments to help prevent potentially detrimental stories from being made public.
Prosecutors claim Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, reimbursed Cohen for payments to Daniels and gave Cohen extra money for completing the task. Prosecutors also claimed that those transactions were falsely logged in company records as legal expenses.
Additionally, Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges and denied sexual encounters with any of the women.
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