As the former president entered the Manhattan courtroom to begin his criminal trial, he said that the accusations against him constituted “an assault on America.”
The former president is charged with fabricating documentation pertaining to his payment of “hush money” to Stormy Daniels. Trump asserted that Democrats were using the hush money case as a political ploy to have him spend money and appear in court instead of campaigning around the nation.
The Manhattan judge overseeing Donald Trump’s hush money trial threatens to put the former president in jail for repeatedly breaking a very tight gag order that doesn’t apply to many of the case’s witnesses.
Judge Juan Merchan, who has a history of supporting Democratic candidates, provided fresh evidence of Trump’s infractions of the injunction on Monday. Last week, the judge fined the 45th president $9,000 for identical offences. “Merchan threatened to imprison Trump if he continued to violate the order, a threat he reiterated on Monday after fining him the maximum of $1,000 for the most recent violation,” according to NBC News.
Trump, Merchan cautioned, “his continued willful violations of this court’s orders constitute a direct attack on the rule of law and threaten the administration of justice.” That cannot go on, in my opinion.
The offensive message was uploaded to Trump’s Truth Social account, according to Merchan, and it needs to be taken down by 2:15 p.m. on Monday.
Concurrently, the lawyer who doubles as Trump’s spokesperson denounced the Democratic-run New York City legal system as “third world” and implied that Merchan consistently violates Trump’s constitutional right to a fair trial.
Attorney Alina Habba spoke particularly on the almost unheard-of gag order surrounding Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan for company records—the first against a former president.
According to NBC, Trump is prohibited by the order from addressing the jury or witnesses in effort to sway them.