After a long and arduous weekend of golfing and complaining on social media, Donald Trump returned to criminal court Tuesday morning. He was already unhappy about his obligation to show up, but when the proceedings began, his day grew much worse.
Trump has complained nonstop about his gag order, though he hasn’t really let it stop him from attacking witnesses and jurors. As court began, Judge Juan Merchan ruled on the 10 contempt allegations that were brought before him last week, determining that in nine of them, Trump did violate the order.
The judge imposed the maximum fine of $1,000 per incident.
Nine thousand dollars in fines isn’t a huge sum for Trump, but fines did seem to convince him (after a few incidents) to stop talking about Judge Arthur Engoron’s clerk during his business fraud trial. Also, Judge Merchan — who is hearing the next round of contempt allegations on Thursday — issued a warning that jail time will be imposed if he keeps it up. The order reads, in part:
“Defendant is hereby warned that the Court will not tolerate continued willful violations of its lawful orders and that if necessary and appropriate under the circumstances, it will impose an incarceratory punishment; and it is hereby ORDERED, that Defendant pay a $1,000 fine for each of the nine violations of this Court’s lawful order by the close of business on Friday, May 3, 2024; and it is further ORDERED that Defendant remove the seven offending posts from Defendant’s Truth Social account and the two offending posts from his campaign website by 2:15pm Tuesday, April 30,2024.”
Another hearing is scheduled for Thursday to consider the next batch of alleged violations.
The order also addresses Trump’s claims that he thought reposting other people’s words didn’t count as violating the order. The court rejects that claim, and says that Trump’s TruthSocial account and website “exclusively represent the opinions and views” he holds and expresses — and that, with or without his own added commentary, the intent of reposts “is to communicate to his audience that he endorses and adopts the posted statement as his own.”
Judge Merchan also ruled on Trump taking a day off to attend his son Barron’s high school graduation. Trump and his media counterparts have spread the false claim that he has been denied this, but Merchan made it clear from day one that he was waiting to rule. On Tuesday, he granted the May 17th break, thereby demolishing one of Trump’s victimhood claims.
Watch Trump’s pre-court whine-fest below, bearing in mind that he did not use his weekend off to hold rallies in the states where he claims he’d rather be.
Trump: I'm going to go into the icebox now and sit for about eight hours or nine hours. I would much rather be in Georgia and Florida. I much rather be in states that are in play pic.twitter.com/oE63o5qp1U
— Acyn (@Acyn) April 30, 2024
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