By Jennifer Peltz and Jake Offenhartz, Associated PressFormer President Donald Trump speaks during a break in his civil business fraud trial at New York Supreme Court, Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2023, in New York. The judge in Donald Trump's civil fraud trial has fined the former president $10,000. The judge says Trump violated a limited gag order barring personal attacks on court staffers.
Trump and his lawyers said that comment was about witness Michael Cohen, a former Trump law, and not about the clerk. Trump told the judge from the witness stand that his remark about partisans was aimed at “you and Cohen.” The judge had ordered Trump to take down that post and Trump did, which the former president noted in court Wednesday. But that post had lingered on his campaign website for weeks, prompting a $5,000 fine for Trump last Friday.
Habba tried to suggest that Cohen had angled unsuccessfully for a job in Trump’s White House — Cohen insisted he never sought one — and asked whether he had “significant animosity” toward Trump.“You have made a career out of publicly attacking President Trump, haven’t you?” Habba asked.
During his first day of testimony Tuesday, Cohen said he and key executives at Trump’s company worked to inflate the estimated values of their employer’s holdings so documents given to banks and others would match a net worth that Trump had set “arbitrarily.”