Donald Trump fined $9,000 for contempt of court in criminal hush-money trial

Former US president Donald Trump arrives at the Manhattan Criminal Court on Tuesday in New York City. Photograph: Seth Wenig-Pool/Getty Images’s criminal hush-money trial fined the former US president $9,000 for contempt of court on Tuesday and said he would consider jailing him if he continued to violate a gag order.

Mr Merchan had imposed the gag order to prevent Mr Trump from criticising witnesses and others involved in the case.The fine – $1,000 for each of nine online statements that Mr Merchan said violated the order – was just short of the $10,000 penalty that prosecutors had requested for posts that insulted likely witnesses and questioned the impartiality of the jury.

Mr Trump has argued that the gag order violates his free speech rights, and his lawyer Todd Blanche told Mr Merchan last week that the statements at issue were responses to political attacks. Imprisonment, however, would be an unprecedented twist in the first criminal trial of a former US president. The Republican candidate in the 2024 presidential election is charged with falsifying business records to conceal a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels in exchange for her silence about a sexual encounter she said she had with Trump in 2006.

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