MANHATTAN (CN) — In a shocking midday twist, Judge Arthur Engoron called Donald Trump to the witness stand for a spontaneous hearing at Trump’s civil fraud trial in Manhattan before ultimately fining the former president $10,000 for violating the judge's gag order.
Engoron had been mulling over Trump's comments to the press earlier that day.
“It was just brought to my attention that the Associated Press reported that Mr. Donald J. Trump just stated the following to the press gaggle outside of the courtroom: ‘This judge is a very partisan judge, with a person who is very partisan sitting alongside him, perhaps even much more partisan than he is,’” Engoron said Wednesday morning, threatening “serious sanctions” at the “blatant, dangerous disobeyal of a clear court order.”
Trump’s lead lawyer Christopher Kise claimed Trump was actually referring to Michael Cohen, who was being cross-examined on Wednesday, not Engoron’s clerk. Engoron had previously issued a gag order preventing parties from making public comments about members of his staff after Trump attacked his clerk on Truth Social earlier this month.
The judge said he’d take the argument under consideration when issuing a ruling. But after the lunch break, Engoron decided to put Kise’s claim to the test. He called Donald Trump to the witness stand.
Energy filled the room as the former president made his way to the stand, was sworn in and testified that he was in fact referring to Michael Cohen when he was speaking to the press that morning.
“Are you sure you didn’t mean the person to the other side of me?” Engoron asked, referring to his clerk who was seated beside him.
“Yes I’m sure,” Trump replied.
“Don’t you always refer to Michael Cohen as Michael Cohen?” Engoron asked.
“No,” Trump said.
Trump’s lawyers chimed in from the defense table.
“Maybe worse,” Kise said.
“Maybe a lot worse,” added lawyer Alina Habba.
Engoron acknowledged the fact that Trump in the past had complained about the clerk being “partisan,” the same vocabulary Trump used Wednesday. The judge also pointed out that the clerk is always seated next to him, much closer than Cohen and the other witnesses, who are separated from the judge by a barrier.
Trump conceded that he thought the clerk is “maybe unfair, I think she’s very biased against us.”
Engoron excused Trump from the stand, and addressed the court as the former president sat back down at the defense table.
“I find that the witness is not credible, that he was referring to my principal law clerk who is sitting much closer to me,” Engoron said. “I hereby fine you $10,000, which is on the liberal side.”
Trump’s lawyers immediately objected to both the punishment and the unusual makeshift hearing, but Engoron ultimately upheld the fine and issued a warning to the former president.
“Don’t do it again, or it’ll be worse,” Engoron said.
Earlier that day, Habba complained to the judge about the clerk’s “eye rolls and constant whispering” during her cross-examination of Cohen the day prior.
“It’s incredibly distracting when there are eye rolls and constant whispering at the bench when I’m trying to cross-examine a witness,” Habba said.
She didn’t explicitly name the clerk as the subject of her complaint. But Habba clearly aimed her criticism at the clerk, making a point to reference her own time as a court clerk.
This is the second time Trump has been sanctioned for violating Engoron’s gag order. He was fined $5,000 last week after Engoron discovered Trump’s deleted Truth Social post about the court clerk was still live on his 2024 campaign website. In the post, Trump baselessly called the clerk the “girlfriend” of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and shared her name to his followers.
Trump stormed out of the courtroom on Wednesday after a failed bid from his lawyers to drop the case following Cohen’s testimony. It’s unclear when the former president will return.
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