MANHATTAN (CN) — Former President Donald Trump will be fined $5,000 for violating the gag order in his Manhattan fraud trial, a judge ruled Friday.
It’s a minor punishment compared to the imprisonment that Judge Arthur Engoron floated Friday morning in court. The ruling came after the judge discovered that Trump had never deleted a disparaging social media post about his court clerk, which was the reason for the Oct. 3 gag order in the first place.
Earlier this month, Engoron ordered Trump to remove the post immediately and barred him from making any further disparaging posts against his staff, threatening “serious sanctions” for a violation.
“Despite this clear order, last night I learned that the subject offending post was never removed from the website DonaldJTrump.com, and in fact, had been on that website for the last 17 days,” Engoron said Friday. “I will now grant defendants the opportunity to explain why this blatant violation of the gag order should not result in serious sanctions, including financial penalties, holding Donald Trump in contempt and possibly imprisoning him.”
Engoron added that the post was finally removed from Trump’s campaign website Thursady night, but only after the court sent him an email demanding he do so.
Trump’s lead counsel, Christopher Kise, said the incident was “inadvertent” and the fault of Trump’s “large machine” of an election campaign.
“The Truth Social post, and I believe this happens with all his Truth Social Posts, they are captured and published on the website as what’s called a ICYMI email,” Kise said, explaining that the campaign team must have forgotten to delete the post from the site after the gag order was issued.
Engoron didn’t buy it.
“I will take this under advisement,” he said. “But I want to make clear that Donald Trump is still responsible for the large machine even if it is a large machine.”
Engoron appeared to give Trump the benefit of the doubt when it came to his punishment, however. He considered the accidental nature of the violation when issuing Trump the fine, as opposed to a more severe punishment.
“Given defendant’s position that the violation was inadvertent, and given that it is a first time violation, this court will impose a nominal fine, $5,000, payable to the New York Lawyers’ Fund for Client Protection, within ten (10) days of the date of this order,” the judge wrote in the ruling.
But Trump is on a tighter leash now, Engoron said.
“Make no mistake: future violations, whether intentional or unintentional, will subject the violator to far more severe sanctions, which may include, but are not limited to, steeper financial penalties, holding Donald Trump in contempt of court and possibly imprisoning him,” he wrote.
Kise returned from the morning’s break with some statistics for the judge that showed how many people viewed the post on Trump’s website and accompanying email chain. He said there were roughly 25,000 people on the mailing list.
“Of that, there were 6,713 that opened the email,” Kise said.
He added that there were more than 114 million visitors to Trump’s campaign site during the time the post was live.
“However, only 3,701 viewed the posting,” Kise said.
“You and I are both becoming more tech savvy from all this,” Engoron quipped.
On Thursday, The Daily Beast reported that the attorney general’s office flagged to the court that the post was still live on Trump’s campaign site.
The judge issued the gag order after Trump posted to Truth Social a “disparaging, untrue and personally identifying post” about his clerk earlier this month. In the post, Trump posted a photograph of the clerk, sharing her name and baselessly referring to her as the “girlfriend” of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
“Schumer’s girlfriend … is running this case against me,” Trump wrote in the now-deleted post that featured a photograph of the clerk next to the New York senator. “How disgraceful! This case should be dismissed immediately!!”
Trump hasn’t explicitly acknowledged Engoron’s sanctions against him. Seemingly, his only response thus far has been posting two illustrations on Friday to Truth Social.
In one, Trump is seen surrounded by smiling police officers. In the other, he appears to be seated in a courtroom next to Jesus Christ.
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