Judge Merchan accuses Trump of contempt in the hush money trial because he violated the gag order

The judge presiding over Donald J. Trump's criminal trial in Manhattan held him in contempt on Tuesday, fined the former president $9,000 for repeatedly violating a gag order and warned him that he could go to prison if he continues to attack witnesses and jurors.

“The court will not tolerate further willful violations of its lawful orders,” Judge Juan M. Merchan said — an ominous warning as the third week of Mr. Trump’s trial begins. He added that he would detain Mr. Trump “if necessary and appropriate,” although he was “very aware of and protective of the defendant’s First Amendment rights.”

The judge's harsh approach immediately created tension in the day's proceedings before three new witnesses took the stand in the first criminal trial against an American president.

The most significant was Keith Davidson, a lawyer who represented porn star Stormy Daniels when she received the $130,000 hush money payment at the center of the case. Mr. Davidson negotiated the payout in the final days of the 2016 presidential campaign with Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump's personal lawyer and go-between, to silence Ms. Daniels' account of a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump.

Mr. Davidson began his testimony by recounting his account of another woman, Karen McDougal, a Playboy model, who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump in 2006. He negotiated a payout from The National Enquirer, which kept Ms. McDougal's story secret from publication.

In a striking sequence of testimony, Mr. Davidson read to the jury a series of unconventional text exchanges from 2016 in which he told an Enquirer editor that he had a “blockbuster Trump story” about how Mr. Trump cheated on his wife. McDougal. When some of Ms. McDougal's friends urged her to go to ABC News instead, Mr. Davidson warned that if The Enquirer didn't pay, and quickly, the story could be missed.

“Time is of the essence,” Mr. Davidson wrote. “The girl is cornered by the estrogen mafia,” a message that Mr. Davidson, embarrassed by reading his years-long remarks to the jury, called “a very unfortunate, unfortunate text.”

The testimony offered another remarkable moment in a trial whose beginnings were full of them: A former president and current Republican candidate watched helplessly as two strangers revealed details of a sex scandal he had kept secret for so long.

It also underscored the wide range of evidence prosecutors had when putting together their case against the former president. On Tuesday alone, prosecutors obtained live testimony from Mr. Davidson and three other witnesses, a series of provocative text messages, videos of events in the Trump campaign and excerpts from a deposition by the former president in a separate case – all woven into a story they created say, portrays Mr. Trump as a criminal.

Mr. Davidson's testimony helped familiarize jurors with a complex chronology: Mr. Trump was married to Melania Trump in 2006 when Ms. McDougal said they had their affair. When the text exchange was written a decade later, he was in the process of becoming the official Republican presidential candidate and beginning a long, hostile takeover of the party.

As Mr. Davidson dug deeper into the details, his testimony also bolstered a key part of the prosecution's claim that the Enquirer was involved in a secret conspiracy to promote Mr. Trump's candidacy.

The supermarket tabloid's former editor, David Pecker, had previously testified that he agreed to buy and bury potentially damaging stories and teamed up with Mr. Cohen to protect Mr. Trump's candidacy. Mr. Pecker also informed Mr. Cohen that Ms. Daniels also bought her story, initiating the $130,000 hush money deal.

Prosecutors have accused the former president, who faces up to four years in prison, of falsifying business records to cover up his restitution to Mr. Cohen. Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen had a falling out years ago and their mutual hatred has become a major motif in the trial.

This resurfaced on Tuesday in Judge Merchan's decision to hold Mr. Trump in contempt, finding that the former president had violated the gag order by making nine public statements on social media and his campaign website, in which he presented the jury and certain witnesses, including Mr. Cohen. The judge ordered Mr. Trump to remove the posts by Tuesday afternoon.

Mr. Trump, who was accompanied in court by a larger-than-usual entourage including his son Eric Trump, his campaign adviser Susie Wiles and Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, did not immediately respond to the judge's decision. During a break shortly afterwards, he stood there and glowered into the room.

The judge's ruling and admonition came a week after a heated hearing in which prosecutors had argued that Mr. Trump's statements jeopardized the trial.

One of Mr. Trump's lawyers, Todd Blanche, claimed at the time that the former president had not violated the order, but Judge Merchan reprimanded him for failing to gather facts or legal precedent in support of Mr. Trump.

The subsequent ruling marked a low point in relations between the court and Mr. Trump. The former president attended every day of the trial but was mostly sidelined, complaining to cameras afterward about the gag order and the judge. Now, with the fine – and the specter of a prison sentence – his anger could be reaching a boiling point.

Prosecutors have already alerted the judge to four new potential violations. These were not covered by Judge Merchan's order on Tuesday and will be discussed at another hearing on Thursday morning.

The judge's decision and his questioning at last week's hearing targeted two of Mr. Trump's typical tactics: his penchant for lying and his habit of suggesting that every action he takes is political, even when it relates to his criminal cases.

Judge Merchan largely rejected Mr. Blanche's argument that Mr. Trump's posts did not violate the gag order because they were responses to political attacks by opponents who happened to be potential witnesses.

A likely witness, Mr. Cohen, has sharply criticized Mr. Trump on social media, although he vowed last week to “stop posting anything about Donald,” a decision he said he made “out of respect for Judge Merchan and the prosecutors.” “I met.

If Mr. Cohen breaks his silence, he may not be protected from Mr. Trump's attacks: The judge suggested in his order on Tuesday that the former president might be free to respond if witnesses provoked Mr. Trump.

The gag order, Judge Merchan wrote, “cannot be used by potential witnesses as a sword rather than a shield.” And in a seemingly oblique nod to Mr. Cohen, the judge added that he “might well consider the appropriateness of maintaining the restriction” on Mr. Trump’s speech “with respect to certain individuals.”

The other witness who attacked Mr. Trump is Ms. Daniels.

The former president denies that he and Ms. Daniels had sex, and in a post for which he was fined, he attacked Ms. Daniels on his website Truth Social and resurrected a years-old statement denouncing the affair denied. Mr. Trump added a comment misrepresenting the statement as newly discovered: “LOOK WHAT JUST FOUND! WILL THE FAKE NEWS REPORT THIS?”

Mr. Trump did not note that the original statement was from January 2018 or that Ms. Daniels had recanted it shortly thereafter, saying she had denied the sexual encounter under a nondisclosure agreement.

At last week's hearing, Judge Merchan focused on Mr. Trump's lie about when the statement came to light.

“So that’s not true?” he asked Mr. Blanche.

“That’s not true,” Mr. Blanche admitted.

In his ruling Tuesday, Judge Merchan agreed with prosecutors that the former president had crossed the line when he attacked Mr. Cohen and Ms. Daniels, except in a post in which he appeared to refer to them as “sleaze bags.” . Echoing Mr. Blanche's argument that Mr. Trump could respond to political attacks, the judge found a “tenuous connection” between Mr. Trump's post and Mr. Cohen's criticism of the former president's recent run for the White House.

Judge Merchan convicted Mr. Trump of the nine other statements that prosecutors characterized as contemptuous, including instances in which Mr. Trump reposted other people's comments. If Mr. Trump selected a post to share with his followers, it would be “counter-intuitive and actually absurd” not to attribute the re-posts to Mr. Trump, the judge said.

In one instance, Mr. Trump had quoted a Fox News commentator, Jesse Watters, who denigrated potential jurors in the case as “covert liberal activists.”

One day after publication, one of the jurors dismissed the panel.

Judge Merchan initially imposed the order against Mr. Trump in late March, banning public testimony about witnesses, prosecutors, jurors or court staff, and their families. But within a week, Mr. Trump found a loophole and repeatedly attacked the judge's daughter, a Democratic political consultant.

At prosecutors' request, Judge Merchan then extended the measure to his relatives and relatives of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg. Judge Merchan and Mr. Bragg are not subject to the order, and Mr. Trump is free to attack them.

Mr. Trump often attacks people he once praised and praises those he once pilloried.

Shortly before Mr. Davidson took the stand on Tuesday, for example, prosecutors showed a video in which Mr. Trump praised Mr. Cohen as “a very talented lawyer.”