Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
A New York judge on Wednesday fined Donald Trump $10,000 for violating a gag order as the atmosphere in the former US president’s civil fraud trial continued to deteriorate.
Judge Arthur Engoron issued the fine after calling Trump to the witness stand and then deeming his testimony about the matter “not credible”.
Trump has used a hallway outside the Manhattan courtroom to rail against Engoron; Letitia James, the New York attorney-general who brought the civil lawsuit; and other antagonists during breaks in the three-week-old trial.
The former president drew Engoron’s ire when, during the first week of the trial, he took to social media to attack the judge’s clerk, Allison Greenfield, calling her Democratic Senator “Chuck Schumer’s girlfriend”, and publishing her photo.
That prompted Engoron to issue a partial gag order forbidding Trump from speaking publicly about the judge’s staff in order to protect them.
On Wednesday, Trump told reporters outside the courtroom: “This judge is a very partisan judge with a person who is very partisan sitting alongside him, perhaps even more partisan than he is.”
In a brief — and extraordinary — appearance on the witness stand, Trump claimed that he had been referring to Michael Cohen, his former personal lawyer, who testified against him on Tuesday. But Engoron found that explanation unconvincing.
The judge had previously fined Trump $5,000 for failing to remove the original post about Greenfield from his website.
Engoron has already found that Trump committed fraud by persistently inflating his net worth in order to secure loans and insurance on favourable terms. The trial is to determine whether Trump and his adult sons, Donald Jr and Eric, will pay upwards of $250mn in penalties and be stripped of their ability to operate a business in New York.
The mood in the courtroom has soured as the trial has progressed — both due to Trump’s antics and his lawyers’ complaints about Engoron’s tendency to over-rule their objections.
Read the full article here
