Judge to rule on request to convict Trump for contempt of gag violation

NEW YORK (AP) Prosecutors in Donald Trump's historic secret trial urged a judge Tuesday to fine and convict him of social media contempt that they said violated a hush order barring attacks on witnesses, jurors and others involved in the case. .

READ MORE: Who are the main players in Donald Trump's secret criminal trial?

Citing 10 posts on his social media account and campaign website that they said violated the order, prosecutors called the posts a deliberate disregard of the court's ban and requested a $1,000 fine. dollars for each of them.

The defendant violated that order repeatedly, and he did not stop, said prosecutor Christopher Conroy, who said the violations continued Monday with Trump's comments to reporters outside the room hearing about Michael Cohen, his former lawyer and fixer and the government's star witness.

A defense attorney countered that Trump was simply responding to others' comments during protected speech.

“There is no doubt that President Trump faces a barrage of political attacks,” attorney Todd Blanche said.

Judge Juan Merchan did not immediately rule but repeatedly signaled his exasperation with the Trump team. You lose all credibility, he told Blanche after the lawyer claimed Trump was working to comply.

The hearing could result in new financial penalties for Trump, who was fined $15,000 last year for twice violating a silence order imposed during his civil fraud trial in New York. But it remains an open question whether this deters him from future inflammatory comments or whether it antagonizes him further. The presumptive Republican nominee has put his legal threat at the center of his presidential campaign by castigating this case and the three others he faces as examples of political persecution.

The hearing preceded the scheduled resumption of testimony in the case, with a longtime editor expected to take the stand Tuesday to tell jurors about his efforts to help Trump suppress unflattering stories during the 2016 campaign.

David Pecker, the former National Enquirer publisher who prosecutors say worked with Trump and Cohen on a strategy called catch and kill to suppress negative stories, testified briefly Monday.

Pecker's testimony followed opening statements in which prosecutors alleged that Trump sought to illegally influence the 2016 race by preventing damaging stories about his personal life from being made public, including approving secret payments to a porn actor who claimed to have had an extramarital sexual relationship with Trump. decade earlier. Trump has denied this.

This was pure and simple electoral fraud,” prosecutor Matthew Colangelo said Monday.

Blanche responded by attacking the government's cause and attacking Cohen's integrity.

President Trump is innocent. President Trump has committed no crime. The Manhattan District Attorney's Office should never have brought the case, he said.

The opening statements offered the 12-person jury and voting public radically divergent road maps for a case that will play out against the backdrop of a hotly contested White House race in which Trump is not only the presumptive Republican nominee , but also a criminal defendant facing the prospect. a felony conviction and prison time.

It is the first criminal trial of a former U.S. president and the first of four prosecutions against Trump to go before a jury. Consistent with that history, prosecutors sought from the outset to increase the seriousness of the case, which they said was primarily about election interference, as evidenced by hush-money payments to a porn actress who said she had a sexual relationship with Trump.

The defendant, Donald Trump, orchestrated a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election. Then he covered up this criminal conspiracy by lying over and over again in his business records in New York, Colangelo said.

Trump faces 34 counts of falsifying business records, a charge punishable by up to four years in prison, although it is unclear whether the judge would seek to put him behind bars . A conviction would not prevent Trump from becoming president again, but because it is a state matter, he would not be able to pardon himself if convicted. He has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

The case brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg revisits a years-old chapter in Trump's biography when his celebrity past collided with his political ambitions and, prosecutors say, he eager to suppress stories that, they feared, could torpedo his campaign.

The opening statements served as an introduction to the colorful cast of characters who figure prominently in this sordid saga, including Stormy Daniels, the porn actress who says she received the hush money; Cohen, the lawyer who prosecutors say paid her; and Pecker, who prosecutors say agreed to serve as eyes and ears for the campaign.

In his opening statement, Colangelo described a comprehensive effort by Trump and his allies to prevent three stories about women alleging prior sexual relationships from surfacing during the 2016 presidential campaign. This endeavor was particularly urgent after the emergence , at the end of the race, of a 2005 Access Hollywood recording in which Trump could be heard bragging about sexually assaulting women without their permission.

Days after the Access Hollywood tape became public, Colangelo told jurors that the National Enquirer alerted Cohen that Daniels was campaigning to make public her claims about a sexual relationship with Trump in 2006.

At Trump's direction, Cohen negotiated a deal to buy Ms. Daniels' story to prevent American voters from hearing the story before Election Day, Colangelo told jurors.

But, the prosecutor noted, neither Trump nor the Trump Organization could simply write Cohen a check with a memo line indicating reimbursement for a porn star's earnings. » So, he added, “they agreed to fudge the books and make it appear that the payment was in fact income, payment for services rendered.

These allegedly falsified records form the backbone of the 34-count indictment against Trump. Trump has denied having a sexual relationship with Daniels.

READ MORE: Only 1 in 3 Americans Think Trump Acted Illegally in Hush Money Case, AP-NORC Poll Finds

Blanche, the defense attorney, sought to preemptively undermine the credibility of Cohen, who pleaded guilty to federal charges related to his role in the hush money scheme, as someone who cannot be not trust. He said Trump did nothing illegal when his company recorded the checks written to Cohen as legal fees and said it was not illegal for a candidate to try to influence an election.

Blanche disputed the notion that Trump accepted payment from Daniels to save his campaign, instead calling the transaction an attempt to cover up a sinister attempt to embarrass Trump and those close to him.

President Trump fought back, as he always does, and as he has the right to do, to protect his family, his reputation and his brand, and that is not a crime, Blanche told jurors.

Efforts to suppress stories are what is known in the tabloid industry as “catch and kill” which involves catching a potentially damaging story by purchasing the rights to it, then killing it through agreements that prevent the person being paid from telling the story to anyone else.

In addition to paying Daniels, Colangelo also described arrangements to pay a former Playboy model $150,000 to suppress allegations of a nearly year-long affair with the married Trump. Colangelo said Trump desperately didn't want this information about Karen McDougal made public because he was worried about its effect on the election.

Tucker reported from Washington.

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