By Jack Queen, Brendan Pierson and Andy Sullivan
NEW YORK (Reuters) -The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s criminal hush money trial on Thursday signaled he might impose more fines on the former U.S. president for violating a gag order that prohibits him from talking about witnesses and jurors.
Justice Juan Merchan challenged Trump’s defense lawyer assertion that Trump did not violate the gag order last week when he said the Manhattan jury hearing the case was picked from a heavily Democratic area.
“Did he violate the gag order? That’s all I want to know,” Merchan asked Trump lawyer Todd Blanche.
“Well, I’m making an argument that he didn’t,” Blanche said.
“Well I’m not agreeing with that argument,” Merchan responded. Merchan did not immediately say whether he would impose a fine.
Prosecutors are asking Merchan to fine Trump a total of $4,000 for comments he made last week about the jury and witnesses in the first criminal trial of a former U.S. president.
Those statements are “deliberate shots across the bow to anyone who may come to this courtroom to tell the truth about defendant and what he did,” prosecutor Christopher Conroy told the court on Thursday.
A further penalty would follow a $9,000 fine Merchan imposed on Tuesday. Merchan said at that session that he might jail Trump if he continues to defy the gag order. Conroy said prosecutors were not yet asking for Trump to be jailed.
The judge did not immediately rule on the additional fine request.
On Thursday, Merchan appeared skeptical of Blanche’s argument that the gag order prevents Trump from responding to political attacks while he seeks to win back the White House in a Nov. 5 election.
“Everybody else can say whatever they want about this case,” Blanche said.
“They’re not defendants in this case,” Merchan responded.
The gag order aims to prevent one of the world’s most prominent people from intimidating witnesses, jurors and other participants in the trial. It does not prevent Trump from criticizing prosecutors or the judge himself.
Trump claims prosecutors are working with Democratic President Joe Biden to undercut his bid to win back the White House and says Merchan faces a conflict of interest because his daughter has done work for Democratic politicians.
“I don’t think there’s ever been a more conflicted judge – crooked and conflicted,” he said at a rally in Michigan on Wednesday.
Trump is accused of falsifying business records to hide a hush-money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 presidential election.
Lawyer Keith Davidson testified on Tuesday that Daniels had been shopping her story of a 2006 sexual encounter with Trump to media outlets at a time when Trump was already facing damaging accusations of sexual misbehavior.
Davidson returned to the witness stand on Thursday after the hearing on the gag order.
Trump has pleaded not guilty and says he did not have sex with Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.
Conroy, the prosecutor, said Trump violated the gag order on four separate occasions last week by referring to Cohen as a “liar” and former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker, another witness, as a “nice guy” in statements to news media.
Blanche said there was “no threat” in what Trump said about Pecker and said Cohen has been “inviting, and almost daring” Trump to respond to his comments about the trial.
Conroy said Trump also violated the gag order by saying in a television interview that “that jury was picked so fast – 95% Democrats. The area’s mostly all Democrat.”
The jury is drawn from Manhattan, where Biden won nearly 85% of the vote in the 2020 presidential election.
“By speaking about the jury at all, he places this proceeding in jeopardy,” Conroy said. The hearing, before the resumption of scheduled testimony, took place at the start of the day in the absence of the 12 jurors and six alternates.
Trump faces three other criminal prosecutions, though it is not clear whether any of them will go to trial before the Nov. 5 presidential election. Two accuse him of trying to overturn his 2020 election loss to Biden, while another accuses him of mishandling classified documents after leaving office. He has pleaded not guilty in all three cases.
His legal troubles have come at a cost. Fundraising groups have diverted tens of millions of dollars from his presidential campaign to his legal fees, and he has had to post $266 million in bonds in order to appeal two civil judgments that found he engaged in business fraud and defamed writer E. Jean Carroll, who claimed he raped her in the 1990s.
(Reporting by Jack Queen, Brendan Pierson and Andy Sullivan; Additional reporting by Nathan Layne; Editing by Scott Malone, Jonathan Oatis and Howard Goller)
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