Trump will face severe sanctions for future violations.
Former President and billionaire Donald Trump was issued a $5,000 fine for violating a gag order on Oct. 20 that was put in place by Judge Arthur Engoron during Trump’s civil fraud trial. This trial is currently being held in New York. The hearings being held now are intended to determine how personally responsible Trump and his sons were in the fraud conspiracies that two of Trump’s sub–companies were convicted of late last year. The Trump Corp. and Trump Payroll Corp. were charged with 17 felonies and were made to pay $1.6 million.
On Oct. 3, Trump was issued a gag order by Judge Engoron after Trump had posted on Truth Social smearing the reputation of Allison Greenfield, one of Engoron’s law clerks. In his post, Trump heavily insinuated that the clerk was in a romantic relationship with Chuck Schumer, a DDemocratic New York senator. The post in question had a picture of Greenfield and Schumer standing next to one another and smiling. Throughout the entire trial, Trump has claimed that the charges leveled against him are politically motivated. In his post, Trump wrote, “Schumer’s girlfriend, Alison R. Greenfield, is running this case against me. How disgraceful! This case should be dismissed immediately!!” Engoron claims that this kind of post endangers those he works with, and that “In the current overheated climate, incendiary untruths can, and in some cases already have, led to serious physical harm, and worse..”
Schumer has since reached out and denied knowing Greenfield, stating that he has taken pictures with many of his constituents.
Trump was ordered by Engoron to remove the post from all of his social media and to not mention anyone involved in the trial or he would face “severe sanctions.” This led Trump’s legal and media team to delete the post from Truth Social. However, a copy of the post had not been removed from Trump’s website where it had been archived. Trump’s legal team has has claimed innocence, stating that it was just an oversight due to the number number of employees on Trump’s team those in charge must oversee, and the post has now officially been deleted. Evidently, the post had been sent through email to over 25,000 people but had only been seen by a little over 3,000 people on the website.
This defense seems to have appeased Engoron for now, though he does still threaten harsher fines and even imprisonment if the limited gag order is broken again. In a statement to Trump and his legal team, he said, “I want to be clear that Donald Trump is still responsible for the large machine even if it’s a large machine.”
It would be fair to say that this entire week has been a strained one for this trial, with several outbursts from both sides as witnesses have been called to speak for the prosecution. It is also worth noting that while Trump is not required to be present for the trial, he has gone to three of the hearings this week.
