Trump’s shtick is apparently too smart for the room. He gets fined for his attempts to skirt meaning with his usual rhetoric stunts.
Mister Accordion Hands stormed out of the trial after the humiliation of violating yet again, the gag order by ambiguously referring to the person “next to the Judge” as ‘partisan’, as well as believing mistakenly that his lawyers had caught Michael Cohen in a ‘trial-ending’ contradiction.
Trump may have been referring to Michael Cohen, who was at the time in the witness box, but Trump as usual forgot he had already stepped over the line by referring to the judge’s law clerk who sits adjacent, as a ‘girlfriend of Chuck Schumer’.
More humiliating may have been the Judge putting Trump in the witness box to clarify Trump’s yammering to the assembled press outside the courtroom during breaks.
Trump returned to the courtroom again after storming out, and after the public had left.
The reality is that Cohen’s testimony wasn’t shaken, and indeed Trump acted like a “mob boss”.
“Don't do it again or it'll be worse,” Engoron reportedly warned after issuing the fine.
Previously, Trump had been fined $5,000 for failing to remove a post criticizing the judge's law clerk. Engoron had already admonished Trump, a 2024 Republican nominee frontrunner, for making derogatory remarks about court staff.
During a trial recess regarding a lawsuit by New York Attorney General Letitia James concerning Trump's business practices, the former disgraced president called the judge partisan and implied the same for the person alongside him, the clerk. "This judge is a very partisan judge," trump whined, "with a person who's very partisan sitting alongside of him, perhaps even much more partisan than he is."
Engoron deemed these comments a blatant violation of the gag order, leading to the imposition of the $10,000 fine after Trump briefly testified.
The fines underscore the notion that the former so-called President who is running for office again, does not possess the discipline to refrain from following legal orders, and blatantly broke a law meant to protect an American citizen.
The judge overseeing former President Trump's civil fraud trial in New York on Wednesday ordered him to pay $10,000 for violating his gag order — the second fine relating to the order he's faced in less than week.
Why it matters: Trump was ordered to testify on Wednesday after Judge Arthur Engoron questioned whether he violated his gag order by appearing to reference the judge's law clerk during remarks to reporters.
- Engoron issued the gag order earlier this month after Trump made a post on his Truth Social account attacking the judge's law clerk.
Details: "As the trier of fact, I find that the witness is not credible," Engoron said Wednesday after Trump's testimony, per CNN.
- "Don't do it again or it'll be worse," the judge reportedly warned after issuing the fine.
Zoom out: Engoron considered earlier on Wednesday whether he should impose "severe sanctions" on Trump, after he appeared to reference the judge's law clerk.
- "This judge is a very partisan judge with a person who is very partisan sitting alongside him — perhaps even much more partisan than he is," Trump told reporters during a break, CNN reports.
- Engoron said that Trump has made "defamatory, disparaging, untrue comments" about the law clerk in the past.
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Former president Donald Trump abruptly left a New York City courtroom on Wednesday afternoon after Judge Arthur Engoron refused to toss out the $250 million civil fraud case concerning the valuation of his properties. His departure occurred during the cross-examination by Trump’s attorneys of his former fixer Michael Cohen. Cohen was on the witness stand for most of the day, while Trump’s attorneys relentlessly attempted to lead him into contradicting himself.
At one point, under intense questioning from a Trump family attorney, Cohen appeared to falter, seemingly contradicting his earlier testimony about Trump’s role in altering property values. In response to Cohen’s apparent confusion, Trump’s team immediately requested the case be tossed, saying that Cohen—who they described as New York Attorney General Letitia James’ “star witness”— had just undone the entire case against Trump. But, their joy was short-lived as Judge Engoron quickly denied the motion, thereby triggering Trump’s extreme response.
The former president, who previously had moved slowly in and out of the courtroom, stood up abruptly muttering “unbelievable, unbelievable” and began to stride towards the door. A small posse of Secret Service agents leaped to their feet and trotted after him, with Eric Trump taking up the rear. The courtroom sat in surprised silence for a moment. Attorneys for James attempted to regain control of the situation and resumed their questioning of Cohen, giving him more time to clarify his answers.
In a post on Truth Social Wednesday evening, a disappointed Trump said it had been a “Perry Mason moment.”
But it wasn’t.
As ex-President Donald Trump's New York fraud trial continues, MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin shared her thoughts on how the MAGA 2024 hopeful is doing.
"In the court of law, I'm not sure that Trump is faring very well," Rubin told Deadline: White House host Nicolle Wallace.
"Yesterday's first 45 minutes of cross-examination was far more effective than the hours that Alina Habba and Cliff Robert, who represents the adult Trump sons, put in today. And that's for two reasons. One because Michael Cohen resisted their questions as much as he could within the bounds of what was respectful. When he didn't understand a question, he made that clear. If they were jumping around in time periods, he asked for clarification, and when the question begged for a 'yes' or 'no' answer and he couldn't give more nuance, he answered it honestly and truthfully, sometimes even stumping the lawyers. And I'll give you a good example. Cliff Robert wanted to talk with Michael Cohen about the space and time between his indictment on those charges that led to his plea in 2018, and his ultimate plea, and he kept talking about an arraignment.
"Well anybody who has Google knows Michael Cohen was never arraigned. He pled and had criminal information filed on the exact same day.
[...]
“Trump's lawyers were not well prepared for what happened today. They knew they wanted to paint Michael Cohen as a liar, and they succeeded in that to some extent, but in terms of dismantling the core of his testimony, which was about Trump's intent and participation, they didn't even do that very well.
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