“I find you in criminal contempt for the 10th time.”
The fourth week of Trump’s hush-money trial kicked off on Monday with Judge Juan Merchan once again ruling that the former president violated his court-imposed gag order, fining him $1,000 and warning him that continued violations could result in jail time. Merchan first found Trump in contempt of court last week, fining him $9,000 for nine gag-order violations flagged by prosecutors.
“It appears that the $1,000 fines are not serving as a deterrent,” Merchan told Trump on Monday. “The last thing I want to do is to put you in jail. You are the former president of the United States, and possibly the next president as well. There are many reasons why incarceration is truly a last resort for you.”
“Of course, I am also aware of and concerned about the broader implications,” Merchan continued. “The magnitude of such a decision is not lost on me. But at the end of the day, I have a job to do. … So as much as I do not want to impose a jail sanction. That I will, if necessary.”
Trump last week was found to have broken the court-imposed rule in 9 out of the 10 instances flagged by the prosecution and fined $9,000 — $1,000 for each violation. Trump was further ordered to delete the offending social media posts from his accounts.
In a subsequent hearing on Thursday, Manhattan prosecutors presented four additional alleged violations of a limited gag order barring Trump from publicly commenting on court staff, prosecutors, prospective jurors, or their families.
Prosecutor Christopher Conroy argued before the judge that Trump’s public comments regarding the jury selection process created “an air of menace” around the trial. During jury selection, Trump quoted Fox News host Jesse Watters in a Truth Social post, who claimed that “they are catching undercover Liberal Activists lying to the Judge,” and added, “in order to get on the Trump jury.”
While prosecutors made clear in Thursday’s hearing that they are “not yet seeking jail” as a penalty for the former president, Merchan warned Trump on Tuesday that “the Court will not tolerate continued willful violations of its lawful orders and that if necessary and appropriate under the circumstances, it will impose an incarceratory punishment,” echoing past warnings to the former president that he will not hesitate to revoke his bail if he’s unable to comply with court rules. He emphasized the point again on Monday.
As previously reported by Rolling Stone, Trump’s attorneys have already concocted a plan to keep him out of jail should the need arise by filing an emergency writ of habeas corpus that they are confident would result in an emergency stay of the ruling.
On Monday, Trump complained to reporters outside of the courtroom that the gag order bars him from answering their questions, telling reporters, “As you know, they’ve taken away my constitutional right so I’m not allowed to answer” questions concerning Michael Cohen, a likely witness in the trial. including whether he planned to testify in the trial. The gag order does no such thing, as the judge reminded him last week, but the former president seems intent on continuing to sell the notion that being treated like any other defendant makes him a victim of prosecutorial overreach.
Prosecutors invited two key Trump Organization witnesses to testify on Monday, showing for the first time checks signed by Trump made out to Cohen. Jeffrey McConney, former senior vice president comptroller for the Trump Organization, detailed the process of how Cohen would be reimbursed for a supposed “retainer” that was allegedly intended to cover up the payment Cohen made to Stormy Daniels.
“I had a conversation with Allen Weisselberg sometime in January 2017,” McConney said of the former Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer. “Allen said we had to…reimburse Michael.”
McConney painted a picture of Weisselberg offering rough back-of-the-envelope math that accounted not only for Cohen’s $130,000 payment to Daniels but also a $50,000 an IT firm called RedFinch Solutions, bringing the total to $180,000. Weisselberg told McConney to double the amount to account for Michael Cohen’s tax bracket, and then added an additional $60,000 bonus, bringing the total amount to $420,000, which was then paid out in monthly checks of $35,000 for the entirety of 2017.
“That was just math, at that point in time we would wire to Michael $35,000 per month, starting on February 1, 2017,” McConney explained. “We wired the funds from President Trump’s personal account.”
Weisselberg “had his hands in everything,” Trump Organization Accounts Payable Supervisor Deborah Tarasoff said during her testimony after McConney. Through her and McConney’s turns at the witness stand, prosecutors showed jurors a series of invoices from Cohen to Weisselberg requesting $35,000 a month for a retainer for legal services. Both witnesses explained that the money had come out of the “Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust” account, an account that only Trump himself can sign.
This posed issues for 2017 when Trump started his presidency. “We had to get someone to the White House, get the president to sign the check, get the checks and send them out,” McConney stated.
“Only Mr. Trump” could sign checks from his personal revocable trust account, Tarasoff told jurors. Prosecutors, aided by McConney’s and Tarasoff’s testimony, drew a direct line from Weisselberg’s call to McConney directing him to pay the monthly invoice to Cohen, to the then-president signing checks from his personal account and incorrectly recorded as business transactions.
Evidence showed a series of emails between Cohen, McConney and Weisselberg in which Cohen would send a monthly invoice, McConney would get approval from Weisselberg to pay the invoice, and then direct Tarasoff to cut the checks, send it to Trump’s desk at the White House to sign, and mark the transaction as a “retainer” for each month.
These false invoices made by Cohen, the false general ledger entries into the Trump Organization’s business records, and the subsequent checks signed by Trump to hide a reimbursement payment constitute the 34 felony counts of fraudulent records that Trump is being tried for, and were made public for the first time.
