Key Points
- The former US president violated a gag order barring him from disparaging court staff.
- He's been ordered to pay an $8,000 fine.
- Post was visible on Trump's campaign website two weeks after the judge had ordered it to be taken down.
Donald Trump was hit with a US$5,000 ($8,000) fine by a New York judge for violating a gag order barring the former US president from disparaging court staff in which he is accusing him of unlawfully inflating his net worth to dupe lenders.
Trump violated a gag order
Justice Arthur Engoron earlier said during a hearing in Manhattan on Friday that a social media post by Trump attacking the judge's clerk - which was deleted from the former president's Truth Social platform - had remained visible on his campaign website two weeks after Engoron had ordered it taken down, according to media outlets.
Trump is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination to challenge Democratic President Joe Biden in the 2024 US election, holding a commanding lead over his rivals despite mounting legal troubles and court-ordered restrictions on his public statements.
Trump lawyer Christopher Kise blamed the "very large machine" of Trump's presidential campaign for allowing a version of his deleted social media post to remain on his website, calling it an unintentional oversight.
Engoron, however, said the buck ultimately stops with Trump — even if it was someone on his campaign who failed to remove the offending post.
"I want to be clear that Donald Trump is still responsible for the large machine even if it's a large machine," he said.
What did he say?
Engoron, presiding over the trial on charges brought by New York state Attorney General Letitia James, imposed a limited gag order on 3 October after Trump in a social media post shared a photo of the judge's top clerk posing with US Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer, a critic of the former president, and falsely called her the senator's "girlfriend."
Engoron said in imposing the gag order that comments directed at his staff were "unacceptable, inappropriate and will not be tolerated under any circumstances."
The judge ordered Trump to delete the post and warned of "serious sanctions" for violations.
'ICYMI' email sent to more than 25,000 recipients
Before Trump deleted the post from his Truth Social platform, his campaign copied the message into an email blast. That email, with the subject line "ICYMI" (used as an abbreviation for 'in case you missed it') was automatically archived on Trump's website, Kise said.
The email was sent to about 25,800 recipients on the campaign's media list and opened by about 6,700 of them, Kise told Engoron after obtaining the statistics at the morning break.
In all, only 3700 people viewed the post on Trump's campaign website, the lawyer said. "What happened appears truly inadvertent," Kise said.
"President Trump has not made any statements of any kind about court staff, has abided by the order completely, but it appears no one also took down the ICYMI — in case you missed it — link that is in the campaign website in the back pages."
Trump at times has appeared in person at the ongoing trial, attacking James and Engoron in inflammatory remarks to reporters outside of the courtroom.
Trump did not attend Friday's hearing at which, according to US media accounts, his lawyers said the post remaining visible was inadvertent and offered an apology to the judge.
What are the legal cases against Donald Trump?
The lawsuit by James accused Trump of inflating the values of his properties by billions of dollars in statements to banks, reaping hundreds of millions of dollars in ill-gotten savings on loan interest.
Trump is also accused of manipulating asset values to dupe insurers. Trump, who has sought to portray the case as intended to hurt him politically, has denied wrongdoing and defended his asset valuations.
He has said banks conducted their own due diligence and profited on the loans.
Trump faces criminal charges in four other cases - federal and Georgia state charges involving his efforts to undo his loss in the 2020 election, a federal case over his handling of classified documents after leaving office and New York state charges involving hush money paid to a porn star. Trump has denied wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty in those cases.
Trump also faces a January civil damages trial for defaming a writer who accused him of rape, which he denies.
On 17 October, a Washington federal judge overseeing a case accusing Trump of illegally attempting to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election barred Trump from making public statements that "target" US prosecutors, court staff and potential witnesses involved in the case.
Trump is appealing that order.
