AP---------- Donald Trump was held in contempt of court Tuesday and fined $9,000 for repeatedly violating a gag order that barred him from making public statements about witnesses, jurors and some others connected to his New York hush money case. If he does it again, the judge warned, he could be jailed.
Here’s what to know:
What this case is about: Trump is charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records as part of a scheme to bury stories that he feared could hurt his 2016 campaign.
Trump’s investigations: The hush money case is just one of the criminal cases facing the former president.
The other witnesses: Jurors so far have heard from Trump’s former longtime executive assistant, Rhona Graff, former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker, and Gary Farro, a banker who helped Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen open accounts.
Trump rails against gag order and trial as he leaves court for the day
The former president approached news cameras in the courthouse hallway where he complained about the gag order, which he was fined $9,000 for violating earlier in the day.
Trump hit on familiar themes, accusing Judge Merchan of bias and of rushing the case, and saying he should be out campaigning instead.
As he did so, the former president pressed in to view the message on a monitor in front of him on the defense table. He then leaned over to whisper something to his lawyer Todd Blanche, sitting at his left, as the messages flashed by on the screen — rendered as a spreadsheet in black text on a green background.
Trump and Blanche whispered back and forth intermittently as Davidson continued testifying about the text message.
In the October 2016 message to Davidson, Howard was commenting on Cohen’s apparent reluctance to make good on an agreed-upon $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels.
“All because trump is tight,” Howard wrote in one of the messages, which Davidson said was a reference to Trump’s purported frugality. In a follow up message, the editor wrote: “I reckon that trump impersonator I hired has more cash.”
Three times in the waning minutes of Tuesday’s testimony, Trump was left alone at the defense table as Judge Merchan summoned the lawyers to the bench to discuss matters outside the jury’s earshot.
During one of the interruptions, Trump lawyer Todd Blanche turned to Eric Trump in the gallery and chuckled before going up to the bench.
Was Cohen negotiating on Trump’s behalf?
Asked if Cohen ever told him whom he was representing in the Daniels negotiations, Davidson said the ex-lawyer may not have explicitly stated he was working on Trump’s behalf — but the implication was clear.
“Every single time I talked to Michael Cohen, he leaned on his close affiliation with Donald Trump,” Davidson said. “It was part of his identity. He let me know it at every opportunity he could that he was working for Donald Trump.”
Steinglass tried to probe whether Davidson had been told that someone other than Cohen was going to fund the $130,000 Daniels payout. Defense objections blocked Davidson from answering that exactly, but he said he understood Trump was the ultimate beneficiary of the contract. He added that “in the overwhelming majority of cases, the beneficiary is the one who funds it,” but the judge told jurors to disregard that part after the defense objected to it.
With Stormy Daniels’ deal with Michael Cohen done, but the money unpaid, Davidson and Howard texted each other about what the then Enquirer editor in chief called an “impending storm” of publicity if the performer took her story somewhere else, according to Davidson’s testimony and documents shown at the trial.
In the exchange, on Oct. 17 and Oct. 18, 2016, Davidson wrote to Howard that he believed Daniels and her agent had agreed to bring her story to another publication, and “I think it’ll be a full-on blitz.”
“I just felt like there was going to be more than a flurry of activity. I felt like it was going to be a tornado,” Davidson explained in court.
“If the story got out,” Steinglass asked.
“Yes,” Davidson said.
8:55 PM GMT+1
Davidson says Cohen missed deadline to pay $130K to Stormy Daniels
BY JAKE OFFENHARTZ
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Before the break, Davidson testified that though both parties had reached a deal, the payment to Daniels didn’t materialize by the agreed upon date.
At first, Cohen offered a litany of explanations for the delay, at turns blaming broken computers, Secret Service “firewalls,” and the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur. “The things he was saying didn’t really make sense,” Davidson said of Cohen.
As the excuses piled up, Davidson said he understood that Cohen “didn’t have the authority to actually spend money.” He eventually sent an email informing Cohen that the deal was off.
“I thought he was trying to kick the can down the round until after the election,” Davidson said.
