The New York judge presiding over Donald Trump's civil fraud trial fined the former US president $5,000 on Friday for not complying with a partial gag order and threatened him with possible jail time for future violations.
Judge Arthur Engoron ordered the 77-year-old Trump to pay the fine within the next 10 days to the New York Lawyers' Fund for Client Protection.
"Make no mistake: future violations, whether intentional or unintentional, will subject the violator to far more severe sanctions," Engoron said in a court filing.
"(These) may include, but are not limited to, steeper financial penalties, holding Donald Trump in contempt of court, and possibly imprisoning him pursuant to New York Judiciary Law," the judge added.
Engoron slapped a limited gag order on the former president on October 3 after he insulted the judge's principal law clerk in a social media post on his Truth Social platform.
The offending post was removed from Truth Social the same day, but the judge complained in his filing on Friday that it remained on a Trump 2024 campaign website for 17 days, until the court asked on Thursday that it be taken down.
Engoron said Trump's lawyers told him the violation of the gag order was "inadvertent."
"Giving the defendant the benefit of the doubt, he still violated the gag order," the judge said. "In the current overheated climate, incendiary untruths can, and in same cases already have, led to serious physical harm, and worse."
On October 3, as Trump sat at the defense table, Engoron said he was issuing a partial gag order "forbidding all parties from posting, emailing or speaking publicly about any of my staff."
Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, and his two eldest sons are accused in the New York case of inflating the value of the real estate assets of the Trump Organization to receive more favorable bank loans and insurance terms.
Trump has personally attacked the judge on numerous occasions, calling him a "Trump-hating judge," but Engoron, in his verbal gag order, only ordered a halt to attacks on his court staff.
On Monday, the federal judge set to preside over Trump's trial for conspiring to overturn the 2020 presidential election also imposed a partial gag order on the former president.
US District Judge Tanya Chutkan ordered Trump not to publicly attack prosecutors, court staff or potential witnesses ahead of the trial scheduled to begin in Washington in March 2024.
On Friday, Chutkan temporarily lifted her narrow gag order, giving Trump's legal team time to prove why the former president's comments should not face restrictions as his case heads toward trial.
Lawyer flips in election conspiracy case
A second Donald Trump campaign lawyer reached a plea deal on Friday that would see him testify for the prosecution in the case alleging that the former US president led a criminal conspiracy to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia.
Kenneth Chesebro, 62, was indicted on racketeering and other charges in the southern state in August along with Trump and 17 other codefendants.
Chesebro was accused of orchestrating a scheme to submit a slate of fake electors to Congress in a bid to block certification of Democrat Joe Biden's election victory over Trump.
Jury selection for his trial began on Friday at the Fulton County Courthouse in Atlanta, Georgia, but was abruptly halted after Chesebro entered into a surprise last-minute plea deal with prosecutors.
Chesebro, a graduate of Harvard Law School, faced seven charges including racketeering -- a felony that carries jail time -- conspiracy to commit forgery and conspiracy to file false documents.
He pleaded guilty to the single charge of conspiracy to file false documents in exchange for a sentence of five years probation, $5,000 in restitution and 100 hours of community service.
"You are to testify truthfully in any other proceedings in this case against any and all other codefendants," Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee added at the plea hearing.
Chesebro's guilty plea came one day after another former Trump campaign attorney, Sidney Powell, also entered into a plea deal with prosecutors that would see her testify at the upcoming trials of other codefendants.
Powell, 68, was a vocal Trump supporter who peddled outlandish conspiracy theories about voting machines allegedly designed in Venezuela under the late Hugo Chavez that "flipped" Trump votes to Biden votes.
Powell pleaded guilty to six misdemeanor counts of conspiracy to interfere with the performance of election duties and was sentenced to six years of probation.
- 'Dominos are starting to fall' -
Legal analysts said the plea deals are a potential blow to Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
"The dominos are starting to fall," said Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor.
"Trump is planning to blame the attorneys, but now they'll be prosecution witnesses pointing the finger at him."
Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, said Chesebro's testimony could be "even more damaging to Trump than Powell's" since he was apparently "central to the election fraud conspiracy in Georgia."
The plea deals also mean Trump and his attorneys will no longer be able to have a preview of the evidence and strategy that prosecutors may use at his own eventual trial.
Chesebro and Powell had been the only two of the 19 codefendants in the Georgia case to invoke their right to a speedy trial. A trial date has not been set yet for the 77-year-old Trump and the others.
- 'Influence the outcome' -
According to the Georgia indictment, Trump met with Powell, his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and others at the White House on December 18, 2020, several weeks before the end of his term, and discussed "strategies and theories intended to influence the outcome" of the election.
Among the moves allegedly considered but eventually abandoned was naming Powell as special counsel "to investigate allegations of voter fraud in Georgia and elsewhere."
Chesebro is the third codefendant in the Georgia case to enter a guilty plea.
Scott Hall, a bail bondsman, pleaded guilty last month to five counts of conspiracy to interfere with the performance of election duties.
Others indicted in Georgia include Giuliani, Trump's former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, John Eastman, a constitutional lawyer, and Jeffrey Clark, a mid-level Justice Department official.
Trump also faces federal charges for his efforts to upend the 2020 election and the January 6, 2021 storming of the US Capitol by his supporters. He is to go on trial in that case in Washington in March 2024.