Former President Trump deleted social media posts that a judge determined violated a gag order in his criminal hush money trial, just before a Tuesday deadline.
Judge Juan Merchan fined Trump $9,000 and held him in contempt nine times early Tuesday over the posts on Truth Social and his campaign website, which included attacks on prospective jurors and witnesses in the case. He added that further violations could result in jail time.
“Defendant is hereby warned 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,” Merchan wrote in his ruling.
Trump faced a 2:15 p.m. deadline to remove the posts.
The nine deleted posts, most of them reposts of other online figures, include multiple attacks on expected witnesses Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels, as well as a post blasting potential jurors as “liberal activists.” Merchan found that one of the posts in question, a repost of attorney Michael Avenatti, which disparaged Daniels and Cohen, did not violate the gag order and could remain online.
The expanded gag order, which Trump has repeatedly criticized as too limiting, bars him from attacking witnesses, prosecutors, court staff and the judge’s family in his hush money case, in which he stands accused of paying off a porn actor ahead of the 2016 election to prevent the public from learning of an alleged affair, then writing down the payment as a legal expense.