Former President Donald Trump was forced to take the witness stand during his civil fraud trial Wednesday after violating his gag order, Breitbart reported. Trump said he was not talking about New York County Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron's clerk, but the former president was fined $10,000 anyway.
The former president and his two adult sons face a $250 million lawsuit thanks to partisan Democratic New York Attorney General Letitia James. She has accused Trump and his sons of "numerous acts of fraud and misrepresentation" in overvaluing his assets.
It appears to be a partisan witch hunt for a GOP presidential candidate the left has repeatedly attempted to stop. However, the New York case does not have a jury, so Trump is at the mercy of Engoron.
The judge imposed a gag order on Trump during the trial, which means that the former president and current GOP frontrunner for the 2024 presidential nomination would not be allowed to speak out against anyone involved. On Friday, Trump was fined $5,000 for violating the gag order th first time.
This most recent violation arose because Trump had told reporters that he was being tried by a "very partisan judge with a person who’s very partisan sitting alongside him, perhaps even much more partisan than he is." The judge took it to mean his clerk, Allison Greenfield, which would be another violation.
Trump insisted he was talking about Engoron and Michael Cohen, his former attorney who is a witness for the prosecution. "Are you sure that you didn’t mean the person on the other side, my principal law clerk?" Engoron asked Trump.
The former president replied, "Yes, I’m sure." Still, Engoron slapped him with the $10,000 fine while insisting it was "on the liberal side" for that punishment.
When doling out the earlier fine, Engoron had warned Trump about what would happen with a subsequent violation. "Make no mistake: future violations, whether intentional or unintentional, will subject the violator to far more severe sanctions," had warned Trump.
"(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," Engoron wrote. The judge had placed the gag order on Trump on Oct. 3 after he called him a "Democrat operative" who deserves to be "disbarred."
Trump has also rightly called out James for her role in keeping him from campaigning. "I'm here, stuck here, and I can't campaign," Trump said when his trial began, Fox News reported.
"I'd rather be right now in Iowa. I'd rather be in New Hampshire or South Carolina or Ohio or a lot of other places. But I'm stuck here because I have a corrupt attorney general that communicates with the DOJ in Washington to keep me nice and busy, because I'm leading Biden in the polls by a lot," Trump pointed out.
"This is election interference. They made up a fake case, these fraudulent people," Trump charged. "And the judge already knows what he's going to do. He's a Democrat judge. In all fairness to him, he has no choice," Trump added.
"I know this city better than anybody who knows this city. Nobody knows it like I do. He's a Democrat judge out of the clubhouses, he's controlled, and it's a shame. What's going on here is a shame. Our whole system is corrupt. This is corrupt, Atlanta is corrupt, and what's coming out of D.C. is corrupt," the 45th president said.
This gag order was put in place as a trap for Trump and is absolutely election interference. However, it appears they will keep getting away with it and continue to punish Trump as he attempts to defend himself.
