Former President Trump and his legal team arrive at Manhattan Criminal Court before jury selection begins, Monday, April 15, 2024, in New York, New York.
Jabeen Botsford | via Reuters
Editor’s note: This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.
Prosecutors asked a New York judge on Monday to sanction Donald Trump for violating a gag order in multiple social media posts commenting on potential witnesses in the former president’s criminal hush-money trial.
“He is a criminal defendant, and like all criminal defendants, he is subject to the supervision of the court,” Assistant District Attorney Chris Conroy told Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchant as Trump watched in court.
Conroy pointed to three recent posts mentioning Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen and porn star Stormy Daniels, who received $130,000 in hush payments from Cohen, as part of the criminal case Core.
Prosecutors asked Merchin to fine each of the three posts $1,000 and order Trump to delete them.
Prosecutors also want Murchin to warn Trump that another violation could result in jail time.
The judge said he would hold a hearing on the request on April 24.
The request came on the first day of jury selection for the former US president’s first criminal trial.
Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, must be present throughout the trial, including during jury selection. The trial is expected to take six weeks or more.
“Nothing like this has ever happened before,” Trump told reporters before entering the courtroom Monday morning.
“This is a political persecution,” he said. “This is an attack on America, and that’s why I’m very proud to be here.”
Trump’s lawyers made several last-ditch efforts at the appeals court last week to delay Monday’s trial date, but those efforts failed.
All told, defense attorneys tried about a dozen times to dismiss or delay the trial, but only succeeded in delaying it by a few weeks.
In this court sketch, former U.S. President Donald Trump sits with his lawyers in Manhattan Criminal Court, New York, on April 15, 2024, as Judge Juan Merchan oversees the proceedings.
Christine Cornell | via Reuters
Merchant began proceedings on Monday, rejecting Trump’s request for a judge to throw out the case because Merchant’s daughter works for a digital fundraising and advertising firm whose clients include the alleged conflict. Vice President Kamala Harris.
A gag order imposed on Trump last month was expanded on April 1 after the former president repeatedly targeted the judge’s daughter on social media.
Trump has been charged with nearly three dozen counts of falsifying business records. He will be required to appear in court every day for the trial, which is expected to last about six weeks or more.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg alleged that Trump submitted business records that concealed the true purpose of Cohen’s payments to Daniels shortly before the 2016 election.
Cohen, who is expected to testify against Trump, said he paid Daniels in exchange for her silence about an alleged sexual tryst with the then-Republican nominee years ago. Trump denies having sex with Daniels.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen leaves after attending the Trump Organization’s civil fraud trial at the New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan, New York, October 24, 2023.
Gina Moon | Reuters
It could take a week or more to complete jury selection before testimony begins. Trump said days ago that he was willing to testify.
Trump used social media to blast the criminal case and those involved, and did so again early Monday morning.
“Radical left-wing Democrats are already cheating in the 2024 presidential election by filing or helping bring all these bogus lawsuits against me, thereby forcing me to sit in court and spend money that could have been spent on my campaign instead of being punished by Trump on his ‘s Truth Society post read: “Defeated the worst president in American history, Crooked Joe Biden, on the battlefield. “Interfering with the election!” “
The trial could seriously damage Trump’s ability to run for the White House himself. Trump is set to face President Joe Biden in a rematch of the 2020 race in November.
Trump has also been charged in three other criminal cases.
Two of the cases — one in federal court in Washington, D.C., and the other in a Georgia state court — relate to his attempts to overturn his 2020 loss to Biden, including by pressuring state election officials and lawmakers to It was asked and failed to effectively undo Biden’s victory in several elections.
A separate criminal case pending in federal court in Florida involves allegations that he retained confidential government records after leaving the White House and allegedly withheld those records from government officials as they sought to return home.
Trump has pleaded not guilty in all criminal cases.
Although Bragg’s prosecution of Trump has long been considered the least serious, the New York trial may ultimately prove to be the most important for Trump.
The hush-money case is likely to be the only case to be heard in the middle of the 2024 presidential campaign as Trump’s team continues to work to either dismiss the indictment against him or postpone his trial.
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