Former US president Donald Trump on Tuesday was charged with contempt of court for violating the gag order nine times. The judge overseeing the criminal hush money trial directed the 77-year-old to pay an amount of $9,000 in fines.
Judge Juan Merchan ordered the former president to remove “offending posts” from his social media platform Truth Social and the two “offending posts” from his campaign website by 2:15pm today.
Merchan fined Trump $1,000 for each saying that prosecutors had met the burden of proof.
“THEREFORE, 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,” read the court order as reported by CNN.
Here are posts for which Donald Trump has been fined:
According to CNN, the posts were released on the following dates:
- A Truth Social post on April 10 at 10:48am
- Truth Social post, April 13, 12:56pm
- Truth Social post, April 15, 9:12am
- Truth Social post, April 15, 10:26am
- Campaign website post, April 15
- Truth Social post, April 16, 1:50pm
- Campaign website post, April 16
- Truth Social post, April 16, 7:09pm
- Truth Social post, April 17, 5:46pm
The Republican presumptive nominee is facing his first criminal case that involves a hush money payment he made to an adult film star Stormy Daniels in 2016.
During the case proceedings, Judge Juan Merchan said that he will allow Donald Trump to participate in his son Barron Trump’s graduation ceremony which is slated on May 17.
The business mogul was indicted for the case in the last match with three others followed in the coming months which alleged Trump for retention of classified documents illegally after leaving the Oval Office, instigating supporters to storm Capitol Hill in 2021, and interfering in the election results of Georgia.
