Former US President Donald Trump attends his trial in Manhattan court in a civil fraud case in New York, USA, on October 18, 2023.
Brendan Mcdermid | Reuters
A New York judge fined Donald Trump $5,000 on Friday after threatening the former president with prison time for violating a partial confidentiality agreement in his civil fraud trial.
However, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron warned that future violations against Trump would result in “far more severe sanctions” – including prison time.
The fraud case brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James accuses Trump, his two adult sons, his company and top executives of fraudulently inflating the value of their assets to obtain tax benefits and favorable loan terms.
Trump has denied wrongdoing, although Engoron has already held the defendants liable for fraud and ordered their New York business certificates revoked. The lawsuit aims to resolve six other claims brought by James, who is seeking $250 million in damages and wants to ban the defendants from operating a business in New York.
The fine imposed Friday is small for Trump, but it is the first time the former president has been punished for violating court-ordered speech restrictions. Engoron made the decision after discovering that Trump had not fully deleted the social media post that triggered the speech restrictions in the first place.
The judge had issued a narrow gag order earlier this month after Trump, the front-runner for the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination, sent a Truth Social post attacking the judge’s clerk. At the time, Engoron ordered the post deleted and banned Trump and other parties involved in the case from making public statements about his employees.
But the post remained available on Trump’s website donaldjtrump.com for more than two weeks, archived screenshots of the page show.
The left-leaning website MeidasTouch published an article about the undeleted post on Thursday. The Daily Beast reported that this article led to attorneys on both sides of the lawsuit being notified of the post, which was ultimately removed Thursday evening.
Engoron appeared in court against Trump on Friday morning.
“This is a blatant violation of the gag order. I have made it clear that non-compliance will result in serious sanctions,” the judge said. “It remained on Donald J. Trump’s campaign page and in fact it had been there for 17 days, [and] It was removed last night following an email from this court.
Trump was not in court to hear the rebuke, having left New York on Wednesday after attending the civil trial for two more days.
Defense attorney Christopher Kise apologized on Trump’s behalf and said the violation was unintentional.
Engoron said he would take Kise’s comments “carefully” but added that Trump “is still responsible for what appears on the website.”
“I want to make it clear that Mr. Trump is responsible for the big machine, even if it is a big machine,” the judge said, according to NBC.
In his written order Friday afternoon, Engoron said the effect of the post on the clerk remained whether or not it was intentionally posted.
“Furthermore, a defendant cannot escape liability for a violation of a court order by alleging that the violation resulted from the actions of one or more of the defendant’s employees or agents,” Engoron wrote.
“In the current overheated climate, inflammatory falsehoods can, and in some cases have, resulted in serious physical harm and worse,” he wrote.
Trump was “amply warned” about the consequences of violating his gag order and vowed to comply, the judge wrote. “Accordingly, it is no longer appropriate to issue a further warning; this court is well past the stage of ‘caution’.”
Still, Engoron decided to impose the $5,000 fine because it was a first offense and because Trump’s lawyers insisted it was not done intentionally.
“Make no mistake,” Engoron added. “Future violations, whether intentional or unintentional, will subject the violator to far more severe sanctions, which may include, but are not limited to, increased fines, the arrest of Donald Trump for contempt of court, and potentially his imprisonment,” in accordance with state law .
Judge Arthur Engoron is seen in the courtroom before the start of the third day of the civil fraud trial of former U.S. President Donald Trump on October 4, 2023 in New York.
Maria Altaffer | AFP | Getty Images
Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal lawyer who plans to testify against him next Tuesday, said he doubted Kise’s explanation.
“Donald knows exactly what he is doing and any statements to the contrary are false,” Cohen said in a statement to CNBC. “It’s all about his intent to intimidate. Plain and simple.”
Engoron’s gag order is not the only restriction on Trump’s freedom of speech on legal matters. A federal judge in Washington, D.C., imposed a partial gag order in mid-October in special counsel Jack Smith’s criminal case, accusing Trump of conspiring to overturn his 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden. Trump pleaded not guilty in the case.
That gag order, which followed many posts by Trump attacking various parties in the case, prohibited him from publicly targeting the special counsel and potential witnesses. Trump’s lawyers are appealing this order.
—CNBC’s Dan Mangan contributed reporting.