Trump faces potential punishment for violating gag order as hush money trial resumes

NEW YORK — Donald Trump on Tuesday is expected to be threatened with thousands of dollars in fines — and potentially jail time — for denigrating anticipated witnesses and jurors in his hush-money case in violation of a gag order.

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan is expected to hear arguments from prosecutors requesting that the former president be held in criminal contempt for almost a dozen violations of his order prohibiting him from publicly attacking trial participants in the last week alone.

The DA’s office has requested thousands of dollars in sanctions for Trump’s violations, including disseminating comments by Fox News host Jesse Watters that disparaged potential jurors. Gag order violations can result in jail time.

The chief target of numerous of Trump’s offending posts has been his former right-hand-turned-bitter enemy, Michael Cohen, the subject of articles Trump shared on his social media site calling him a liar. Cohen, slated to be the trial’s star witness, hasn’t taken the comments sitting down, disparaging his former boss on Monday as “VonSh–zInPantz.”

What to expect Tuesday

Prosecutors and Trump’s defense have delivered their opening statements to the jury, and now the Manhattan district attorney’s case against Trump is underway.

The DA’s first witness is David Pecker, the former longtime tabloid publisher who’s long admitted to helping carry out a hush-money scheme to bag Trump the presidency in 2016.

Pecker briefly took the stand Monday — managing to read his phone number into the record accidentally — and is expected to delve into his role in the case for a few hours on Tuesday.

What the jury has heard so far

In the prosecution’s opening argument, Assistant District Attorney Matthew Colangelo said Trump devised the hush money scheme soon after he launched his first bid for the presidency at an August 2015 Trump Tower meeting with Cohen and Pecker, which involved silencing a porn star, pinup model and a Trump Tower doorman.

“This was not spin or communication strategy; this was a planned, coordinated long-running conspiracy to influence the 2016 election, to help Donald Trump get elected, through illegal expenditures, to silence people who had something bad to say about his behavior, using doctored corporate records and bank forms to conceal those payments along the way,” Colangelo said.

“It was election fraud. Pure and simple.”

Pecker, who received immunity to testify in Cohen’s 2018 federal case, is expected to walk the jury through the plot to bury rumors about Trump’s infidelities and former Playboy model Karen McDougal about her claims she had a 10-month affair with Trump early into his marriage to Melania.

The ex-National Enquirer head is expected to say that he backed out of the deal after consulting with a lawyer and getting cold feet.

The jurors’ identities will remain anonymous to the public, but Trump knows them.

What is Trump’s defense?

The former president’s lawyer, Todd Blanche, told jurors his client was an innocent man — and a husband and father and “a person, just like you and just like me” — guilty of nothing more than signing checks to his lawyer “while he was running the country.”

He said trying to influence an election wasn’t a crime but “democracy,” and that Trump had a right to defend himself against the lurid allegations.

“There’s nothing illegal about what you will hear happened among AMI and National Enquirer and Mr. Pecker and President Trump,” Blanche said. “It happens with politicians, with wealthy people, with famous people.”

Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 felonies alleging he repeatedly and fraudulently falsified New York business records in 2017 in paying back Cohen for the hush money payoff to Daniels.