On Monday, prosecutors asked a New York judge to punish Donald Trump for violating a gag order on several social media posts during which he commented on likely witnesses in the previous president's hush money trial.
“He is a criminal defendant, and like all criminal defendants, he is subject to judicial supervision,” Assistant District Attorney Chris Conroy told Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan as Trump looked on within the courtroom.
Conroy pointed to 3 recent posts related to Michael Cohen, Trump's former personal lawyer, and Stormy Daniels, the porn star whose receipt of a $130,000 hush-money payment from Cohen is at the middle of the criminal case.
The prosecutor asked Merchan to impose a $1,000 effective for every of the three posts and order Trump to take them down.
Prosecutors also want Merchan to warn Trump that one other violation could end in prison time.
The judge said he would hold a hearing on the motion on April 24.
The request got here on the primary day of jury selection for the first-ever criminal trial of a former US president.
The first group of potential jurors to enter the jury box often stared at Trump as Merchan explained the case to them. Trump occasionally glanced at them.
Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, have to be in court throughout the trial, including during jury selection. The process is predicted to take six weeks or longer.
“Nothing like this has ever happened before,” Trump told reporters before entering the courtroom Monday morning.
“This is political persecution,” he said. “It’s an attack on America and that’s why I’m very proud to be here.”
Trump's lawyers tried repeatedly last week to delay Monday's start date with final attempts at an appeals court, but all of those efforts failed.
In total, defense attorneys tried to stop or delay the trial a couple of dozen times, but only succeeded in postponing it for just a few weeks.
Merchan began the proceedings Monday by rejecting Trump's request that the judge dismiss the case based on an alleged conflict stemming from Merchan's daughter's work for a digital fundraising and promoting firm whose clients include Vice President Kamala Harris.
The gag order imposed on Trump last month was expanded on April 1 after the previous president repeatedly targeted the judge's daughter on social media.
Trump is accused of nearly three dozen counts of falsifying business records. He have to be within the courtroom day-after-day for the trial, which is predicted to last about six weeks or longer.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has accused Trump of filing business documents that concealed the true purpose of the payment Cohen made to Daniels shortly before the 2016 election.
Cohen, who is predicted to testify against Trump, said he paid Daniels in exchange for her silence about an alleged sexual tryst with the then-GOP candidate years ago. Trump has denied having sex with Daniels.
It could take every week or more for jury selection to be accomplished before testimony begins. Trump said just a few days ago that he was willing to testify.
Trump took to social media to denigrate the criminal case and people involved, again early Monday morning.
“The radical left Democrats are already cheating in the 2024 presidential election by bringing or helping to bring all these bogus lawsuits against me, forcing me to sit in courthouses and spend money that could be used for the campaign instead of being used .” “On the field, he beat down Crooked Joe Biden, the WORST President in the history of the United States,” Trump wrote in his Truth Social post. “Election interference!”
The trial could significantly impact Trump's ability to personally run for the White House. Trump is predicted to face President Joe Biden in November in a rematch of his 2020 contest.
Trump can be charged in three other criminal cases.
Two of them — one in federal court in Washington, D.C., the opposite in state court in Georgia — are related to his try and overturn his loss to Biden in 2020, which included unsuccessfully pressuring state election officials several times and lawmakers exercised to effectively nullify Biden's victory states.
The other criminal case, being heard in federal court in Florida, involves allegations related to his retention of secret government records after he left the White House and his alleged attempts to cover the records from government officials after they demanded their return.
Trump has pleaded not guilty in all of his criminal cases.
Although Bragg's prosecution of Trump has long been considered the least serious case, the New York trial could ultimately prove to be Trump's most consequential.
Because of continued efforts by Trump's team to either dismiss his charges or delay his trials, the hush money case may very well be the one one which goes to trial in the course of the 2024 presidential campaign.
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