Former President Donald Trump, with his attorney Todd Blanche, speaks to reporters following the day’s proceedings in his trial on May 7, 2024, in New York.
| Photo Credit: AP

Donald Trump returns to his hush money trial on May 7 facing a threat of jail time for additional gag order violations as prosecutors gear up to summon big-name witnesses in the final weeks of the case.

Stormy Daniels, the porn actor who has said she had a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump, and Michael Cohen, the former lawyer of Mr. Trump and personal fixer who prosecutors say paid her to keep silent in the final weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign, are among those who have yet to take the stand but are expected to in the coming weeks.

The jury on May 6 heard from two witnesses, including a former Trump Organisation controller, who provided a mechanical but vital recitation of how the company reimbursed payments that were allegedly meant to suppress embarrassing stories from surfacing and then logged them as legal expenses in a manner that Manhattan prosecutors say broke the law.

The testimony from Jeffrey McConney yielded an important building block for prosecutors trying to pull back the curtain on what they say was a corporate records cover-up of transactions designed to protect Mr. Trump’s Republican presidential bid during a pivotal stretch of the race. It focused on a $130,000 payment from Mr. Cohen to Ms. Daniels and the subsequent reimbursement Mr. Cohen received.

Mr. McConney and another witness testified that the reimbursement checks were drawn from Mr. Trump’s account. Yet even as jurors witnessed the checks and other documentary evidence, prosecutors did not elicit testimony May 6 showing that Mr. Trump dictated that the payments would be logged as legal expenses, a designation that prosecutors contend was intentionally deceptive.

Mr. McConney acknowledged during cross-examination that Mr. Trump never asked him to log the reimbursements as legal expenses or discussed the matter with him at all. Another witness, Deborah Tarasoff, a Trump Organisation accounts payable supervisor, said under questioning that she did not get permission to cut the checks in question from Mr. Trump himself.

“You never had any reason to believe that President Trump was hiding anything or anything like that?” Mr. Trump attorney Todd Blanche asked.

”Correct,” Ms. Tarasoff replied.

The testimony followed a stern warning from Judge Juan M. Merchan that additional violations of a gag order barring Mr. Trump from inflammatory out-of-court comments about witnesses, jurors and others closely connected to the case could result in jail time.

The $1,000 fine imposed May 6 marks the second time since the trial began last month that Mr. Trump has been sanctioned for violating the gag order. He was fined $9,000 last week, $1,000 for each of nine violations.

“It appears that the $1,000 fines are not serving as a deterrent. Therefore going forward, this court will have to consider a jail sanction,” Mr. Merchan said before jurors were brought into the courtroom. Mr. Trump’s statements, the judge added, “threaten to interfere with the fair administration of justice and constitute a direct attack on the rule of law. I cannot allow that to continue.”

Mr. Trump sat forward in his seat, glowering at the judge as he handed down the ruling. When the judge finished speaking, Mr. Trump shook his head twice and crossed his arms.

Yet even as Mr. Merchan warned of jail time in his most pointed and direct admonition, he also made clear his reservations about a step that he described as a “last resort.”

“The last thing I want to do is put you in jail,” Mr. Merchan said. “You are the former president of the United States and possibly the next president as well. There are many reasons why incarceration is truly a last resort for me. To take that step would be disruptive to these proceedings.”

The latest violation stems from an April 22 interview with television channel Real America’s Voice in which Mr. Trump criticised the speed at which the jury was picked and claimed, without evidence, that it was stacked with Democrats.

Prosecutors are continuing to build toward their star witness, Mr. Cohen, who pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the hush money payments. He is expected to undergo a bruising cross-examination from defence attorneys seeking to undermine his credibility with jurors.

Mr. Trump, the Republican Party’s presumptive presidential nominee, is charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection with the hush money payments but has pleaded not guilty and denied any wrongdoing. The trial, the first of his four criminal cases to come before a jury, is expected to last another month or more.

New York:

Stormy Daniels will be called as a witness in Donald Trump’s criminal trial on Tuesday, ABC News reported, setting up a long-awaited showdown between the former U.S. president and the porn star who says they had sex.

Stormy Daniels is at the center of the first-ever criminal trial of a former U.S. president. Prosecutors say Donald Trump covered up a $130,000 hush money payment his former lawyer Michael Cohen made to Daniels in the run-up to the 2016 election.

Michael Cohen has previously said Donald Trump directed him to pay Daniels to keep quiet about a sexual encounter she says she had with Trump in 2006.

Prosecutors have not said who they will call to testify on Tuesday, the 13th day of the trial. Donald Trump said on social media early on Tuesday that he had been told who the witness would be, but quickly took down the post.

A lawyer for Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Prosecutors with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office say Donald Trump falsely labeled his reimbursement payments to Michael Cohen in 2017 as legal expenses in his real estate company’s books to cover up what they call an illegal scheme to influence the 2016 election by buying the silence of people with potentially damaging information.

Donald Trump, running again for president in the Nov. 5 election, has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records and denies any sexual encounter with Daniels.

Prosecutors have shown the former president’s signature was on payments at the heart of the case. Over the next two weeks they aim to demonstrate that Donald Trump was responsible then for an illegal cover-up.

On Monday, jurors saw the 34 business records that prosecutors say were falsified by Donald Trump to obscure his reimbursement of Michael Cohen.

Donald Trump’s defense lawyers have told the 12 jurors and six alternates that Daniels’ testimony will not be relevant to the financial paperwork violations at the heart of prosecutors’ case.

Michael Cohen in 2018 pleaded guilty to violating federal campaign finance law through the payment to Daniels. He testified that Donald Trump directed him to make the payment.

Daniels said she had sex with Trump at a Lake Tahoe hotel while he was married to his wife Melania Trump.

Trump’s legal team say Daniels’ claim is false and have suggested she was seeking a role on Trump’s reality TV show, The Apprentice.

Daniels has been at the receiving end of some of Trump’s vitriolic attacks on social media.

Justice Juan Merchan, who is hearing the case, has said some of those posts violated a gag order restricting Trump from speaking about witnesses, jurors, and others involved in the case if those statements are meant to influence the proceedings.

Merchan has fined Trump $10,000 for 10 violations of the order and warned that he could face time in jail if he keeps up his attacks.

Trump has called the gag order a violation of his free speech rights and says the trial is an attempt to hobble his attempt to win back the White House from Democratic President Joe Biden.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)