NEW YORK (AP) — A judge held a hearing Tuesday on prosecutors’ request to hold Donald Trump in contempt of court and fine him for social media posts that they say violated a gag order.
Prosecutors in the historic hush money case cited 10 posts on Trump’s social media account and campaign website that they said breached the order, which bars him from making public statements about witnesses in the case. They called the posts a “deliberate flouting” of the court’s order.
“The defendant has violated this order repeatedly, and he has not stopped,” said prosecutor Christopher Conroy, who said the Manhattan district attorney’s office would seek additional sanctions for Trump’s comments Monday to reporters outside the courtroom about Michael Cohen, his former lawyer and fixer and the government’s star witness.
The hearing preceded the scheduled resumption of testimony in the case, with a longtime publisher expected back on the stand Tuesday to tell jurors about his efforts to help Trump stifle unflattering stories during the 2016 campaign.
David Pecker, the former National Enquirer publisher who prosecutors say worked with Trump and Cohen on a strategy called “catch and kill” to suppress negative stories, testified briefly Monday.