US President Donald Trump
On Friday, October 20, Judge Arthur Engoron, overseeing the civil fraud trial involving former US President Donald Trump and his company, issued a stern warning of “serious sanctions,” potentially even imprisonment.
This came in response to Trump’s apparent violation of the court-imposed gag order, which prohibited him from discussing the court’s personnel. The gag order was put in place on October 3 after Trump posted a derogatory comment on Truth Social about one of Judge Engoron’s clerks.
The post was removed from Truth Social on October 3, hours after being posted and right before the gag order was issued, but stayed up on Trump’s website until Thursday night, right after reports on social media emerged that it was still online.
At the start of the trial on Friday, Engoron called the post being left up a “clear and blatant violation of the gag order,” as quoted by the Messenger, and asked Trump’s lawyers to explain why it shouldn’t result in “serious and substantial sanctions,” including fines or potential imprisonment.
As reported by ABC News, Trump’s attorney, Christopher Kise, explained to the judge that the continued presence of the post was an “unintentional” error, which could be attributed to the scope of Trump’s “extensive [campaign] operation.”
Engoron noted that he would carefully consider the matter but underscored that he “wants to make it explicitly clear that Donald Trump remains accountable for the substantial apparatus, even if it is a substantial apparatus.”