Donald Trump’s New York criminal trial entered its third week on Tuesday morning with additional testimony from a private banker, Gary Farro, who last week described financial maneuvering related to the ex-president’s alleged catch-and-kill scheme.
First, however, the ex-president was held in contempt of court and fined $9,000 for violating a gag order. Judge Juan Merchan wrote in an order released moments after he announced the fine that Trump was found “in criminal contempt for willfully disobeying a lawful mandate of this court … on nine separate occasions”.
Merchan warned that there could be more severe consequences if Trump continues to flout the order, which bars him from commenting on witnesses in the trial, including on social media.
“Defendant is hereby warned that the court will not tolerate continued willful violations of its lawful orders and that if necessary and appropriate under the circumstances, it will impose an incarceratory punishment,” Merchan said.
In the early afternoon, the prosecution called the witness Dr Robert Browning to the stand. Browning is the executive director of C-SPAN archives and has worked there for 37 years.
In a brief testimony, Browning confirmed his role in managing the collection of videos aired on the network. He was largely called in a custodial capacity to discuss the facts surrounding media that prosecutors are admitting.
On Friday, the trial had adjourned for the week following testimony from Farro, who in 2015 became then Trump attorney Michael Cohen’s contact at First Republic Bank. His testimony lifted the veil on Cohen’s financial chicanery to protect his then boss.
Prosecutors allege that Trump, Cohen and tabloid honcho David Pecker plotted in the summer of 2015 to bury stories that could harm Trump’s GOP presidential bid. Cohen, who allegedly shuttled a $130,000 hush-money payment to the adult film star Stormy Daniels, sought to open accounts in October 2016 for two new LLCs.
These inquiries followed the 7 October 2016 publication of a hot mic recording in which Trump bragged about groping women and Cohen learning, a day later, that Daniels had come forward with a claim about an alleged extramarital liaison with Trump, per prosecutors.
Cohen plunked his own money into one of the LLCs, Essential Consultants, which wired money to Daniels’s lawyer, so she would not go public with her account. Cohen allegedly set up LLCs to facilitate hush-money payments without the candidate’s fingerprints, as Trump’s campaign feared that additional accounts of boorish behavior could sink his chances in the general election, prosecutors have said.
Farro’s testimony came after the longtime Trump assistant Rhona Graff took the stand. Graff told jurors she had seen Daniels in the reception area of Trump Tower’s 26th floor some time before the 2016 election.
Before Graff’s brief testimony, Pecker testified. Over the course of three days, Pecker described his arrangement with Trump and Cohen to flag any negative stories to them – before they broke. At the time, Pecker helmed American Media Inc (AMI), which owned the National Enquirer.
“Based on our mutual agreement back in August 2015, any stories concerning Mr Trump that would be very embarrassing, I would want to communicate that with Michael Cohen right away,” Pecker said in the final hours of his testimony. “If he heard it from somebody else, he would go ballistic.”
Pecker testified that AMI paid $150,000 to the Playboy model Karen McDougal in August 2016, to cover up her story about an alleged affair with Trump. When asked by the prosecution if his purpose in paying for McDougal’s story was to “influence the election”, Pecker said yes.