May 6 (UPI) — Week four of Donald Trump‘s hush-money trial got underway Monday with the former president fined again and held in criminal contempt for violating a gag order for the 10th time with possible jail time now on the table.
Judge Juan Merchan told Trump “the last thing I want to do is to put you in jail” but it appears to the judge that the continuous flow of $1,000 fines “are not serving as a deterrent.”
“You are the former president of the United States, and possibly the next president as well,” Merchan reminded Trump.
“There are many reasons why incarceration is truly a last resort for you,” Merchan said as he told Trump — who would be the first ex-president to be put in prison for any period of time — that he will impose a jail sanction “if necessary.”
Trump has repeatedly and almost daily called Merchan “conflicted” as he railed against the judge just before going in this court in the morning.
“It’s a ridiculous case, I did nothing wrong,” Trump told a pool of reporters. “And yet the judge gags me and I’m not allowed to talk about, I guess, his total conflict.”
Former Trump Organization controller Jeff McConney took the stand in the morning while there had been no advance posting of whom the prosecution will put on the stand to follow former White House communications director Hope Hicks.
Trump’s top communications director from 2015 to 2018, Hicks cried in testimony Friday as she recalled her boss’ reaction when news broke in 2018 of an alleged hush-money payment to cover up a supposed affair with porn film actress Stormy Daniels was that it was preferable to having negative press during his 2016 campaign run.
“He wanted to know how it was playing, and just my thoughts and opinion about this story versus having a different kind of story before the election had Mr. Cohen not made that payment,” said Hicks, the first witness from Trump’s inner circle to enter the witness box.
“I think Mr. Trump’s opinion was it was better to be dealing with it now, and it would have been bad to have that story come out before the election,” she stated.
However, Hicks appeared to undercut the idea that the primary motivation behind Trump’s alleged actions was an illegal bid to influence the election — the whole premise of the prosecution’s case — by going on to testify that Trump was equally concerned about keeping news stories about affairs from his wife, Melania Trump.
Hicks related how when, four days before the 2016 election, a story hit about a $150,000 payment by the National Enquirer to Playboy model Karen McDougal to cover up the alleged affair with the former president, Trump had instructed staff to hide the newspapers.
“He was concerned about how it would be viewed by his wife, and he wanted me to make sure that the newspapers weren’t delivered to his residence that morning,” she said.
Trump was also keen to avoid situations that would cause “anyone in his family to be hurt or embarrassed”, she said.
Earlier in the session, Hicks also testified about the chaos triggered by The Washington Post’s October 2016 revelation of the infamous Access Hollywood tape in which Trump boasts about groping women with impunity.
She told jurors she was “very concerned” when The Washington Post first contacted her for comment.
“Everyone was just absorbing the shock of it,” Hicks said adding that their initial response was “deny, deny, deny.”
Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up $130,000 paid to his former lawyer Michael Cohen to reimburse him for a paying off Daniels to keep quiet about sex with Trump.
The Republican presidential candidate denies ever having had sexual relations with Daniels.
