The judge presiding over Donald Trump's New York fraud trial raised the possibility of jail time for the former president over his "blatant violation of the gag order" the judge issued earlier this month, according to multiple reports.
New York state Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron made the remarks from the bench after it was brought to his attention that Trump never deleted a post he shared about the judge's principal law clerk Allison Greenfield. According to the website Meidas Touch, the offending post remained on Trump's website Thursday night but has since been removed.
Engoron ordered it removed Oct. 3.
"I ordered him to remove the post immediately, and he said he did take it down," Engoron said. "Despite this order, last night I learned the offending post was never removed from the DonaldJTrump.com and in fact, has been on the website for the past 17 days. This is a blatant violation of the gag order. I made it clear [that] failure to comply will result in serious sanctions."
"Incendiary untruths can and have led to serious physical harm. I will now allow the defendant to explain why this should not end up with serious sanctions or I could possibly imprison him," Engoron went on.
Trump attorney Christopher Kise told the judge it was an oversight. Kise said the failure to remove the post falsely linking Greenfield as the girlfriend of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., was "truly inadvertent."
"The Truth Social post was taken down when the court asked," Kise told the judge. "Truth Social was taken down and Trump never made any more comments about court staff, but it appears no one took it down on the campaign website. It is unfortunate, and I apologize on behalf of my client."
The offending post that Trump shared was, "Why is Judge Engoron's Principal Law Clerk, Allison R. Greenfield, palling around with Chuck Schumer?" It led to Engoron issuing a limited gag order.
"I will take this under advisement, but I want to make clear that Donald Trump is still responsible for the large machine, even if it is a large machine," Engoron said.
Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.
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