Donald Trump fined $10,000 for second gag order violation in civil fraud case

girlfreddy@sh.itjust.works to News@lemmy.world – 331 points –
Donald Trump fined $10,000 for second gag order violation in civil fraud case
reuters.com

Justice Arthur Engoron on Oct. 3 barred Trump from disparaging court staff after Trump shared on social media a photo of the judge's top clerk posing with U.S. Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, and falsely called her Schumer's "girlfriend."

During a trial break on Wednesday in the civil lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James concerning Trump's business practices, Trump told reporters, "This judge is a very partisan judge, with a person who's very partisan sitting alongside of him, perhaps even much more partisan than he is."

Engoron, surmising that Trump was referring to his clerk, called the comments a "blatant" violation of the gag order. The judge imposed the fine after Trump briefly took the witness stand to take questions.

56

Wow. Isn't that like fining the regular Joe 2 bucks? Must be devastating and lifestyle-changing.

The first fine was 5k. This is 10k.

Doubling can get pretty nasty, pretty fast. Let's hope he sticks to it.

He'd have to do it 16 12 times for doubling to touch just 1% of his reported net worth.

(I have zero interest debating what his actual net worth is. Don't @ me.)

Edited to correct math.

Your math is bad.

16 total payments of 5k, 10k, 20k, ... is $327,675,000.

That is 1% of $32,767,500,000.

Trump's net worth is not reported as close to 33 billion anywhere, and never has been.

13 payments would be 1% of about 4 billion, which could be ballparked as about Trump's reported net worth at various times in history.

My math was indeed bad! That's what I get for doing it fast at work lmao. Thanks for the call out.

10'000 is to a billionaire what 10 is to a millionaire. Or cents to some random person.I hope that gets the point across just how irrelevant that number is.

Maybe this is like write-ups at work. Verbal warning, written warning, final warning, 3 day suspension, 7 day suspension, termination.

So 5k, 10k, 100k, month in jail, 3 months in jail, in custody until trial is over.

"Don't make me get HR to count to ten again!"

"7... 8... 9... 9 and a half... 9 and three quarters... 9 and four fifths..."

I'm bad at math, so you're probably right. Sadly so. Makes it even worse.

They should up it to a cookie million next time to give him a jolt

Is a cookie million different than a regular million? Like, does it have to be a million cookies? $1 million worth of cookies? A $1 million cookie made of, like, platinum and diamonds and whatnot? Like a Faberge Egg, but a cookie and worth $1 million?

What would the State of New York even do with that?

Oh sorry. I didn't know. Well, that changes everything. Poor guy, and i was mocking him 😣

Sure, but what is the penalty for not paying (as Trump has a long history of doing)?

I looked it up, and the penalty is imprisonment until the fine is paid. If the fine is never paid, it ticks down with time served (looks like double-digit dollars forgiven per day).

Let's say Trump is worth $1 billion. (He claims he's worth much more, but reports say he's worth much less.) The super rich skew the average net worth, but it looks like the median American is worth $193,000.

At those amounts, $10,000 for Trump is like $1.93 to the "median American."

I can only hope that the fines increase by a lot more or jail time starts getting added to the mix.

And the consequences if he refuses to pay?

When you refuse to pay court-ordered fines my understanding is that they send bailiffs to physically take your property away so it can be sold to cover it.

Worst (best?) case, he's thrown in jail until he pays. Not paying is contempt of court

Not paying is contempt of court

Yeah, but so was violating the gag order.

If he isn't jailed on a third strike, I'm done following this.

Losing time rather than money would be a stronger punishment for that kind of person, so lock him up for a while where he cannot enjoy any luxuries.

As if he would have the same jail-experience like regular joe. It would be worse than home, but probably still more comfortable than us in our homes. At least I'm having a hard time imagining it would not be... Maybe I'm just too cynical.

My hope is that Engoron is baiting him to say/do more egregious things to really justify a proper sentence, because he knows Trump will keep pushing the envelope. But Occam's Razor suggests he might just be cowardly.

Come on Engoron, defy the razor. Show us all what you got.

Law of three strikes, or something like that? He now has had two warnings.

One can only hope. I'm sure we won't have to wait long to find out.

$10,000 now? Yeah that'll teach him. Mostly it'll just teach him that violating court orders comes with a small price tag and he could do it a hundred more times.

Let's just hope that when it happens again he actually gets to sit in a godamn jail for a change, clearly taking the loose change out of his pocket isn't doing the job.

Perhaps a week or so in jail will clean up his behavior.

Imo they haven't simply because if Trump is in jail, so is his Secret Service detail ... and that's a shit show nobody wants to deal with right now.

We should just build a cell in the white house. A super secret cell with tunnels and bunkers and shit. Everyone knows it's there, but they say it's impossible to figure out where it is. There's only one entrance inside the white house somewhere that only 3 secret service agents know about.

And the sitting president can stream footage online if they wanted.

if Trump is in jail, so is his Secret Service detail

It's not like they'll be in the cell with him.

And it'll be a lot easier for them to keep him protected if he's locked up. (Clearly they'll never put someone like this in general population where some random gangbanger can get at him.)

(Clearly they'll never put someone like this in general population where some random gangbanger can get at him.)

I wouldn’t be surprised if they did. And then, Epstein’d his ass

Nah, take him to a cell in some place like Leavenworth where they've already got plenty of security. No sense in wasting money on extra personnel when they can just house him with other high security felons.

So… barely a tap on the wrist… and after his SECOND violation, no less.

My only hope is that the judge is laying a "fair fine" foundation so that any future jail time is appeal proof. If Trump tries to appeal being sent to jail, the judge would be able to say "I gave him a warning. I gave a fine. I have him a slightly larger fine. I gave him more fines. Finally, I had no choice, but to go with jail time."

Yeah, that's pretty likely - also the judge probably doesn't want those hacks on the Supreme Court to have the slightest figleaf of an excuse to stick their noses into this on appeal.

Sometimes I just pay the parking ticket.

Stop charging the wealthy guy a fee that allows him to do what he wants and just make him sit facing the corner for half an hour if you want him to learn.

The fine should be multiplied by 10 each time he/him violate the gag order.

I'm waiting for the news that he is in prison and gags correctly on his giant cell mate. I know too crude, but it needs to happen.