Juan Merchan, the judge in the trial against former President Donald Trump in New York, signaled on Thursday that he will impose more fines on Trump if he continues to violate the ban on talking about witnesses and jurors.
The statement came in response to Trump’s defense attorneys’ claim that Trump did not violate that ban last week when he alleged that the Manhattan jury was drawn from a heavily Democratic district.
Prosecutor Christopher Conroy said in court on Thursday that Trump’s statements are “deliberate intimidation to everyone who comes to this courtroom to tell the truth about the defendant and what he did,” according to Reuters.
Trump was fined $9,000 on Tuesday.
Further punishment will follow, if you continue to talk about the jury. Merchan said Tuesday that he could jail Trump if he continues to defy the speech ban.
Conroy said prosecutors are not yet asking for Trump to be jailed in such a case.
READ MORE: Can the trial ruin Trump’s chances to return to power?
Spoke to the supporters
Trump, who is the presidential candidate for the Republican Party, flew out to the states of Wisconsin and Michigan on Wednesday to hold public meetings. It was just one day after Judge Merchan fined him for breaching orders to speak about the case and warned he could be jailed for further offences.
Trump’s visit to the two crucial states marks his first major campaign event since the start of the New York trial on April 15, in which he is accused of falsifying business documents in the so-called kickback case.
He addressed his supporters in Waukesha, Wisconsin and Freeland, Michigan. And he spoke to local media.
– Fighting for the right to the land
And Trump did not spare the powder.
In an interview on Wednesday, the former president refused to unconditionally accept the results of the upcoming presidential election in 2024, according to CNN.
– If everything is honest, I will gladly accept the results. I’m not changing that. If it’s not, you have to fight for the right of the land, Trump said in the interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
He did not elaborate on what it would mean to “fight for the right to the land”
Trump said he would “let it be known” if he thought the 2024 election was not “fair,” but said he expected it would be.
In the interview, he also repeated false claims that he won the state of Wisconsin in the 2020 election and cast doubt on whether the ballots will be “honestly” counted.
“If you go back and look at all the things that were found out, it showed that I won the election in Wisconsin,” Trump told the newspaper.
President Joe Biden won Wisconsin in 2020 by about 21,000 votes — a victory of about 0.6 percentage points.
