Donald Trump Could Be Talking His Way Into a Jail Cell

Donald Trump is at risk of being jailed if he continues to make disparaging remarks about those connected to the $250 million civil fraud trial against the former president.

Judge Arthur Engoron fined Trump for the second time on Wednesday after he violated a partial gag imposed to stop him from attacking court staff overseeing New York Attorney General Letitia James' lawsuit accusing Trump of fraudulently inflating the value of his property and assets in financial statements for years. Trump has denied all the allegations against him.

During Wednesday's proceedings in New York, Engoron ordered Trump to take the witness stand to answer questions about comments he gave to reporters about a "very partisan" individual "sitting alongside" the judge in the courtroom, an apparent reference to Engoron's longtime law clerk Allison Greenfield.

Trump had already been fined for violating his gag order over failing to remove a Truth Social post from his website. The post falsely declared Greenfield was the girlfriend of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, suggesting the civil trial was politically biased against the Republican presidential hopeful.

On October 20, Engoron fined Trump $5,000 for violating the gag order by not removing the post from his site more than two weeks after the judge ordered its deletion.

Engoron warned at the time that any further transgressions could bring "far more severe" sanctions against the former president, including "possibly imprisoning him."

On Wednesday, the judge ruled that Trump violated his gag order for a second time by publicly attacking Greenfield and fined him $10,000. Once again, he warned that Trump could face even greater punishment if there are further serious transgressions.

"Don't do it again or it will be worse," Engoron said on Wednesday.

Whether the judge will take the unprecedented step of jailing a former president during his latest White House bid remains to be seen.

The issuing of the gag order was previously criticized by Trump and his lawyers as an alleged attempt to violate the former president's First Amendment rights. Trump has frequently claimed the proceedings in New York are a politically motivated "witch hunt" that aims to prevent him from winning the 2024 election.

"It's really a new frontier for the legal system, and the legal system is really struggling with how to control this man who has no respect for the rule of law," Jimmy Gurule, a Notre Dame law school professor, told the Associated Press.

Trump's legal team has been contacted for comment.

While taking the stand on Wednesday, Trump said his remarks to reporters that there is a "person who's very partisan sitting alongside [Engoron], perhaps even much more partisan than he is" were about the judge and Michael Cohen, Trump's former lawyer who had testified against the former president on Tuesday and Wednesday.

"The idea that that statement would refer to the witness, that doesn't make sense to me," Engoron said, noting that his law clerk, not Cohen, sits beside him on the bench during the civil trial.

Engoron also told Trump that his rhetoric against his staff members may result in violence being carried out against them by supporters of the former president.

"I'm very protective of my staff, as I believe I should be," Engoron said. "I don't want anybody killed."