NEW YORK — The Manhattan judge presiding over Donald Trump’s fraud case on Friday asked why he shouldn’t send the former president to jail in light of a derogatory online post he ordered him to delete two weeks ago that remained on the internet through Thursday — but cooled down hours later and meted out a slap on the wrist instead.
State Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron ordered Trump to pay a $5,000 fine for violating a limited gag order imposed on the second day of his fraud trial that prohibited him and everyone involved in his case from publicly commenting on his court staff.
The gag order came after Trump published an incendiary post on his social media site Truth Social about Engoron’s chief law clerk, Allison Greenfield, including a picture of her, a false claim she was New York Sen. Chuck Schumer’s girlfriend, and a link to her Instagram account.
The Republican presidential front-runner fired off the missive sometime during the morning of Oct. 3 when he was in the courthouse. Upon learning of it, Engoron called Trump to his courtroom on a lunch break and ordered him to immediately take down the “untrue and personally identifying” post about his principal law clerk, who sits with him on the bench and regularly questions the parties.
The post was deleted from Truth Social. However, it remained online on Trump’s campaign website late Thursday — 17 days after the order — and was only gone after the political action committee Meidas Touch reported it was still up, and the judge emailed Trump’s lawyers.
The post was also sent out in an email blast from Trump’s campaign to what Engoron previously estimated to be “millions” of people. Kise said in court the blast was delivered to 25,800 recipients, and only 6,713 people opened it. Kise said the campaign page had 114 million viewers — and 3,701 viewers who clicked on the link emailed to them.
In court Friday, Engoron asked Trump’s lawyers why he shouldn’t follow through on his promise to impose severe sanctions, including financial penalties or “ possibly imprisoning” Trump.
But in a ruling hours after dressing down his attorneys in court, Engoron accepted Trump lawyer Kise’s argument that it was inadvertently left on the site in ordering Trump to pay the minor penalty within 10 days.
The judge said his patience with Trump was shot.