Jurors heard from Keith Davidson, an attorney who helped broker the hush money agreements involving Daniels and Karen McDougal.

Judge Juan Merchan previously issued a gag order that specifically bars Trump from making or directing others to make public statements about potential jurors, court staff or family members of staff.

New York Judge Juan Merchan has fined former President Donald Trump for repeatedly violating the gag order in the hush money trial.

Prosecutors urged the judge to fine Trump $1,000 per alleged violation. He was similarly fined at his state-level civil fraud trial; a judge told him to fork over $15,000 for violating a gag order in that case.

It was a stinging rebuke of the Republican former president and a reminder that he’s a criminal defendant subject to the harsh realities of trial procedure.

Former President Donald Trump defied a gag order in his New York state hush-money trial by posting attacks on likely witnesses on his social media platform and campaign website, the judge in the case ruled Tuesday.

Witness testimony in Donald Trump’s hush money trial advanced on Tuesday with no fewer than three people taking the stand, including Gary Farro, who began testifying in the case last week. Among those called to the stand after defense attorneys concluded their cross-examination of Farro were the executive director of the C-SPAN archives and Keith Davidson,

On Tuesday, he found himself on the stand in the first criminal trial of a former US president, reading aloud profanity-ridden text messages that led to that deal. Prosecutors have charged Donald Trump with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records,

The lawyer, Keith Davidson, testified that the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape, in which Donald J. Trump described assaulting women, increased the urgency of talks to buy and bury Ms. Daniels’s story of a sexual encounter with him.