Report: Judge Considers 4 More Gag Order Violations Against Trump
The judge overseeing former President Trump’s hush money case will begin the trial Thursday by holding a hearing to consider four more potential violations of a gag order imposed on the former President.
Trump was already found in contempt of the gag order on Tuesday, where the judge found him in violation for nine separate online posts attacking witnesses, potential jurors in the case. Judge Merchan fined the former President nearly $10,000.
Prosecutors now say Trump violated his gag order an additional four times.
Here are the four statements at issue:
1 – Courthouse hallway statement
The first statement at issue is one Trump gave to the cameras in the hallway outside the courtroom on April 22.
“When are they going to look at all the lies that Cohen did in the last trial?,” Trump said, referring to his ex-fixer, Michael Cohen, who is expected to be prosecutors’ star witness.
“He got caught lying in the last trial. So he got caught lying, pure lying. And when are they going to look at that?”
2 – Real America’s Voice interview
After court concluded that day, Trump in the evening gave an interview to conservative channel Real America’s Voice and took aim at jurors.
“That jury was picked so fast – 95% Democrats,” Trump said. “The area’s mostly all Democrat. You think of it as a – just a purely Democrat area. It’s a very unfair situation, that I can tell you.”
3 – Local ABC station interview
The next day, Trump conducted a roughly 12-minute interview with the local ABC affiliate in Philadelphia, when the former president went after Cohen and ex-National Enquirer Publisher David Pecker, who was testifying that day.
Michael Cohen is a convicted liar and he’s got no credibility whatsoever,” Trump said of his ex-fixer.
As for the other witness, Trump said moments later, “David Pecker, I don’t know exactly what he’s going to be testifying against but or about, but he’ll be testifying today.”
4 – Surprise campaign event
Before coming to court last Thursday, Trump stopped at a construction site in Manhattan, turning it into a campaign stop. He again was asked about Pecker, who hadn’t yet concluded his testimony:
“He’s been very nice. I mean, he’s been – David’s been very nice. A nice guy,” Trump said.
Biden Scheme To Spy On Trump Supporter Bank Accounts Even Wider Than Reported
Congressional investigators are demanding additional documents and information from financial institutions nationwide amid revelations that a Biden administration operation to spy on millions of bank accounts to identify suspected January 6 rioters was even more widespread than previously reported.
U.S. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) sent letters to the Chief Executive Officers of Standard Chartered Bank USA, Truist, U.S. Bank, Wells Fargo, Western Union, Charles Schwab, Bank of America, Citibank, HSBC Bank, JPMorgan Chase, MUFG Bank, PayPal, and Santander Bank requesting “documents and communications related to the Committee’s investigation of financial surveillance of American citizens, including the disclosure of private financial records to federal authorities without legal process.”
“Documents obtained by the Committee and Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government show that the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) circulated specific materials to these banks, and the Committee believes that these banking institutions possess information necessary for the investigation,” the Judiciary Committee reports.
“The Committee previously sent letters to Bank of America, Chase, U.S. Bank, Wells Fargo, Citibank, and Truist for its probe into how the FBI worked together with banks to spy on Americans following the events of January 6, 2021, without a warrant,” the Committee reports.
“The Committee also sent a letter to U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen demanding all Bank Secrecy Act filings, including Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs), that included the tag created to group all SARs related to the events following January 6, 2021,” the Committee adds.
Excerpts of Jordan’s letter to Charles Schwab, for example, read:
“After receiving documents and information from several entities, the Committee and Select Subcommittee learned that the financial surveillance occurring in the United States is much broader than the FBI simply requesting, without any legal process, a list of customers’ transactions from Bank of America. On March 6, 2024, the Committee and Select Subcommittee released an interim staff report detailing its findings to date on how federal law enforcement is using private banks to pry into the private transactions of American customers. That report highlighted how, following January 6, 2021, federal law enforcement commandeered financial institutions’ databases, sought to treat sweeping classes of otherwise lawful transactions as potentially ‘suspicious,’ and profiled Americans using Merchant Category Codes (MCCs), ‘typologies,’ and ‘indicators’ that treated protected political and religious expression as indicative of domestic violent extremism.
“The Committee and Select Subcommittee remain concerned about how and to what extent federal law enforcement and financial institutions continue to spy on Americans by weaponizing backdoor information sharing and casting sprawling classes of transactions, purchase behavior, and protected political or religious expression as potentially ‘suspicious’ or indicative of ‘extremism.'”
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