“Playing with fire”: Judge threatens to throw Trump in jail for “blatant violation of gag order”

The judge presiding over Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial ripped the former president on Friday for failing to delete a post attacking a court clerk on his campaign site, weeks after the post prompted the imposition of a partial gag order. “I learned that the subject offending post was never removed from the donaldjtrump.com and in fact, has been on the website for the past 17 days,” New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron said, according to The Messenger, asking why Trump shouldn’t incur “serious sanctions” for his “blatant violation of the gag order,” such as fines or “possibly imprisoning him.”

Trump’s attorney, Christopher Kise, immediately apologized for the incident and claimed it was an “inadvertent” result of Trump’s team crossposting between social media and his website. “There was no intention to evade or circumvent or ignore the order. I assure you that,” Kise said per The Daily Beast, blaming the flub on the GOP frontrunner’s large-scale “campaign machinery.” Though the former president had deleted the inflammatory post on Truth Social circulating the false and identifying information about his principal law clerk, Allison Greenfield, after the gag order, Trump and his campaign left a mirroring message up on his site until hours after liberal political action committee Meidas Touch flagged the now-deleted webpage.

The Daily Beast reported that the New York attorney general’s office had notified the judge of the web page’s existence, which Engoron said was only removed late Thursday night “in response to email from this court.” The judge further upbraided Trump, noting that messages like Trump’s could lead, and have led to “serious physical harm and worse.” Of Engoron’s rebuke, former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti tweeted, “That’s one way to get Trump’s attention. When you ignore a judge’s orders, you’re playing with fire.”