Judge Merchan fines ex-president $9000 for violating gag order as witness testimony continues

Donald Trump’s hush money trial got back underway with further testimony from Gary Farro, the banker for former Trump fixer Michael Cohen who took the stand at the end of last week. Cohen was instrumental in making a $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels to cover up an alleged affair with Mr Trump.

Judge Juan Merchan began proceedings began on Tuesday by saying he would give the trial a day off to allow Mr Trump to attend his son Barron Trump’s high school graduation before ruling that he found the former president in contempt of court on nine of the first ten violations of the gag order, fining him $1,000 for each.

Further violations may result in “an incarceratory punishment”.

Meanwhile, over the weekend Mr Trump met with Ron DeSantis to resolve their differences after a bruising primary rivalry. The Florida governor’s campaign for the GOP nomination ended in disappointment and the former president now hopes to capitalise on his influence with Sunshine State conservative donors.

After a quick mid-morning break, court has resumed in Donald Trump’s hush money trial.

Judge Merchan says the text messages up for redaction show “exchanges between a co-conspirator and someone who is not a co-conspirator” that say “pretty prejudicial things”.

Also, Merchan agrees that the defence has “opened the door” to certain questions, which attorneys can use to “explain what I call waffling, going back and forth, among the main witnesses”.

But “at this point, I don’t believe it goes to consciousness of guilt.”

He also announced that a juror has a morning flight on the Friday before Memorial Day so there’s no trial on 24 May.

So that’s two days off the calendar in May already: 17 and 24 May. The judge doesn’t seem bothered. He thinks things are moving on time.

16:07 , Alex Woodward

With the jury out on their morning break, Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass is going over some proposed redactions from some messages in evidence involving people who are not alleged co-conspirators or witnesses.

Those messages are meant to “contextualize” what was going on around the time of the Stormy Daniels transaction so that National Enquirer editor Dylan Howard’s responses can be admitted, Steinglass says.

Steinglass wants to include a message saying “very shady s***” was going on at the time. Blanche does not, obviously.

Blanche also objects to an exchange that says “The Daily Mail is scared of Trump”.

Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo also tells the judge that prosecutors intend to make another Sandoval request — they want to cross-examine Trump, if he testifies, about Judge Merchan’s gag order ruling from this morning…

Colangelo argues that the defence has “opened the door” for that testimony after defence arguments have sought to undermine the credibility of witnesses targeted by Trump.

Essentially three reasons why they want to elicit this testimony: to “offset the defence claim that the witnesses are benefiting from their willingness to testify,” to “explain why both witnesses initially denied certain facts and now acknowledged certain facts,” and to examine Trump’s “consciousness of guilt”