Judge threatens to have Trump arrested after claiming he ‘flagrantly’ violated gag order
The judge claims that Trump made an "untrue and disparaging post" about his secretary that should be removed. However, it remained on the campaign website until Thursday.
Judge Arthur Engoron threatened this Friday to have Donald Trump arrested. The judge in charge of the civil fraud trial the former president is facing in New York claimed that he could have Trump put in prison for violating a gag order. Trump was required to delete a post in which he directly criticized Engoron’s clerk.
Specifically, NBC News reports, the judge demanded that Trump remove "an untrue and disparaging post" that Trump had made on Truth Social. Engoron claims that he had previously discussed the post with the former president: "I ordered him to remove the post immediately and he said he did take it down."
However, days later, the judge discovered that although Trump did remove Truth Social's post, it was still up on the Trump presidential campaign website, thus violating the gag order. Trump received a similar order from Judge Chutkan in early October:
Trump's lawyer says this is a mistake
Donald Trump's lawyer, Chris Kise, assured in statements to ABC News that not removing Trump's comments from the presidential campaign website was not done intentionally, but rather was an "inadvertent" error.
The cause of this oversight, he explained, was due to a "very large (campaign) operation" where no one had realized that the former president's statement was still on his website: