Jill Wine-Banks, a former prosecutor and current legal analyst, is among those sounding the alarm amid what many deem clear flouting of his gag order in a New York City criminal case by Donald Trump.
“Days after a New York judge expanded a gag order on Trump, he tested its limits by calling 2 key witnesses in his upcoming NY criminal election interference/hush money trial liars,” she said on X, formerly Twitter, then pointing to Trump’s recent discussions of Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels. “He must be held accountable or he will keep doing it. No witness names for him.”
The gag order that Wine-Banks referenced specifically restricted statements by Trump about known or even just reasonably foreseen witnesses in connection to participation in the investigation and trial. And Cohen and Daniels were both already established as expected witnesses for this week’s trial on the New York matter, which involves criminal allegations against Trump of falsifying business records in connection to hush money from before the 2016 elections for Daniels, who allegedly had an affair with Trump.
“Consequences must follow,” Wine-Banks said in a follow-up post, discussing again Trump’s angry, public commentary.
Prosecutors were pushing early Monday for consequences on Trump for some of his recent social media commentary, including what sounded like a post to which Wine-Banks herself had been responding. “We ask for $1000 for each of 3 posts, and that the Court order the Defendant to take down the post, and future posts could result in jail,” a member of the prosecution team challenging Trump told Judge Juan Merchan on Monday as Trump’s trial got going, per a recap provided online by journalist Matthew Russell Lee.
Merchan already dangled to Trump on Monday a threat of detention in another context, telling the former president that he could end up arrested for failing to show up for proceedings or disrupting the trial.
