Donald Trump was called to the witness stand and

Than

was fined $10,000 on Wednesday after a judge concluded the former president violated a limited silence order in his civil fraud case. It was the second time in less than a week that Trump was punished for his extrajudicial comments.

Before imposing the final fine, Judge Arthur Engoron called Trump from the defense table to testify about his comment hours earlier to reporters about a highly partisan person sitting next to the judge.

Trump and his lawyers said that comment was about witness Michael Cohen, a former Trump lawyer, and not the clerk. Trump told the judge from the witness stand that his comment about partisans was directed at you and Cohen.

But Trump did not hide his frustration with the clerk. “I think she’s very biased against us, I think we’ve made that clear,” Trump said.

Engoron on Oct. 3 had ordered all participants in the trial not to publicly comment on its staff, a restriction issued after Trump posted a social media post defaming the clerk.

The judge ordered Trump to remove that post and Trump did so, which the former president noted in court on Wednesday. But that message had been on his campaign website for weeks, earning Trump a $5,000 fine last Friday.

Three of Trump’s lawyers objected to the $10,000 fine and repeated Trump’s claim that the clerk was biased.

Earlier Wednesday, Michael Cohen returned to the witness stand as the defense team sought to undermine the credibility and question the motives of his former personal attorney turned adversary.

As Trump sat at the defense table, his lawyer Alina Habba confronted Cohen about comments he had made praising Trump before turning on him when Cohen’s legal troubles began in 2018.

Habba tried to suggest that Cohen had looked in vain for a job in Trump’s White House. Cohen insisted he never sought it and asked whether he harbored significant animosity toward Trump.

Do I have animosity towards him? Yes, I do, Cohen replied.

You’ve made a career out of publicly attacking President Trump, right? Habba asked.

After a long pause, Cohen said: Yes.

Cohen worked as Trump’s lawyer and fixer for many years, before Cohen’s 2018 federal prosecution, guilty pleas and prison sentences for tax evasion, making false statements on a bank loan application, lying to Congress and making illegal contributions to Trump’s campaign. The contributions were in the form of payouts to women who said they had extramarital sexual encounters with Trump, who said the women’s stories were false.

Cohen is now a key witness in New York Atty. General Letitia James civil case against Trump. James claims Trump habitually exaggerated the value of his real estate holdings on financial documents that helped him get loans, insurance and close deals.

Trump denies any wrongdoing and says James, a Democrat, is targeting the leading Republican presidential candidate in 2024 for partisan reasons.

During his first day of testimony Tuesday, Cohen said he and key figures at Trump’s company worked to inflate the estimated values ​​of their employer’s assets so that documents given to banks and others would match a net worth that Trump arbitrarily had established.

In cross-examining Cohen, Habba highlighted his federal criminal convictions and tried to portray him as a liar, especially after he said Tuesday that he had lied when he pleaded guilty to tax evasion and lying on loan applications. Cohen claimed that he did not actually commit these crimes and tried to portray his behavior as a matter of negligence and a failure to correct the paperwork.

Habba returned to those issues on Wednesday, underscoring that Cohen had admitted in open court that he had lied under oath in a federal courthouse next door.

Outside court, Trump said the trial was deeply unfair and a pure political witch hunt. Nevertheless, he said: We are happy with the way things are going.

We have the facts on our side, Trump said. He is expected to testify later in the trial, but has since voluntarily attended several days of the proceedings.

Cohen is also expected to be a key witness in a criminal trial scheduled for next spring in which Trump is accused of falsifying business records. That case is one of four criminal charges Trump faces in New York, Florida, Georgia and Washington.