Trump Trial Takeaways: Judge Merchan Fines Trump $9,000 for Gag Order Violations

The third week of the criminal trial of Donald J. Trump began with a rebuke: The judge, Juan M. Merchan, held the former president in contempt and fined him $9,000 for repeatedly violating a gag order. He also threatened jail time if the violations continue.

That decision on Tuesday, triggered by Mr. Trump’s comments on social media about witnesses and others, preceded riveting testimony from a lawyer who had arranged a $130,000 hush-money payment to conceal a tryst between Mr. Trump and a porn star, Stormy Daniels, a sum paid weeks before the 2016 election.

The lawyer, Keith Davidson, also described an earlier deal to buy the silence of another woman, Karen McDougal, who said she’d had a longer-term affair with Mr. Trump.

Mr. Trump, 77, is charged with falsifying 34 business records to hide the payment to Ms. Daniels. He has denied the felony charges, and having had sex with Ms. Daniels and Ms. McDougal. He could face probation or prison if convicted.

Here are takeaways from the ninth day of Mr. Trump’s trial, the first prosecution of an American president:

A lawyer recounts two stories and two deals to bury them.

Mr. Davidson, a Los Angeles lawyer, described in painstaking detail the pressured negotiations to pay off Ms. McDougal in summer 2016, which played out in text messages with Dylan Howard, an editor at The National Enquirer. The tabloid had agreed to buy negative stories about Mr. Trump and then bury them.

Ms. McDougal was eventually paid $150,000 and promised other perks, a deal hashed out in sometimes jocular terms.

“We are going to lay it on thick for her,” read one text from Mr. Howard.

Mr. Davidson replied: “Throw in an ambassadorship for me.”

Mr. Davidson testified that his response was a joke, but acknowledged that a deal for Ms. McDougal would help Mr. Trump’s candidacy.

In the afternoon, Mr. Davidson detailed how the arrangement with Ms. Daniels was made later that year as interest in her story increased after the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape, in which Mr. Trump bragged about groping women.

Mr. Davidson testified that he dealt with Michael D. Cohen, who was special counsel at the Trump Organization and who he believed was acting for the benefit of Mr. Trump.

Trump’s gag order violations haven’t cost him much. Yet.

In an eight-page decision, Justice Merchan announced Tuesday morning that Mr. Trump had repeatedly violated the March gag order that protects witnesses, court staff and others. He warned the former president that the court “will not tolerate continued violations,” raising the prospect of “an incarceratory punishment” if he continues. That means jail.

The judge also ordered Mr. Trump to remove the nine “offending posts” from his Truth Social account and his campaign website by Tuesday afternoon.

The fines, however, were a pittance for a billionaire: $9,000. Justice Merchan acknowledged that such penalties “unfortunately will not achieve the desired result” if a person “can easily afford such a fine.”

A banker described how Michael Cohen paid off Stormy Daniels.

Mr. Cohen, who also acted as Mr. Trump’s fixer, made the $130,000 payment to Ms. Daniels, drawing money from a credit line and channeling it through a shell company. Gary Farro, who was a banker with First Republic Bank, described that monetary flow, a dry but essential part of the prosecution’s case.

The payment’s timing — less than two weeks before the 2016 presidential election — speaks to another element of the prosecution’s argument: that Mr. Trump was seeking to illegally influence voters by silencing Ms. Daniels.

During cross-examination, a defense lawyer, Todd Blanche, tried to drive home the idea that the account had no connection to Mr. Trump. Mr. Farro also told Mr. Blanche that if Mr. Cohen “had told me this was a shell corporation, the account wouldn’t have been opened.”

A parade of record keepers took the stand.

Prosecutors also called several witnesses to testify about records, including a C-SPAN archivist and an official with a court reporting company. They were so-called custodial witnesses, who testify about the authenticity of basic evidence in the case, such as videos or deposition transcripts, which all came into play on Tuesday.

The jury saw several video clips from 2016 in which Mr. Trump denied accusations of sexual assault. They also saw a snippet of a deposition Mr. Trump gave in another lawsuit in which he confirmed that he married Melania Trump in 2005, soon before Ms. McDougal and Ms. Daniels say they had sexual encounters with him.

Trump can go to a graduation and is hitting the road.

Mr. Trump had complained about the possibility of missing his son Barron’s high school graduation on May 17, but Justice Merchan said Tuesday that the trial would pause for it.

This week’s trial schedule has already been truncated, with Monday and Wednesday off. Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, is planning rallies in Wisconsin and Michigan — both battleground states — on Wednesday.

Testimony will resume with Mr. Davidson on Thursday, with a tough cross-examination by the defense expected.