Former President Donald Trump drew gasps in the New York courtroom when he abruptly stormed out of a hearing after being suddenly called to the witness stand and then fined $10,000 by the judge on Wednesday.
Video of a fiery Trump afterwards shows his U.S. Secret Service detail scrambling to keep up with the 45th president.
“The witness just admitted that we won this trial, and the judge should end the trial immediately,” Trump told reporters just outside the courtroom. “Thank you.”
Take a look —
The judge just fined Donald Trump $10,000 for violating a gag order and Trump storms out of the court.
Secret Service agents flank Trump as he storms out. The Secret Service could be a big problem if the judge tries to jail the former president.pic.twitter.com/MG2vtuot61
— Max Murray (@MaxMurrayTweets) October 25, 2023
Judge Arthur Engoron had just forced Trump to get up from the defense table and take the witness stand to testify about his comment to reporters about “a person who’s very partisan sitting alongside” the judge.
Engoron had already ordered all participants in the trial not to comment publicly about his staff.
Trump and his lawyers insisted that his comment Wednesday was not about a court clerk, but said he was referring to Michael Cohen, a former Trump attorney who had been testifying.
Engoron said Trump’s claim was “not credible.”
“The idea that the statement would refer to the witness,” Engoron said, “doesn’t make any sense to me.”
Five days earlier, Trump had been fined $5,000 after Engoron learned that the offending social media post from early October had lingered on Trump’s campaign website for weeks after being taken down — on the judge’s orders — from Trump’s Truth Social media platform.
Then, on Wednesday, the Republican presidential front-runner complained in a courthouse hallway that Engoron, a Democrat, is “a very partisan judge, with a person who’s very partisan sitting alongside of him, perhaps even much more partisan than he is.”
Under oath on the witness stand, Trump told the judge that the remark was aimed at “you and Cohen.”
But Trump did not conceal his frustration with the clerk. “I think she’s very biased against us. I think we’ve made that clear,” Trump said during his roughly two minutes on the stand.
Three of Trump’s lawyers objected to the $10,000 fine, and they reiterated Trump’s claim that the clerk was partial.
Not long after he was fined and moments after one of his lawyers finished questioning Cohen, Trump stood up and abruptly walked out of the courtroom to gasps from the audience, trailed by his son Eric. Donald Trump has attended the trial voluntarily, and he can leave whenever he likes.
It’s the latest in a series of battles with judges in the courtroom for the leading Republican presidential candidate.
The judge in Trump’s in Washington, D.C. case imposed a gag order last week barring public statements about prosecutors, court staff, and potential witnesses. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan’s order came after prosecutors raised concerns that Trump’s remarks could inspire his supporters to threaten or harass his targets.
Chutkan temporarily lifted the order Friday so she could consider a defense request to pause the restrictions while Trump appeals it.
The Horn editorial team and the Associated Press contributed to this article