The judge, presiding over President Trump’s hush-money trial, blasted the defense during a contentious hearing on the gag order violations the prosecution alleged. The judge held off on making an immediate ruling on the matter, and called the trial’s first witness, the former publisher of the National Enquirer, David Pecker, back to the stand, where he described how the supermarket tabloid got involved in helping Mr. Trump’s 2016 election campaign. 

Before Mr. Pecker returned to the stand, the New York Supreme Court  Justice, Juan Merchan, upbraided the defense for “losing all credibility,” regarding the gag order. Specifically, Judge Merchan criticized a defense lawyer, Todd Blanche, for not presenting a legally sound argument, backed with evidence and case law.   

Besides bringing the first ever criminal trial against a former president, the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, asked the court last week to hold Mr. Trump in contempt for violating the gag order the judge imposed on him. Last month, Judge Merchan issued the tailored restriction that prohibits Mr. Trump from making public statements about the witnesses, the court staff, the attorneys, the jurors, and their family members. He later extended the gag order to include family members of Mr. Bragg, and his own family, after Mr. Trump had repeatedly attacked the judge’s adult daughter, Loren Merchan, for her work at an agency that organizes election campaigns for high profile Democratic candidates.     

Mr. Trump has vociferously denounced the gag order, claiming that two high profile witnesses in the case, the adult film performer Stormy Daniels and his former attorney, Michael Cohen, are free to criticize him, while he must remain silent.

Prosecutors filed a motion on April 15, as reported by the Sun, arguing that Mr. Trump had violated the gag order in three instances. On April 18, in a supplement filing, they added another seven violations, and then last night, prosecutor Christopher Conroy told the court, Mr. Trump overstepped again, raising the total number of violations to eleven, all made over social media. 

“The defendant has violated this order repeatedly and hasn’t stopped,” Mr. Conroy argued. The prosecution asked that the judge order Mr. Trump to take down the insulting social media posts and fine him $1,000 per violation, which would amount to a total sum of $10,000, if the judge considers each post a full violation. 

Mr. Blanche argued that Mr. Trump reposting on social media an article from an established publication should not count as a violation of the gag order. The prosecution had cited as a violation a post on Mr. Trump’s Truth Social account, where he had reposted a New York Post article, which described  Cohen as a “a serial perjurer”, who will “try to prove an old misdemeanor against Trump in an embarrassment for the New York legal system.” 

Mr. Blanche said that some of Mr. Trump’s postings on Truth Social were actually made by three staff members, a practice that is de rigueur among celebrities like Mr. Trump who have large social media followings.

On April 17, Mr. Trump’s social media team  posted on his Truth Social account a quote from the Fox News star Jesse Watters. The quote read, “‘They are catching undercover Liberal Activists lying to the Judge in order to get on the Trump Jury,’ Jesse Watters.” 

The next day, prosecutors told the court on Tuesday, a juror asked to be excused, saying friends and colleagues had identified her and she did not feel safe. 

“What happened here was exactly what this order was meant to prevent and the defendant doesn’t care,” Mr. Conroy said on Tuesday.

As the court dug deeper into issue, it turned out that the quote posted by Mr. Trump, or his employees, was not in fact precisely what Mr. Watters had said. There had been additions made to the quote. The judge said this showed that the act of reposting was not “passive” but deliberate. 

(Mr. Watters, the tenor of whose comments were not misrepresented in Mr. Trump’s Truth Social post, later posted on X the exact words previously attributed to him by Mr. Trump.)

Mr. Blanche told the court that Mr. Trump was “extremely frustrated” by what he considers to be a “two-tiered system of justice.”   

“There are two systems of justice in this courtroom — is that what you are saying?” Judge Merchan asked. 

“There are two systems of justice. Mr. Weisselberg is in prison, and Mr. Cohen is a witness,” Mr. Blanche argued, referring to the former Trump Organization CFO Allan Weisselberg, 76, who was charged with perjury and sentenced to five months in prison, while Cohen, 57, who also committed perjury, is a free man.

But the judge noted that it was not the decision of the court, whom to charge. That was the decision of the district attorney. 

As Mr. Blanche stood at the lectern, a bunch of papers before him, which, so it seemed, he had not fully read, Mr. Trump was seated at his defense table, also looking through papers, seemingly agitated. 

The defense attorney raised another argument, which Mr. Trump has made in press conferences and on his social media, that witnesses like Cohen and Ms. Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, are allowed to publicly attack Mr. Trump, while he has no right to defend himself. Both Cohen and Ms. Clifford have recently published books, “Disloyal” and “Full Disclosure”, which prolifically attack Mr. Trump. But when the judge asked Mr. Blanche for a specific example of contumely by these witnesses, the defense attorney failed to provide one.    

“I keep asking you over and over and I am not getting an answer,” Judge Merchan scolded. 

“I don’t have a special one,” Mr. Blanche said looking through his papers, “the documentary that came out. And the timing of it.” He was referring to the new documentary “Stormy”, which details the years- long legal battle between Ms. Clifford and Mr. Trump from her perspective. The film was released on Peacock, the streaming service for NBCUniversal, on March 18th, exactly one week before the trial was originally scheduled to begin.

Outside in the hallway, Mr. Trump addressed reporters. “We have a gag order, which to me is totally unconstitutional. I’m not allowed to talk but people are allowed to talk about me,” the former president said. “So, they can talk about me, they can say whatever they want, they can lie. But I’m not allowed to say that. I just have to sit back and look at why a conflicted judge has ordered for me to have a gag order. I don’t think anybody’s ever seen anything like this.” 

Judge Merchan reserved the right to issue a judgment. He will issue his decision at a later time.  

After a short break, the judge called in the jury and Mr. Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer, got back on the witness stand. 

“I met Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago,” Mr. Pecker, 72, told the jury. “I’ve had a great relationship with Mr. Trump over the years.”

According to Mr. Pecker, he met the former president some time in the late 1980s but did not actually begin to work with him until years later, when he had the idea to create a magazine called “Trump Style”, which according to Wikipedia, was distributed to guests at Mr. Trump’s properties. After he presented it to Mr. Trump, who liked the idea a lot, Mr. Trump asked him, “who’s gonna pay for it?” 

Mr. Pecker described his former friend’s approach to money as “very cautious and very frugal.” After Mr. Pecker had bought the National Enquirer and Mr. Trump was starring on NBCUniversal’s hit TV show, “The Apprentice”, the two men maintained a good friendship that was mutually useful. Mr. Trump, known for his mastery of the tabloid news cycle, would go on to generously supply Mr. Pecker with exclusive “Apprentice” stories, as well as gossip about celebrities.   

“When someone would get fired [from ‘The Apprentice’], he would get me the information first,” Mr. Pecker testified. Their relationship became more important after Mr. Trump announced he was running for president. 

As the prosecution explained in their opening statement, Mr. Pecker, Cohen, and Mr. Trump did indeed meet at Trump Tower in August 2015 to discuss how the Enquirer could help the campaign. Mr. Pecker told the court that Cohen invited him to the meeting, saying “the boss” wanted to see him.

At the meeting, the three men devised the plan to run positive stories about Mr. Trump, to attack his opponents and to bury any type of scandal they would come across. Mr. Pecker agreed to be Mr. Trump’s “eyes and ears”, adding that their agreement was “highly, highly confidential.” 

“I thought there would be a lot of women trying to sell their stories,” Mr. Pecker explained. “Mr. Trump was well-known as the most-eligible bachelor, and dated the most beautiful women, and it was clear, based on my past experience, that when someone’s running for public office like this, it was very common for these women to call up a magazine like the National Enquirer to try to sell their stories.”

As one of the few American publishers practicing so-called “checkbook journalism” in which sources were paid for information, Mr. Pecker was often a first stop for people trying to sell stories about celebrities such as Mr. Trump.

At the same time as Mr. Pecker was being Mr. Trump’s “eyes and ears” regarding women selling stories about Mr. Trump’s romantic liaisons, the Enquirer was also publishing negative stories about Mr. Trump’s political opponents. The prosecution showed the court a few examples of the  stories that Mr. Pecker ran about other Republican candidates during the 2016 Republican primaries. 

One of the headlines, for example, against Ben Carson read, “Bungling Surgeon Ben Carson left sponge in patient’s brain.” Another one aimed at Senator Cruz said, “Donald Trump blasts Ted Cruz’s dad for photo with JFK assassin.”   

Mr. Pecker then explained how his editor in chief, Dylan Howard, had a research department that would manufacture embarrassing photos. In this case, Mr. Howard’s team took a picture of Lee Harvey Oswald and attached it to an image of Senator Cruz’s father. 

Cohen would add content and information to the stories, Mr. Pecker said. The two men communicated constantly.

Tuesday’s testimony also dove into the first Trump story Mr. Pecker ever bought, then killed, to protect Mr. Trump. This was the account of a former doorman at Trump Tower who claimed that Mr. Trump had fathered a child out of wedlock with a housekeeper. Mr. Howard negotiated a $30,000 payment to the doorman to kill the story, which later turned out to be false. 

Court ended before Mr. Pecker would begin talking about Karen McDougal, Playboy’s Playmate of the Month for December 1997 and Playmate of the Year for 1998, who claimed she trysted with Mr. Trump for nine months in 2006 and 2007. The Enquirer paid her $150,000 to write fitness columns that were never published. The topic of Ms. McDougal is expected to be the first thing Mr. Pecker will discuss when he returns to the stand on Thursday morning. 

There is no court on Wednesdays, as Judge Merchan presides then over Manhattan Mental Health Court, which seeks to provide alternatives to incarceration for mentally ill offenders.