Donald Trump was fined $10,000 on Wednesday after the New York judge overseeing his civil fraud trial said the former U.S. president violated a gag order for a second time.
Justice Arthur Engoron on Oct. 3 barred Trump from disparaging court staff after Trump shared on social media a photo of the judge's top clerk posing with U.S. Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, and falsely called her Schumer's "girlfriend."
During a trial break on Wednesday in the civil lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James concerning Trump's business practices, Trump told reporters, "This judge is a very partisan judge, with a person who's very partisan sitting alongside of him, perhaps even much more partisan than he is."
Engoron, surmising that Trump was referring to his clerk, called the comments a "blatant" violation of the gag order. The judge imposed the fine after Trump briefly took the witness stand to take questions.
10'000 is to a billionaire what 10 is to a millionaire. Or cents to some random person.I hope that gets the point across just how irrelevant that number is.
Is a cookie million different than a regular million? Like, does it have to be a million cookies? $1 million worth of cookies? A $1 million cookie made of, like, platinum and diamonds and whatnot? Like a Faberge Egg, but a cookie and worth $1 million?
What would the State of New York even do with that?
I looked it up, and the penalty is imprisonment until the fine is paid. If the fine is never paid, it ticks down with time served (looks like double-digit dollars forgiven per day).
Let's say Trump is worth $1 billion. (He claims he's worth much more, but reports say he's worth much less.) The super rich skew the average net worth, but it looks like the median American is worth $193,000.
At those amounts, $10,000 for Trump is like $1.93 to the "median American."
I can only hope that the fines increase by a lot more or jail time starts getting added to the mix.