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by: Associated Press, Finn Hoogensen

Posted: Apr 15, 2024 / 02:40 PM EDT

Updated: Apr 15, 2024 / 02:49 PM EDT

NEW YORK (PIX11) – The judge overseeing former President Donald Trump’s hush-money trial in New York City warned Trump on Monday that he could be jailed if he disrupts the proceedings.

Judge Juan M. Merchan told Trump that the trial’s proceedings would continue in his absence if he was jailed for disruption. Merchan said he gives this warning to all defendants at the start of trials, Reuters reported. Trump indicated that he understood the judge’s warning, The New York Times reported.

Jury selection for the trial began on Monday. Trump faces criminal charges that he falsified business records in order to stifle stories about his sex life.

Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records that arose from an alleged effort to keep salacious — and, he says, bogus — stories about his sex life from emerging during his 2016 campaign.

The charges center on $130,000 in payments that Trump’s company made to his former lawyer Michael Cohen. He had paid that sum on Trump’s behalf to keep adult film actor Stormy Daniels from going public, a month before the election, with her claims of a sexual encounter with Trump a decade earlier.

Prosecutors say the payments to Cohen were falsely logged as legal fees in order to cloak their actual purpose. Trump’s lawyers say the disbursements indeed were legal expenses, not a cover-up.

The day began with Merchan ruling on a variety of procedural pretrial motions as Trump sat hunched over in his seat and stared into a monitor directly in front of him on the defense table while evidence was shown.

The judge denied a defense request to recuse himself from the case after Trump’s lawyers said he had a conflict of interest. He also said prosecutors could not play for the jury the 2005 “Access Hollywood” recording in which Trump was captured discussing grabbing women sexually without their permission. However, prosecutors will be allowed to question witnesses about the recording, which became public in the final weeks of the 2016 campaign.

Prosecutors also asked Monday for Merchan to fine Trump $3,000 over social media posts that they said violated the judge’s gag order barring him from attacking witnesses. Last week, he used his Truth Social platform to call Cohen and Daniels “two sleaze bags who have, with their lies and misrepresentations, cost our Country dearly!”

“The defendant has demonstrated his willingness to flout the order. He’s attacked witnesses in the case,” said Christopher Conroy, one of the trial prosecutors.

One of Trump’s lawyers, Todd Blanche, maintained that Trump was simply responding to the witnesses’ statements.

“It’s not as if President Trump is going out and targeting individuals. He is responding to salacious, repeated vehement attacks by these witnesses,” Blanche said.

Merchan said he will hold a hearing on the issue next Tuesday.

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