Donald Trump trial LIVE: Ex-president faces jail for contempt if judge finds he violated gag order in hush money trial

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich went on Fox News where he compared Donald Trump’s hush money case to civil rights workers in the 1960s.

‘I am deeply worried that tomorrow, a totally corrupt judge and a totally corrupt district attorney are going to try to put a former president of the United States, candidate of his party, and front-runner in the polls in jail,’ Gingrich said.

He suggested it is ‘so horrendous’ that there has to be outreach to the Supreme Court.’

‘This is literally like some of the civil rights workers in Mississippi in the 1960s,’ he added.

Gingrich was appearing on Sean Hannity’s program. Hannity is a close ally of the former president.

‘The New York system is now so deeply corrupted, and it’s so bitterly, deeply anti-Trump,’ Gingrich claimed.

Gingrich said he thinks ‘any step that would put him close to a New York prison is an extraordinarily dangerous step and I would hope that there’s some legal way to block it and make sure that it never happens.’

Trump has told supporters ‘ALL HELL’ will break loose if gag order is enforced against him.

In a fundraising email to supporters yesterday the former president said he was at risk of being sent to jail.

He wrote: ‘ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE IN 24 HOURS!’

Trump said that if the gag order was enforced he ‘could be thrown in jail’ and ‘Democrats will have free rein to destroy our country.’

Donald Trump has left Trump Tower on his way to the Manhattan courthouse for the contempt hearing and the second day of testimony.

A gust of wind whipped up his hair as he crossed the sidewalk and got into his waiting SUV.

Former attorney Michael Avenatti – who previously represented Stormy Daniels – is surprisingly coming to Trump’s defense.

‘I certainly see [Trump] as a victim of the system,’ he told Fox News Digital on a phone call from behind bars.

‘And that’s something that I never thought I would say. So if Michael Avenatti is coming to his defense, and I was one of his staunchest opponents for a very significant period of time, that should tell people something,’ he went on.

He was sentenced to 14 years in prison for dodging taxes and stealing $12 million from clients. That sentence is to be served consecutively with his five-year sentence for extorting Nike and stealing from Stormy Daniels.

Avenatti has been one of Trump’s firecest critics, so his comments come as a shock.

He called Trump’s four criminal cases – including the current hush money trial – ‘absolute overkill.’

Donald Trump spent the morning before court on Tuesday doing a TV interview with a local Pennslyvania TV station.

His press secretary Karoline Leavitt shared a photo on X of the former president speaking to the cameras and said: ‘Biden’s trial won’t stop him from sharing his winning message with voters across the country’.

Former National Enquirer published David Pecker is expected to tell jurors about his efforts to help Donald Trump stifle unflattering stories during the 2016 election as he resumes testimony on Tuesday.

Prosecutors say the longtime tabloid executive worked with Trump and Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen on a strategy called ‘catch and kill’ to buy up and then spike negative stories

He testified briefly on Monday and will be back on the stand on Tuesday in the Manhattan trial.

Pecker’s testimony followed opening statements in which prosecutors alleged that Trump had sought to illegally influence the 2016 race by preventing damaging stories about his personal life from becoming public, including by approving hush money payments to Stormy Daniels.

Trump has denied the porn star’s claims they had an affair after meeting at a charity golf tournament in Nevada in 2006.

President Joe Biden will travel to Donald Trump’s home state of Florida on Tuesday to target the former president on abortion.

While his probable 2024 general election rival languishes in a Manhattan courtroom, Biden will head to Tampa a week before the state’s new six-week abortion ban goes into place.

‘Many women in the southeast may have to drive for a day or longer to reach the closest clinic,’ Biden campaign communications director Michael Tyler said in a call with reporters on Monday.

‘There is one person to blame for this cruelty and it’s Donald Trump.’

The president’s re-elect team also argued Florida is in play for them this cycle.

The 12 members of the jury and their six alternates sat rapt with attention. For 45 minutes they listened to the lead prosecutor lay out the case against former President Donald Trump.

Matthew Colangelo delivered all the drama of a B-movie plot as he took them on a wild ride from a shady Trump Tower ‘catch and kill’ meeting to the extraordinary image of President Trump paying a loyal fixer by signing checks inside the White House, with a cast that included muckraking journalists, a now-disbarred lawyer who recorded his phone calls and a porn star.

Only one person inside courtroom 1530 looked unimpressed: The star of the show.

Trump leaned back in his chair, shoulders slumped at times. He did not look once at the jury as the case against him was laid out.

You did not need to be a body language expert to read ‘nothing to see here’ in his posture.

The trial could last for six weeks or more, as the jury hears evidence alleging that the former president falsified business records to hide how he had bought the silence of a porn star ahead of the 2016 election.

But Monday brought the first real insight into the strategies deployed by both sides.

And the court heard from its first witness, David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer.

This is what we learned from the first day of evidence in the case:

Donald Trump appeared to have violated his gag order again on the first day of testimony in his New York ‘hush money’ trial.

During an interview on Steve Bannon’s network Real America’s Voice, Trump attacked the jury.

‘That jury was picked so fast. Ninety-five percent are Democrats. The area is mostly all Democrat. You think of it as a purely Democrat area. It’s a very unfair situation that I can tell you,’ Trump said during the interview.

Judge Merchan has now scheduled hearing for Tuesday morning to consider prosecutors’ arguments that Trump has violated his gag order in several previous comments – and that he should be held in contempt.

Welcome to DailyMail.com’s live coverage from our reporters at Donald Trump’s historic hush money trial.

The former president faces the prospect of going to jail if he is held in contempt of court on Tuesday morning.

Prosecutors have accused him of violating the gag order in the hush money trial at least seven times by attacking witness Michael Cohen and the jury.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has asked Judge Juan Merchan to fine him $1,000 for each post. The punishment could range from a warning to a stint behind bars.

After the contempt, former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker will return to the stand to finish testimony on the ‘catch and kill’ plots allegedly coordinated between Trump and the tabloid.