Trump Organization Sanctioned For Violating Court Order

Court filings that were unsealed this week revealed that the Trump Organization had been sanctioned by the courts and held in contempt for failing to comply with a court order to turn over materials. Specifically, the Organization refused to turn over documents that had been legally subpoenaed from the company. These contempt charges were kept quiet until AFTER the trial, and Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains why.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

The Trump organization was hit with secret sanctions and held in contempt of court and find thousands of dollars for refusing to comply with subpoenas to turn over documents in the investigation that took place with the, uh, New York Attorney General's office. So why are we just now finding out about this? These sanctions, this contempt didn't just happen. In fact, it actually happened over a year ago, but it was kept sealed. This information was not revealed to the public until now. Why? Right. That's the big question mark. Why was this kept secret? The answer's actually quite obvious At the time when these contempt, uh, charges were, were leveled against the Trump organization. We didn't have a trial date. We clearly didn't have the investigation concluded to the point where you could go to trial. The charges hadn't even been decided upon yet, cuz the investigation wasn't over.

And I tell you all that, to tell you this part, because the investigation had not concluded, we were nowhere near jury selection. So revealing to the public knowing that eventually you're bringing criminal charges or civil charges, I should say, if you were to release information showing that the Trump organization was in fact hiding information, refusing to comply with court orders, that is going to taint a jury pool that is going to give everyone who could possibly be called as a juris information that Donald Trump's people are still hiding stuff, even when they're legally being told you can't hide this stuff anymore. So what happened was once they finally got the charges filed, then they go to trial, then they select the jury, then this information did become available, but not to the public, to the people in that courtroom. So this is likely one of the things that those jurors had to weigh very heavily because it is relevant to the case.

I mean, this isn't just something that, oh no, we don't want to taint the jury pool. No. We want them to understand the facts of it and not just hear it through snippets in the media. So I do understand why this wasn't made public, uh, still not exactly happy with it, but it is what it is. And we got the results that we got with that Trump organization fraud trial. But the other part of this goes to the criminal trial. We now know, based on these court documents, based on these contempt charges, that the Trump organization was doing everything in their power to not comply with court orders, to not comply with subpoenas.

They were just downright saying no. Or as the judge put it at one point, uh, they were doing the bare minimum to avoid penalties and instead offered one excuse after another. So is that happening in the criminal investigation? That's the big question I have now. It's a question for which we do not have an answer, but I do think kind of based on what we've seen here, this new information from a year ago, I think that could be one of the big factors as to why we are seeing more of a slow rolling in the criminal investigation. Not that I, I don't think Alvin Bragg is too terrified to bring the charges because I do think he's too scared of that. But it's also a far more complicated process than most of us understand. And Donald Trump's people are putting up as many roadblocks as humanly possible. So patience is a virtue, it's a virtue that I unfortunately do not have very much of. But we do have to be patient because these people trump's people are obstructing at every possible turn, and that's gonna make any criminal charges or any advancement on a lot of these issues be a lot slower than we would like.