A New York judge has fined former President Donald Trump $5,000 on Friday over a disparaging post about a court staffer on his campaign website. This development comes after a gag order was imposed on Trump, prohibiting him from making supposedly incendiary statements about individuals involved in the civil fraud trial.

Along with the fine, Judge Arthur Engoron also threatened to hold Trump in contempt of court for future offenses, meaning the former president could face jail time.

Former President Donald Trump was fined $5,000 on Friday after his disparaging social media post about a key court staffer in his New York civil fraud trial lingered on his campaign website for weeks after the judge ordered it deleted.

Judge Arthur Engoron avoided holding Trump in contempt for now, but reserved the right to do so — and possibly even put the 2024 Republican front-runner in jail — if he again violates a limited gag order barring case participants from personal attacks on court staff.

Engoron said in a written ruling that he is “way beyond the ‘warning’ stage,” but that he was only fining Trump a nominal amount because this was a “first time violation” and Trump’s lawyers said the website’s retention of the post had been inadvertent.

“Make no mistake: future violations, whether intentional or unintentional, will subject the violator to far more severe sanctions, which may include steeper financial penalties, holding Donald Trump in contempt of court, and possibly imprisoning him,” Engoron wrote in a two-page order.

JUST IN: Judge Engoron has fined Trump $5,000 for violating the gag order by failing to remove an incendiary post about Engoron's clerk from his campaign website.

He warns that he could jail Trump for future violations. https://t.co/K0smsq0HRg pic.twitter.com/uvphRHagXi

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) October 20, 2023

Fulton County, Georgia, has also issued a gag order on Trump ostensibly to protect the integrity of the court proceedings. However, others, including myself, have argued that these orders are nothing more than a cynical attempt to muzzle the former president as much as possible as he continues his run for the presidency. His lawyers have indicated that they plan to appeal these orders.

In this case, Trump’s lawyers had already removed the post from social media platforms, which seems to indicate that leaving the former president’s comments up on the website was an oversight – a $5,000 mistake.

Trump lawyer Christopher Kise earlier blamed the “very large machine” of Trump’s White House campaign for allowing the post to remain on the website after Trump had deleted it from social media, as ordered, calling it an unintentional oversight. It was removed from the website late Thursday after Engoron flagged it to Trump’s lawyers.

Judge Engoron wasn’t accepting that, however. After speaking with the former president's attorneys, he said: “I want to be clear that Donald Trump is still responsible for the large machine even if it’s a large machine."

The judge also argued that “incendiary truths can, and in some cases already have, led to serious physical harm, and worse."

This is not the first time this particular judge has extracted money from Trump. Last year, he held the former president in contempt for not responding to a subpoena quickly enough and fined him $110,000.

Again, it is difficult to not see this as a politically motivated effort to attack the former president as he seeks the presidency once again. It seems that the court is doing its level best to prevent him from criticizing those seeking to prosecute him to influence the outcome of the 2024 election. The fact that this judge is threatening to imprison him for future “offenses” shows just how far these people are willing to go to stop Trump from serving a second term in office.