Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump sits in Manhattan state court in New York, Monday, April 23, 2024. Brendan McDermid/Pool Photo via AP

NEW YORK — Prosecutors in the historic hush money trial of Donald Trump urged a judge Tuesday to fine him and hold him in contempt over social media posts that they say violated a gag order barring attacks on witnesses, jurors and others involved in the case.

Citing 10 posts on his social media account and campaign website that they said breached the order, prosecutors called the messages a “deliberate flouting” of the court’s prohibition and requested a $1,000 fine for each one.

“The defendant has violated this order repeatedly, and he has not stopped,” said prosecutor Christopher Conroy, who said the violations continued Monday with Trump’s comments to reporters outside the courtroom about Michael Cohen, his former lawyer and fixer and the government’s star witness.

A defense lawyer countered that Trump was simply responding to others’ comments in the course of protected speech.

“There is no dispute that President Trump is facing a barrage of political attacks,” attorney Todd Blanche said.

Judge Juan Merchan did not immediately rule but repeatedly signaled his exasperation with the Trump team. “You’re losing all credibility,” he told Blanche after the lawyer asserted that Trump was trying hard to comply.

The hearing could result in further financial punishment for Trump, who last year was fined $15,000 for twice violating a gag order imposed at his New York civil fraud trial. But whether it deters him from future incendiary comments, or further antagonizes him, is an open question. The presumptive Republican nominee has thrust his legal jeopardy into the center of his presidential campaign as he lambasts this case and the three others he faces as examples of political persecution.

The hearing preceded the scheduled resumption of testimony in the case, with a longtime publisher expected back on the stand Tuesday to tell jurors about his efforts to help Trump stifle unflattering stories during the 2016 campaign.

David Pecker, the former National Enquirer publisher who prosecutors say worked with Trump and Cohen on a strategy called “catch and kill” to suppress negative stories, testified briefly Monday.

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 a porn actor who alleged an extramarital sexual encounter with Trump a decade earlier. Trump has denied that.

“It was election fraud, pure and simple,” prosecutor Matthew Colangelo said Monday.

Blanche countered by assailing the government’s case and attacking Cohen’s integrity.

“President Trump is innocent. President Trump did not commit any crimes. The Manhattan district attorney’s office should never have brought this case,” he said.