A woman was arrested Wednesday for approaching, but without reaching out to, former US President Donald Trump during a hearing in his civil trial in New York over allegations of widespread fraud in the management of his real estate empire, Court Services said.
This woman, later identified as a staffer at another court, “disrupted the hearing by standing up and walking to the front of the courtroom and yelling at Mr. Trump that she wanted to help him,” court spokesman Lucien Chalfen said in a statement. Statement after the incident that occurred in the morning.
An Agence France-Presse journalist noted that the woman, who was then behind the places where the trial parties, including Donald Trump and his lawyers, were sitting, was ordered to step back and sit on the public benches, and the session continued.
She was wearing a skirt and jacket, and “court security officers arrested her before she approached Mr. Trump, an attorney, or another party.” The spokesman confirmed that neither party was in danger at all.
She was safely escorted out of the courtroom, then the building, and tried for “contempt of court.” She has also been placed on “immediate administrative leave pending an investigation into the incident and banned from entering any New York courts until further notice,” Mr. Chalfen added.
Since the start of this civil trial on October 2, the 45th President of the United States (2017-2021) has been regularly attending the hearings, which require significant security measures, but the proceedings are public.
In that civil suit, state Attorney General Letitia James accuses the Republican and two of his sons, Eric and Donald Jr., of overvaluing the value of his golf courses, residences and skyscrapers in New York by several billion dollars in the 2000s to obtain more profitable loans. From the banks, which he denies.
