The judge has fined Trump $5,000 for the threat of imprisonment due to a violation of the non-disclosure order.

This morning, a judge in the case involving former President Donald Trump's civil fraud criticized him for not removing a derogatory post about the judge's secretary from his campaign website.

The post, discovered on Thursday by the pro-Democrat news site MeidasTouch, was a duplicate of a post published on Trump's social media on October 3 and was removed shortly after New York Judge Arthur Engoron issued a limited order of nondisclosure, prohibiting Trump from publishing or publicly discussing the judge's personnel.

The reposting of the removed post during the election campaign has also since been deleted, but on Friday, Judge Engoron appeared quite angered.

He questioned Trump's lawyers about why he shouldn't impose "serious" sanctions, "including financial sanctions" or "possibly imprison him."

Trump's lawyer, Christopher Kise, apologized and claimed it was a "truly inadvertent" mistake due to the "machinery" of the presidential campaign reproducing the post on their website. Kise stated that there were no subsequent posts about the secretary or other court personnel.

Kise mentioned that there were only about 25,810 people on the campaign's email list who received notifications about the post, and ultimately, only a small fraction of that number visited the campaign's website post. "Between October 3 and October 19, just over 114 million people visited the campaign's website. Only 3,701 views - these are called unique views - viewed the post. This includes everyone who received the email," Kise said.

"Well, we're both getting more technically astute," Engoron responded.

Engoron imposed a $5,000 fine later on Friday.

"In the current overheated climate, incendiary falsehood can, and in some cases already has, led to physical harm and worse," Engoron wrote in his order.

A representative for the campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Tensions have risen this week in the case where Trump, his adult children, and the Trump Organization are accused of inflating property values and Trump's net worth in an alleged scheme to secure favorable loans and insurance, netting them at least $250 million.

Last month, a judge ruled that Trump and his company had "repeatedly" violated the state's fraud laws. Trump and other defendants deny wrongdoing in this case, with their lawyers arguing that what the Attorney General's office calls fraud was a subjective evaluation of property and wealth.

On Thursday, Kise was called "rude" by lawyers from Attorney General Letitia James' office during a sidebar discussion.

The altercation played out in front of Trump, who is not required to attend the trial but was present on Tuesday and Wednesday. Moments before James' lawyers confronted Kise, they asked Engoron to admonish Trump for intimidating a witness, expressing disappointment over the testimony, shaking his head, and raising his hands.

Engoron agreed, addressing Trump's team and saying, "I'm going to ask everybody to keep quiet while the witness is testifying."