The criminal trial of Donald Trump resumed in a Manhattan courtroom Tuesday with a focus on the hush money transaction that’s at the center of the allegations against him — and some bad news and good news for the former president.

Before bringing in the jury, Judge Juan Merchan found Trump in criminal contempt for having repeatedly violated his gag order. The judge did not go into specifics from the ruling, but said he’d found Trump violated the order nine times, and fined him $9,000. Prosecutors had argued that he’d done so 10 times.

The amount of $1,000 per post is the maximum the judge can hand down. He noted in his ruling the amount likely doesn’t mean much to Trump, but said he is not able to increase the amount. “Because this Court is not cloaked with such discretion, it must therefore consider whether in some instances, jail may be a necessary punishment” going forward, the judge wrote.

“Defendant is hereby warned that the Court will not tolerate continued willful violations of its lawful orders and that if necessary and appropriate under the circumstances, it will impose an incarceratory punishment,” he wrote.

The judge also granted Trump’s request to be excused from the trial on May 17 for his son Barron’s high school graduation. Trump had repeatedly falsely claimed since the trial began that the judge had rejected that request.

Another of Trump’s sons, Eric Trump, was in court with him on Tuesday, marking the first time a Trump family member has shown up in court since the trial began over two weeks ago.

The first witness of the day was Gary Farro, a banker who worked with then-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen when Cohen, Trump’s self-described “fixer,” paid adult film star Stormy Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet during the 2016 presidential campaign about her allegation that she had a sexual encounter with Trump a decade earlier. Trump denies her claim.

Farro, who in 2016 was an executive at First Republic Bank, testified Friday that Cohen reached out to him in mid-October of that year to set up a bank account for a company he was forming called Essential Consultants LLC.

Cohen described the company to the bank “as a real estate consulting company to collect fees for investment consulting work he does for real estate deals,” Farro told jurors. Prosecutors characterized it as a shell company that was set up to mask the source of the payment, which was made shortly before Election Day.

Farro testified Tuesday the bank would have asked more questions had it known where the money was actually going. “It is an industry we do not work with,” he said, referring to adult films.

Cohen funded the account by transferring $131,000 from his home equity line of credit account, Farro said. The money was then sent via wire transfer to Daniels’ lawyer, Keith Davidson.

Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records related to reimbursing Cohen for the Daniels payment. He has pleaded not guilty.

Trump has repeatedly attacked Cohen and Daniels in social media posts, some of which played a part in the judge’s gag order decision. Trump’s attorney said he was responding to attacks from them when he made the posts, but didn’t provide specific examples.

In his ruling, Merchan said that if Cohen and Daniels are attacking Trump, they may wind up being excluded from the gag order.

Prosecutors asked the judge last week to hold Trump in criminal contempt because of other public comments since the trial began, and a hearing has been scheduled on that motion for Thursday.

Farro’s testimony is expected to last much of Tuesday morning. There were no trial proceedings Monday.

It wasn’t immediately clear who will take the stand after Farro. The Manhattan district attorney’s office has been keeping its list of witnesses close to the vest, citing Trump’s social media posts blasting expected witnesses Cohen and Daniels.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com