Donald Trump has called the judge presiding over his hush money trial “crooked” as he made a brief return to the presidential campaign trail.
His comment on Wednesday came just a day after he was found to be in contempt of court and threatened with jail time by Judge Juan M Merchan, for violating a gag order prohibiting him from intimidating witnesses.
On Tuesday, he received a $9,000 fine for making public statements about people connected to the criminal case.
In imposing the fine for posts on Trump's Truth Social account and campaign website, Judge Merchan said that if Mr Trump continued to violate his orders, he would "impose an incarceratory punishment".
Speaking to supporters at an event in the battleground state of Wisconsin, Mr Trump said: "There is no crime. I have a crooked judge. He's a totally conflicted judge.”
He again appeared to claim that this and other cases against him are led by the White House to undermine his campaign.
The former president is trying to achieve a balancing act unprecedented in American history, by running for a second term as the presumptive Republican nominee while also fighting 91 felony counts in four states.
Mr Trump has frequently gone after Judge Merchan, prosecutors and potential witnesses at his rallies and on social media, with attack lines that play well with his supporters but that have potentially put him in further legal jeopardy.
Later at a rally in Freeland, Michigan, the former president said he was being forced to spend days in a "kangaroo court room," and claimed without evidence the district attorney was taking orders from the Biden administration.
"I've got to do two of these things a day. You know why? Because I'm in New York all the time with the Biden trial," he said. "It's a fake trial. They do it to try and take your powers away, try and take your candidate away."
Even before the hush money trial got underway on April 15, Mr Trump had held just a handful of public campaign events since becoming his party's presumptive nominee in March.
The gag order bars him from making public statements about witnesses, jurors and some others connected to his hush money case. It did not appear to apply to the judge and the district attorney.
Mr Trump insists he is merely exercising his free speech rights, but offending posts from his Truth Social account and campaign website have been taken down.
Judge Merchan is weighing other alleged gag-order violations, and will hear arguments about those on Thursday.
Manhattan prosecutors have argued Mr Trump and his associates took part in an illegal scheme to influence the 2016 presidential campaign by purchasing and then burying negative stories.
He has pleaded not guilty.
