NEW YORK — Donald Trump was held in criminal contempt and hit with $9,000 in sanctions for repeated gag order violations — and warned he could wind up in jail — as his Manhattan hush money trial resumed Tuesday.

State Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan reprimanded the ex-president after finding that nine out of 10 posts recently flagged by prosecutors, which referenced the jury and anticipated witnesses Michael Cohen and porn star Stormy Daniels breached a pretrial order prohibiting the ex-president from publicly commenting on individuals involved in the case.

Merchan didn’t buy Trump’s argument that sharing things other people said didn’t violate the order, finding there was “no doubt whatsoever” that his intent and purpose when reposting is “to communicate to his audience” his endorsement, Merchan wrote in an accompanying written order, saying he’ll consider putting Trump behind bars if there were further violations.

Before announcing his decision, Merchan threw Trump a bone by saying he’d let him attend his son Barron’s high school graduation next month. That was about the only good news for the former president, who decried Merchan as “rigged” and “crooked” on his social media website amid a jam-packed day of testimony centering on the negotiations that preceded the hush money transactions at the heart of the case.

Later in the day, a midlevel New York appeals court rejected his request to freeze the trial while he attempts to fight several rulings by Merchan.

Prosecutors on Tuesday called Keith Davidson as their sixth witness. The lawyer counseled Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal as they considered coming forward with allegations about sexual relationships with Trump in the leadup to the 2016 election.

Davidson said his initial involvement in the hush money payoffs came months before the election with a friendly tip to his pal Dylan Howard, then editor-in-chief of the National Enquirer, regarding McDougal’s allegations of a lengthy affair with Trump shortly into his marriage to Melania.

After meeting with Davidson and McDougal in Los Angeles, the supermarket tabloid struck a deal for $150,000, with the understanding her claims would never hit the headlines.

Davidson said there was “an unspoken understanding that there was an affiliation between (then-AMI head) David Pecker and Donald Trump and that AMI wouldn’t run this story — any story related to Karen — because it would hurt Donald Trump.”

The bombshell release of the Access Hollywood tape the following October saw Davidson mired in a last-minute scramble alongside Cohen to compensate Daniels for staying silent about her claims that she slept with Trump at a charity golf tournament in 2006.

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