Judge Arthur Engoron published an order defending a $10,000 sanction against Donald Trump after the former president violated the gag order barring public comments about his court staff.

Before trial testimony in Trump's civil fraud case began Thursday morning, Trump attorney Chris Kise asked Engoron to reconsider his fine against Trump from the day before. Engoron said he would review the video of Trump's comments to reporters that prompted the fine.

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When Engoron returned after lunch, he told the defense counsel that the fine stood, adding there was a "clear transition" between Trump's comments referring to Engoron's clerk and a subsequent comment about Michael Cohen, Engoron said.

Trump's legal team has said it plans to appeal the latest sanction against Trump. It has already appealed two other sets of sanctions against its client in the case so far.

The latest sanctions against Trump stemmed from his comments in the hallway of the Manhattan Supreme Court during a break in the trial Wednesday, while Cohen, his former attorney-turned-foe, was on the stand.

“This judge is a very partisan judge with a person who is very partisan sitting alongside him — perhaps even much more partisan than he is,” Trump said. The judge found that Trump was not referring to Cohen in his comment and issued an order Thursday that further explained his reasoning.

“Using imprecise language as an excuse to create plausible ambiguity about whether defendant violated this Court’s unequivocal gag order is not a defense; the subject of Donald Trump’s public statement to the press was unmistakably clear,” the judge wrote Thursday. “As the trier of fact, I find that Donald Trump was referring to my Principal Law Clerk, as such, he has intentionally violated the gag order.”

Kise further defended his client during the trial on Thursday, even saying that if Trump had been talking about the clerk, he didn't name her and was making an observation about the trial's fairness, arguing that it should be protected under his First Amendment rights.

Still, Engoron was not buying Kise's continued explanation on Thursday.

“Witnesses do not sit ‘alongside’ the judge. They sit in the witness box, separated from the judge by a low wooden barrier,” Engoron wrote in the order, also noting that Trump’s language was similar to his prior verbal attack against the same clerk who inspired the limited gag order in the first place.

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Trump was not in the courtroom Thursday. He returned to Florida after he left the courthouse abruptly on Wednesday, in frustration over the judge's latest sanction.

Read Engoron's order about the $10,000 fine below: