(Bloomberg) -- The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s hush-money criminal trial corrected the former president for saying a gag order barring him from publicly discussing jurors or witnesses also prevents him from taking the witness stand.

“I want to stress, Mr. Trump, that you have an absolute right to testify,” Justice Juan Merchan said Friday morning in Manhattan before the jury was brought in. “It is a fundamental right that cannot be infringed upon.”

Trump, on trial for allegedly falsifying business records to conceal a hush money payment to an adult-film star before the 2016 presidential election, has regularly criticized the gag order. On Thursday, he told reporters, “I’m not allowed to testify. I’m under a gag order, I guess. I can’t testify.”

The gag order “only applies to extra-judicial statements — that is, statements that are made outside of court,” Merchan told Trump directly. “Please let your attorney know if you have any lingering doubts.”

Merchan earlier this week found the former president in contempt of court for violating the gag order on nine occasions and fined him $9,000. The judge will rule soon on three additional alleged violations by Trump, who is campaigning to return to the White House during the case brought by Manhattan’s district attorney.

When questioned by reporters Friday before entering the courtroom, Trump acknowledged that the gag order prevented him from responding to attacks, but not from testifying.

The jury Friday morning also heard the cross examination of the district attorney’s forensic analyst, Douglas Daus, who analyzed data on two of cell phones belonging to Trump’s former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen. The devices contained a secret 2016 audio recording of Trump and other key pieces of evidence.

Read More: Trump Jury Hears Him Discuss Payment With Cohen on Secret Tape

During his questioning, Trump attorney Emil Bove repeatedly sought to poke holes in the reliably of the data and eventually got Daus to agree that the data could been tampered with in recent years when Cohen turned on the devices and used them.

“My questions was, did you see gaps in the handling of this data that showed the possibility of risk for tampering?” Bove asked.

“Yes,” Daus said.

The analyst later said he saw no evidence of such tampering. Cohen is the government’s star witness and is expected to testify later.

(Updates with cross examination of forensic analyst)

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