Trump could go to jail for violating the gag order: “Fines do not serve as a deterrent”

The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s hush money trial will consider jailing the former president if he continues to violate a gag order meant to protect witnesses, jurors, court staff and their families.

New York Judge Juan Merchan warned Trump on Monday that jail remains “truly a last resort” that would disrupt proceedings, court staff and law enforcement.

“The magnitude of such a decision is not lost on me,” the judge told Trump inside a Manhattan criminal courtroom on Monday.

“But at the end of the day I have a job to do, and part of that job is to protect the dignity of the justice system,” he said. “Its continued violations…threaten to interfere with the administration of justice and constitute a direct attack on the rule of law.”

Trump was found guilty of contempt of court and fined $1,000 for his comments about the jury, following last week’s contempt ruling and a $9,000 fine for nine other violations of the protective order.

The former president was also ordered to remove any related posts from his social media platform, Truth Social, and content from his campaign website by 2:15 p.m. on Monday.

Manhattan prosecutors charged Trump with four other violations, including comments made during an interview with the far-right network Real America’s Voice.

During that interview, Trump said the jury “was chosen very quickly: 95 percent were Democrats.”

“The area is mostly all Democratic. It is thought to be simply a purely Democratic area. It’s a very unfair situation, I can tell you,” she said.

He made those comments after the jury was selected and after the judge admonished Trump in court for “audibly” commenting on a juror and “gesturing” toward her.

“I won’t tolerate it. “I will not allow any jurors to be intimidated in this courtroom,” the judge said on April 16. “I want to make that very clear.”

Last week, Judge Merchan became increasingly impatient with Trump’s lawyer, Todd Blanche, interrupting him at one point when he claimed that the trial is a “political persecution” and an “impeachment trial” in a “jurisdiction” that is biased against the former president.

“Did you violate the gag order? “That’s what I want to know,” Judge Merchan said last Thursday. “You talked about the jury, right? And he said that the jury was 95 percent Democrats and that the jury had been rushed through, and the implication that it was not a fair jury?

In a written order Monday, the judge noted that because Trump made those comments before the April 30 decision, he will only face a monetary fine.

But he also wrote: “However, because this is the (tenth) time this Court has held the defendant in criminal contempt, spanning three separate motions, it is evident that monetary fines have not been, and will not be, sufficient to deter accused of violating the legal orders of this Court.”

Trump’s comments about the jury have not only “called into question the integrity and therefore legitimacy” of the trial, but have also “raised the specter of fear for the safety of the jurors and their loved ones,” according to the judge.

“It remains the fundamental responsibility of this Court to protect the decency of the criminal process and control disruptive influences in the courtroom,” he wrote.

Trump has so far been fined $25,000 for violating gag orders in both his criminal case and his civil fraud trial last year, where Judge Arthur Engoron imposed $15,000 fines for his statements about his staff. judicial.

The Republican presidential candidate also faces a gag order in his federal election interference case, where federal prosecutors warned that his social media bully pulpit could be used to fuel attacks.

Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team, which is overseeing Trump’s federal criminal cases, described that dynamic in court papers last year as “part of a pattern, stretching back years, in which people Trump publicly attacks” They are “subject to harassment, threats, and intimidation.”

The former president “seeks to use this known dynamic to his advantage,” prosecutors wrote, and “has continued unabated as this case and other unrelated cases involving the defendant have progressed.”

Gag orders in the New York fraud case prevented Trump, his lawyers and all other parties in the case from disparaging court staff.

An official with the New York court system’s Department of Public Safety wrote in a sworn statement last year that “the implementation of the limited gag orders” in the fraud case “resulted in a decrease in the number of threats, harassment and derogatory messages that the judge and his staff received.”

The threats against New York Judge Arthur Engoron and his clerk Allison Greenfield were “serious and credible and not hypothetical or speculative,” he wrote.