WaPo (“Looking Trump in the eye, the N.Y. judge warns he may jail him“):
The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s criminal trial found him in contempt of court Monday — the 10th such violation of a gag order — and warned the former president that he was flirting with jail time if he continued to talk or post online statements about witnesses, jurors, or relatives of those involved in the case.
“Mr. Trump, it’s important to understand that the last thing I want to do is to put you in jail,” New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan warned from the bench. “You are the former president of the United States, and possibly the next president, as well.”
But Merchan added he would take that step if Trump’s behavior did not change.
“Your continued violations of this Court’s lawful order threaten to interfere with the administration of justice, in constant attacks which constitute a direct attack on the rule of law,” Merchan said. “I cannot allow that to continue.”
The warning came as prosecutors signaled they expected their presentation to last roughly two more weeks.
Merchan’s statement marks a significant escalation of the courtroom game of chicken that has played out in recent weeks between the judge and the defendant, who is facing 34 felony counts of falsifying business documents and possible jail time if convicted. Trump, whom Merchan last week fined $9,000 for nine violations of the gag order, has somewhat reined in his public remarks.
The judge had given Trump a similar warning earlier, but only in writing.
The judge said Monday that jailing Trump would require a monumental effort involving several law enforcement agencies including the Secret Service and New York’s corrections department.
“To take that step would be disruptive to these proceedings,” he said.
Trump did not reply to Merchan’s warning.
Merchan, a stern but soft-spoken judge, did not raise his voice Monday even as he spoke about a once-unthinkable scenario — the presumptive GOP nominee for president running for office from a jail cell. Trump is the first former U.S. president to face a criminal trial, and Merchan’s toughest warning to date came on the fourth week of the proceedings, at roughly the halfway mark of the trial.
In his ruling, Merchan decided that Trump’s comments in an interview — in which he criticized the makeup and selection of his jury — had violated the gag order, while three other public statements he made around that same period in late April had not.
Merchan’s decision marks the second time Trump has been told his statements outside court — whether in interviews or social media posts — violated the court order.
I’m by no means an expert in criminal procedure but I’ll go out on a limb and say that most criminal defendants would have been jailed well before the tenth warning. But, of course, Trump isn’t any other defendant. As Merchan rightly notes, he’s not only the immediate past President of the United States but he’s currently roughly 50-50 to win the job back in November.
And, yes, since Congress didn’t anticipate ex-Presidents being convicted of crimes (or jailed for contempt), it seems that he would continue to receive Secret Service protection while incarcerated. While that seems bizarre to me, it’s quite possibly necessary. He would certainly be an attractive target.
Trump seems to relish the spectacle.
POLITICO (“Trump on going to jail over gag order: ‘I’ll do that sacrifice’“):
Donald Trump said he would rather risk imprisonment than comply with a gag order in his on-going criminal trial, just hours after the judge overseeing his criminal hush-money trial threatened to put the former president in jail.
“Frankly our Constitution is much more important than jail,” Trump said to press in the hallway of the Manhattan courthouse. “It’s not even close. I’ll do that sacrifice any day.”
[…]
A fundraising email sent Monday before court was out said: “The liberal judge in New York just threatened to THROW ME IN JAIL” with emphasized red lettering and the subject line, “They want me in HANDCUFFS.”
The email encouraged supporters to “Stand with Trump” and directed donations to a joint-fundraising committee launched this spring, Trump National Committee JFC, which sends money both to Trump’s campaign account and the Republican National Committee. Both entities are being out-raised by their Democratic counterparts.
The contempt rulings provide Trump with a new way to criticize the trial and criminal justice system, which he has asserted is unfair and biased against him. Throughout the 2024 campaign, Trump has railed against the four separate criminal cases against him, claiming that he’s being unfairly targeted while at the same time sending out fundraising solicitations.
As to the politics, WaPo’s Aaron Blake muses “How would Americans react to Trump in jail?” After a lot of throat-clearing, he offers
Polls have yet to ask how Americans would view Trump’s being jailed for violating the gag order, and much would depend on the specifics.
But a strong majority of Americans have been open to the prospect of his being incarcerated if warranted. And at the very least, Americans tend to view Trump’s conduct as problematic — both generally and in this trial.
Americans view Trump’s conduct as problematic
A CNN poll last week found that Americans said by a 17-point margin, 42 percent to 25 percent, that Trump’s conduct in his Manhattan trial had been “mostly inappropriate” rather than “mostly appropriate.” (The poll was conducted before the judge initially found Trump had violated his gag order nine times but after Trump’s offending statements and after the judge rebuked Trump for potential juror intimidation.)
Many Americans were undecided, but it would seem telling that less than a majority of Republicans(48 percent) vouched for Trump’s conduct at the trial. And independents viewed Trump’s conduct 2-to-1 as inappropriate.
Americans have also viewed Trump’s conduct — even aside from this trial — as a strike against him.
The Public Religion Research Institute has shown as many as 6 in 10 Americans have said Trump’s conduct made them less likely to support him, while less than 1 in 10 have said it made them more likely to support him. And a 2020 Pew Research Center poll showed 53 percent of Americans didn’t like the way Trump conducted himself as president, compared to just 15 percent who did. (The rest had “mixed feelings.”)
What we see in those numbers is a potential acknowledgment that Trump could bring these things on himself and truly force the judge’s hand — again, depending on the specific behavior to trigger jail time.
They don’t buy into Trump’s victimization claims so far
The same CNN poll mentioned above provided another instructive finding: Just 34 percent thought Trump was being treated more harshly than most other criminal defendants.
That could certainly change if people view throwing him in jail as excessive, but it speaks to how Americans at this point don’t broadly buy into Trump’s claims of persecution and could view such a step as justified.
They’ve broadly said incarceration could be warranted
As for actually entertaining Trump behind bars? A huge majority of Americans have been willing to do so if they view it as justified — at least in the event of a conviction. A January Reuters/Ipsos poll showed 71 percent of Americans said Trump should be put in prison if he broke the law and were convicted, with 53 percent “strongly” agreeing with that. Just 16 percent disagreed, essentially saying Trump shouldn’t be imprisoned regardless.
That’s not the same as locking him up for a gag-order violation. But it again suggests incarcerating Trump is something Americans could get behind under the right circumstances.
They’re skeptical of the process
The question would be whether they view Trump as being sufficiently at fault.
Merchan has taken care to cast this as a bad but potentially necessary option that would be arrived at only when he had no other choice. But a recent AP-NORC poll showed Americans view Trump’s judges with skepticism; about 4 in 10 Americans said they had little or no confidence in them, while just more than 2 in 10 were “extremely” or “very” confident.
At some point, since Trump shows no signs of being restrained, the judge will have no choice but to follow through on his threat. So I guess we’ll find out.
