The judge overseeing the hush money case involving former President Trump issued his sternest warning yet after finding him in violation of a gag order for the tenth time.
Trump criticized the restrictions, arguing they infringed upon his First Amendment rights to counter political criticisms, especially as he’s the first former U.S. president to undergo a criminal trial.
Now, writes The Hill, the judge has gone even further, threatening the former president with jail time.
Judge Juan Merchan on Monday ordered Trump to pay $1,000 for attacking jurors in his historic criminal trial, just days after the judge ruled on an earlier set of gag order violations.
“Defendant is hereby put on notice that if appropriate and warranted, future violations of its lawful orders will be punishable by incarceration,” Merchan wrote.
But the judge handed Trump a partial win, ruling that prosecutors had not proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump violated his gag order in three other statements.
The gag order bars Trump from hurling insults at witnesses, jurors, prosecutors, court staff or the judge’s family. It doesn’t bar him from attacking the judge himself or Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D).
Trump recently compared himself to Al Capone and went after Biden’s special prosecutor Jack Smith. The Daily Mail wrote that The former president accused the Democrats of running a ‘Gestapo administration’, and branded special counsel Jack Smith a ‘f**king a**hole’ as he addressed a $40,000 a head fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago.
He mocked Fulton County DA Fani Willis as ‘a real beauty’, and joked that his daughter-in-law Lara would not have married his son Eric had she known that her prospective father-in-law risked jail.
‘Once I got indicted, I said holy s***, I just got indicted. Me, I got indicted,’ he said. ‘In fact, Lara, if she knew I got indicted, she probably wouldn’t have joined the family.”
Lara Trump is his daughter-in-law, married to his the president’s son Eric. She recently landed a top spot in the Republican National Committee, where she has helped lead a fundraising boom for the GOP.
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