In a weekend Truth Social blitz, the former president threatened to violate his gag order in the upcoming hush money trial
Donald Trump said Saturday he is willing to go to jail, but not for the crimes he’s accused of committing.
The presumptive GOP candidate said he wanted to violate the expanded gag order against him in his upcoming hush money trial. In fact, he would be willing to make himself a martyr and serve jail time if the judge found him guilty of violating the order.
In a three-part post on his tanking social media company, Truth Social, Trump lashed out at the New York judge who granted the gag order, Juan Merchan, whom Trump has repeatedly targeted in his posts along with Merchan’s daughter for being biased against him.
“IF this Partisan Hack wants to put me in the ‘clink’ for speaking the open and obvious TRUTH, I will gladly become a Modern Day Nelson Mandela – It will be my GREAT HONOR,” Trump wrote.
He doesn’t sincerely want to be put in jail, he is just saying what he thinks will rile up his base like he always does.
I think he does. Not for a long time, mind you. But even an overnight stay on a contempt of court charge…I guarantee you he would not be put in a regular holding cell with the rest of the prisoners. He’d be “held” at an off-site location where he would be far more comfortable and still able to communicate with the outside world (And I’m not saying this because it’s Trump; there’s no way the Secret Service would ever allow for anything else.). At best he’d be mildly inconvenienced for a night or two. Mildly. Trump would accept that in a minute if it meant that he got to paint himself as a martyr for the rest of the campaign and fundraise off of it (Because you know the money would be flowing from the rubes like wine).
Worst case scenario for Trump is that the judge backs down on any threat to hold him in contempt, and Trump gets a new weapon to use: He can just play a game of chicken with them and dare them to do something about it. Any scenario would be a win for Trump.
Can you issue fines for contempt?
None that would matter to Trump. Even an extraordinary contempt fine wouldn’t even qualify as pocket change to Trump. The guy just got slapped with one judgement for the E Jean Carroll case and had to cough up $5 million, and he was live on TV 24 hours later disparaging her again. If that’s how he treats a $5 million fine, the few tens of thosuands he would have to pay for a contempt of court citation would absolutely not matter.