Donald Trump is flirting with being jailed for contempt of court.
On October 3d, in one of his more manifestly stupid acts, Trump doxxed on his Truth Social site a clerk in the NY court where he is on trial for civil fraud and falsely claimed that she was Chuck Schumer’s girlfriend. The post was also used in millions of fund raising emails sent to Trump followers. The furious judge quickly ordered the post deleted and imposed a gag order against Trump commenting on members of the court staff.
Trump deleted the Truth Social post but did NOT delete it from Trump’s website.
It remained there until yesterday, deleted shortly after Meidas Touch reported it, which is still better than two weeks after the judge’s gag order.
Today in court the judge railed against the flagrant violation of his gag order. The judge demanded that Trump’s attorneys explain why “serious sanctions” shouldn’t be imposed including fine or “possibly imprisoning him.”
Trump’s attorneys rather lamely tried to claim the whole thing was an accident. The judge is taking it under advisement.
To be clear, I do not expect the judge to imprison Trump, yet. The most likely course is a fine, along with the judge directly dressing Trump down in court, demanding that Trump acknowledge that he now understands the seriousness of all this.
It astounds me that anyone can regard this man as smart.
UPDATE
The judge has issued his order in response to Trump’s actions in violation of the gag order. You can read it HERE.
The bottom line is a $5,000 fine (a wrist slap really) and a strong warning that it will go worse, much worse, next time.
“this Court is way beyond the ‘warning’ stage . . . Make no mistake: future violations whether intentional, or unintentional, will subject the violator to far more severe sanctions, which may include, but are not limited to, steeper financial penalties, holding Donald Trump in contempt of court, and possibly imprisoning him.”
