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Hey, everyone. Ellie here, wishing you a very happy Friday. Well, we have gotten almost all the way through the first week of Trump trial testimony. There'll be more today. I've been riveted by it. I mean, I'm biased, but this reminds me of why I loved the job of being a prosecutor and a trial lawyer and why I love the job of doing this and being part of the media. I find this process fascinating. It's an exercise in the human condition not to get overly philosophical about it.
Thus far, I also believe that this trial has been carried out just like you would want a trial to happen. Nothing's perfect, but the judge is doing his job by and large, although I will have some criticism for him coming up a little bit. The prosecutors are doing an effective job so far. The defense lawyers, I think, are doing what they're supposed to do. Even Donald Trump, yes, he's violating the heck out of the gag order, which we'll talk about, but his in-court conduct is
has been very normal for a defendant. I know you keep, I will give you some inside scoop here. We at CNN have even been laughing a little bit. Jon Stewart made fun of us, rightly, for the updates that are like, Trump leans forward. Trump looks at defendant. Right, this is what people do in court. Anyway, Trump has been behaving himself inside the courtroom, not outside the courtroom, which leads me to this week's Nope. As always, I love to hear your thoughts, questions, and comments. Keep them coming to lettersatcafe.com.
Donald Trump has spit in the face of a judicially imposed gag order, and now he faces astonishingly serious consequences. He might have to cut a check for, brace yourself here, 50%.
$15,000 max. He's sure now to face financial ruin, unless he can sell a couple hundred commemorative Trump Bibles to cover the expense. Trump effed around, as the kids say, and now he's about to find out. But what he's learning is that the consequences for his misconduct are laughable, and he might as well do it again.
The gag order that we're talking about here, about which Trump constantly rails, is actually quite narrow. The order, handed down by Judge Juan Merchan in the ongoing Hush Money case in Manhattan, originally established three classes of trial participants who were off-limits to Trump's public rantings. One, jurors.
Two, and I quote from the order, known or reasonably foreseeable witnesses. And three, staffers, the courts and the DAs and their families. Everyone and everything else remained fully in play. Now, true to form, Trump immediately zeroed in on the most vulnerable target who was not technically covered by the gag order. He launched a series of attacks at Judge Mershon's daughter, who works for a Democratic political consulting group. You can almost track Trump's internal monologue.
Hmm, let's see. I can't criticize the judge's staff or their family members, but it doesn't say I can't criticize the judge's own children.
Judge Mershon promptly amended the gag order to include his own family members and the DAs. The irony, of course, is that Trump's own hallway screeds are Exhibit A as to why the very same gag order about which he complains is, if anything, quite permissive. He goes off regularly about how oppressive the order is. Quote, quote,
he declared while speaking, and he's fully within his rights to do so. Indeed, the gag order permits Trump to criticize vociferously, angrily, profanely, if he wishes, the indictment, the judge, and the district attorney. The gag order even allows Trump to criticize the gag order itself.
Trump immediately adopted a deviously clever workaround or near workaround. He began reposting media clips of other people making statements that would have squarely violated the gag order had they come out of Trump's mouth, including coverage that branded Michael Cohen a, quote, serial perjurer and a Fox News clip claiming that, quote, undercover liberal activists were trying to lie their way onto the jury.
This is the equivalent of the classic Big Brother move, where you grab your little brother's arm, make him smack himself in the face, and then protest, "'It's not me. He's hitting himself.'"
Judge Mershon and the DA have, at bottom, a discipline issue here and a Goldilocks dilemma in enforcing it. Some remedies are too cold, but the other is too hot. Now, the first level of discipline is a verbal reprimand for any ordinary, rational trial participant. The prospect of ticking off the judge, you know, the guy who runs the trial and decides what evidence the jury can hear and imposes sentence...
That would be sufficient deterrence. But Donald Trump couldn't give a whit about some words from some guy in some robe.
Then you have the financial penalties. It's already tough enough to make a billionaire, maybe a billionaire minus, care about some court fine. But the situation in New York is particularly silly. According to the district attorney's filing, the maximum fine allowable under an antiquated New York law is the jaw-dropping sum of a thousand bucks. It's like Austin Powers threatening to hold the world hostage unless he's paid $1 million.
And then there's the big one, imprisonment. Judge Breshawn does have the power technically to send Trump to the brig for up to 30 days for contempt of court.
And while a cottage industry has emerged around former prosecutors provocatively predicting that Trump will find himself behind bars for violating the gag order, that's more fantastical wish casting than sober assessment of reality. Trump, for his part, either doesn't fear pretrial imprisonment or perhaps even welcomes it if you take him at his word. He boasted that it would be, quote, my great honor, end quote, to get locked up for speaking out about the trial.
Indeed, if Judge Mershon were to imprison Trump for talking about the case, he would turbocharge the MAGA base and he'd provide fuel for Trump's claims of grievance that would resonate even with some moderates. Think of the judge's dilemma here from the perspective of a parent trying to keep unruly toddlers in line during a road trip to Disneyland. You've got a few small punishments in the arsenal, but the kids don't really care about those. You can yell, you can put them in timeout, maybe no candy at the rest stop. Okay, fine. They can live with that.
And then you've got one massive punishment that the kids do care about, the old, I swear I'll turn this car around, but they also know you're not really going to do that. You're stuck. Note, this scenario has to occur in the 80s, though, because now parents can just threaten to take away the iPads or the phones and the kids snap right into compliance. A silver lining, I guess.
Judge Mershon is making the situation even more intractable by his inexplicable delay in coming down with a ruling. Even as Mershon takes his precious time, Trump continues to recidivate on a rolling real-time basis. Just yesterday, prosecutors alleged four new gag order violations, all committed while the judge spins his wheels about how to handle Trump's initial flurry of infractions.
The first rule of discipline is that it only works if it's swift and certain. Yet Judge Mershon, who is otherwise deeply committed to keeping control of his courtroom and doing a pretty good job of it, has responded thus far with an astonishing lack of urgency. No doubt the judge will slap Trump when he finally does get around to ruling, presumably later today, but who the heck knows. But he's already let Trump get away with way too much. Thanks for listening, everyone. Stay safe and stay informed.
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