Donald Trump could face 10 months in prison and be fined around £80,000 ($100,000) for flouting a gag order at his “hush money” trial, a retired judge has said.
The gag order, issued by Judge Juan Merchan, was meant to prevent Trump from launching public attacks against witnesses, court personnel, jurors, and even Judge Merchan’s own family during the trial.
Despite this, Trump is accused of violating the order on 10 separate occasions, potentially resulting in a 30-day jail term and fines of up to £8,000 ($10,000) for each breach.
“The fine is not going to be a deterrent at all. The other issue is imprisonment. (If Trump was imprisoned for breaking the gag order) the judge could delay the trial,” LaDoris Hazzard Cordell, a retired Superior Court of California judge, told CNN.
LaDoris claimed the likely Republican presidential candidate has been sufficiently warned about his unfounded online tirades and merits a spell in prison, saying she would enforce it subtly yet strikingly, reports the Mirror US.
She explained: “If I were the trial judge and I decided incarceration was the way to do it, I would stay any kind of sentence until after the end of the trial. I could hold him in contempt and say I’m going to send you to jail and wait until after the end of the trial to impose a jail sentence.”
In the hush-money case, Manhattan prosecutors are trying to convince a jury that Trump is guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records.
They will attempt to convince the judge to hold him in contempt on Tuesday over his alleged breaches of the gag orders.
The prosecution alleges that Trump has consistently flouted the order that bars him from making disparaging remarks about jurors, witnesses, and other participants in the case.
To address these allegations, Justice Juan Merchan has scheduled a hearing on Tuesday morning, which will take place without the jury’s presence.
Despite the unique and volatile nature of the situation, several ex-prosecutors believe that Merchan will likely show leniency. Nonetheless, they underscored the unpredictable nature of the proceedings.
“Judge Merchan is going to do everything possible to give him as much leeway as possible to cure the situation and be a better defendant,” opined Diana Florence, who previously served as a prosecutor in Manhattan.
Prosecutors are contending that Trump has shown no signs of moderating his public commentary. They highlighted three alleged violations of the gag order on April 15, the trial’s opening day.
One instance involved a post by Trump on Truth Social dated April 13, where he branded the prosecution’s key witness Michael Cohen as a “disgraced attorney and felon.”
On April 18, prosecutors accused Trump of an additional seven breaches of the gag order across three days.
They pointed to a particularly flagrant post on Truth Social, which quoted a Fox News presenter saying, “They are catching undercover Liberal Activists lying to the Judge in order to get on the Trump Jury,” as the most blatant infraction.
