Donald Trump could end in up jail, and his lawyer got a dark warning from the judge in the hearing over the order silencing the former president and 2024 Republican presidential candidate. Judge Juan Merchan says he'll wait to rule until another time on whether Trump broke the gag order, but it appears that the ruling is foreordained after a contentious hearing before testimony resumed on Tuesday.
Trump is accused of stealing the 2016 election by "misreporting payments in 2017 as legal fees instead of campaign expenses."
The media continue to use prosecutors' shorthand for the case as the Trump Hush Money Case, but there's one thing wrong with that: Paying for a non-disclosure agreement is perfectly LEGAL. Gagging a defendant, and a former president and candidate no less, is UNCONSTITUTIONAL. Even the ACLU came from its far-left outpost to say so.
And why does the judge get away with doing it? Who's going to stop him? The law or something?
Related: Here's the REAL Reason the Soros-Bought NYC Prosecutor Put Trump on Trial. Try Not to Laugh.
Currently, the "law" in New York is comprised of the governor who says no one should worry, they're just out to get Trump, not anyone else. Then there's Letitia James, the attorney general who campaigned on getting Trump and who's suing him to destroy his businesses and bankrupt him so he can't run for president. The Soros-baced DA who has Trump in court at this moment also campaigned on Get Trump. The Biden Department of Justice has parachuted Matthew Colangelo to run point on this latest case to stop Trump from running and/or winning office.
But as a result of this broad gag order, Trump may be jailed or fined for allegedly breaking it. I wrote about the issue previously at PJ Media. The judge heard arguments about the gag order on day two of testimony in the Trump bookkeeping trial from both sides, and it got contentious.
Judge Juan Merchan fashioned his gag order after the one put on Trump in federal court by Judge Tanya Chutkan. Regarding that order, the ACLU argued on Trump's behalf, “The obvious and unprecedented public interest in this prosecution, as well as the widespread political speech that it has generated and will continue to generate, only underscores the need to apply the most stringent First Amendment standard to a restraint on Defendant’s speech rights." The ACLU wrote in an amicus brief that Chutkan's order was so over-broad that the "Defendant cannot possibly know what he is permitted to say, and what he is not."
A federal court later narrowed Chutkan's order, but you can still drive a verbal truck through it.
Merchan copied her order and added that Trump couldn't talk about his daughter, the Democrat political operative whose company has earned a reported $100 million touting her dad's trial.
The apparent objective of keeping Trump quiet is so he doesn't start another "insurrection" or something. Not that he did start one before or is charged with starting one, but Democrats have got to keep the up charade. Indeed, in one pubic utterance outside the courtroom, Trump was belittled for telling supporters to be peaceful if they come to protest outside the courthouse. The media mocked the small size of the crowd.
Police were busy wrangling violent pro-Hamas Jew haters on nearby campuses. Which brings us to Tuesday's hearing.
Things got tendentious with Judge Merchan demanding that defense lawyer Todd Blanche prove that Trump's speech criticisms on TruthSocial and in public relate not to the trial but to the 2024 election. Blanche couldn't come up with case law for Merchan to point to that gave Trump the ability to speak his mind. Apparently, the Constitution wasn't good enough for the judge. At one point he told Blanche, "You’ve presented nothing. I’ve asked you eight or nine times, show me the exact post he is responding to. You’ve been unable to do that even once," the judge lectured.
Related: Trump Could Be Jailed for Speaking About His NYC Case Due to Judge's 'Unconstitutional' Gag Order
“Mr. Blanche, you are losing all credibility. You’re losing all credibility with the court," he darkly warned.
The Washington Post captured another one of the exchanges:
Judge Juan Merchan, speaking about Donald Trump's comments on Michael Cohen, said "using the name is not prohibited, making a connection to the trial is prohibited."
Trump attorney Todd Blanche argued the post in question has "nothing to do with this case," but rather, "it has to do with the system and the fact that President Trump very strongly believes the people should have prosecuted Mr. Cohen for lying."
Merchan then asked if Trump is "attacking Michael Cohen's credibility, like he was attacking Ms. Daniel’s credibility?"
Blanche said no, Trump is "attacking the people and the system for not prosecuting Michael Cohen for lying."
"There are two systems of justice," Blanche said, noting Allen Weisselberg is in jail for lying under oath and "Cohen is going to be a witness."
Michael Cohen can blather at will on his podcast about the court proceedings, but Trump can't talk about Michael Cohen. In some world that may be fair, but not in this one.
Why there is such a partition between the trial and campaign seems silly when the case has been tethered to the 2016 election. Prosecutor Mark Colangelo claimed on the first day of testimony that Trump's "hush money" to two women who claimed to have had relations with in the early 2000s constituted a "long-running conspiracy to influence the 2016 election." Yes, we see the irony, as I explicated here.
The media have called this case a "hush money" case, but one of our crafty commenters called it the Hush Trump case. Touché. When a judge shuts up the defendant but not the other trial participants, you can't help but wonder if the fix is in. Where else will you read that in this censorious media world we're living in?
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