How a gag order showdown explains everything about Trump [View all]

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

“He knows what he’s not allowed to do, and he does it anyway.” -- Attorney Chris Conroy on hush money trial on Tuesday.

Conroy was referring to Trump’s incessant testing of a gag order protecting witnesses, court staff and the jury. But there’s rarely been a better description of the presumptive GOP nominee’s entire approach to business and politics – or the way he’s promised to behave if voters send him back to the White House.
The New York lawyer coined his phrase during a tense hearing on whether Trump violated the terms of the gag order in social media blasts, reposts and comments claiming the jury was full of biased liberals and targeting two potential key witnesses, his ex-lawyer Michael Cohen and adult film star Stormy Daniels.

And in remarks in an interview recorded before Tuesday’s hearing but that was broadcast as Judge Juan Merchan considers whether to punish Trump, the ex-president was at it again. “Michael Cohen is a convicted liar and he’s got no credibility whatsoever,” Trump said in an interview with WPVI Philadelphia.

Only six days into the trial, Trump is doing what he always does, pushing the rules and conventions of the law and accepted behavior to service his own narrative of victimization he’s placed at the core of his 2024 campaign. Trump could face a ladder of escalating sanctions. Prosecutors now want Merchan to fine Trump $1,000 for each of 10 alleged violations of the gag order and to warn that imprisonment could be an option if he continues to flout restrictions. CNN’s John Miller reported Tuesday that the Secret Service, court officers and the New York City Department of Corrections have quietly consulted on what to do if Trump ends up being jailed for contempt of court. That remedy remains a distant one for now, but any eventual step in that direction cannot be ruled out since no judge can allow a defendant to mock his authority in what is in essence a show of contempt for the rule of law.

“Judge Merchan has to have control of his courtroom,” former judge and current Cooley Law School professor Jeffrey Swartz told Jim Sciutto on CNN Max. “He cannot allow someone who is under a gag order to basically say, ‘I don’t care what you think, judge, I am going to do what I want to do.’”

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Source: cnn.com

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Yeah, let's give control of the largest nuclear arsenal on earth to a man who thinks the rules don't apply to him, and who has said, "If we have [nuclear weapons], why can't we use them?"