Judge Loses Patience With Trump Lawyer During Gag Order Hearing. Maybe It’s Time To Bind And Gag Trump!
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I f there’s anything we’ve learned about Donald Trump since he’s been drowning in legal woes it’s that he hasn’t met a gag order he didn’t want to immediately violate. (At this point, he might as well be bragging about grabbing gag orders by the…never mind). But Justice Juan M. Merchan, who is overseeing Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan, appears to be losing his patience with the presidential candidate, his legal team and either or both of their propensity for saying any old thing from threats aimed at the Judge and his family to making up whatever he wants to and calling it truth.
On Tuesday, Merchan held a hearing to determine whether Trump should be held in criminal contempt for repeatedly violating the provisions of a gag order, and while he didn’t issue a ruling that day, he did scold the hell out of Trump attorney Todd Blanche for his apparent inability to argue facts (or even present fiction for that matter) comprehensively.
“You’ve presented nothing,” Justice Merchan told Blanche, according to the New York Times. “You’re losing all credibility with the court.”
Oh, Merchan, my sweet summer child.
Certainly, the good judge knows that claiming things but presenting nothing to substantiate those claims is what Trump and Trump attorneys do. Surely, he remembers what 2021 was like when Trump, Rudy Giuliani and the rest of Law & MAGA tied up dozens of courtrooms across lower courts, appellate courts and supreme courts with lawsuits over fictitious election fraud just to be told over and over again that they have not presented sufficient or even plausible evidence that the 2020 presidential race was rigged.
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Trump has also arbitrarily called every Black prosecutor and legal official who has brought a case against him racist without even bothering to elaborate on what racist thing any of them has said or done. (Don’t be alarmed, but I’m starting to think he’s saying it just because they’re Black.) He called Fulton Couty District Attorney Fani Willis a “young racist” who had an affair with a “gang member,” an absurd notion that he plucked out of the same thin air his toupee sways in while trying its hardest to run away from Trump’s face. His attacks on New York Attorney General Letitia James and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg have been much of the same.
Anyway, back to Trump’s current predicament. From the New York Times:
Justice Merchan’s rebuke came moments after prosecutors in the Manhattan district attorney’s office had complained that Mr. Trump willfully violated the gag order by making 10 public statements on social media and on his campaign website that attacked two likely witnesses and the jury.
The prosecutors pointed to Mr. Trump’s attacks on Michael Cohen, a lawyer who had helped Mr. Trump arrange hush payments to a porn star to stop her from speaking about a sexual encounter she said she had had with Mr. Trump. The prosecutors also told Judge Merchan that a post Mr. Trump had made going after the woman, Stormy Daniels, violated the gag order.
Prosecutors flagged another post for Justice Merchan, saying it was even more troubling. In it, Mr. Trump had quoted a Fox News commentator, Jesse Watters, denigrating potential jurors in the case as “undercover liberal activists.”
So, in March, Merchan issued a gag order barring Trump from making public statements about any witnesses, prosecutors, jurors or court staff, which is pretty standard practice for court proceedings, but that didn’t stop the commander-in-losing-and-lying-and-lying-about-losing from attacking the judge’s daughter on social media, prompting Merchan to expand the order to cover the relatives of court staff members and attorneys working the case.
Prosecutor Christopher Conroy argued Tuesday that Trump had broken the order “repeatedly and hasn’t stopped.”
“He knows what he’s not allowed to do and he does it anyhow,” Conroy said.
Blanche, in true Trumpian fashion, ignored demonstrable reality and claimed his client never violated any gag orders and, instead, presented Trump’s outburst to the media and on social media as mere responses to “a barrage of political attacks.”
“Mr. Cohen in particular, and also Ms. Daniels, have ramped up their political attacks and their attacks on him as candidate in the weeks leading up to the trial,” Mr. Blanche said. Merchan was not having any of that load of orangey-white nonsense.
“I hate to keep coming back to this, but you’re not offering me anything to support your argument,” he said.
Merchan appears to be trying his best to explain to Trump and his people that they can’t just throw random unprovable allegations at the wall and hope something sticks. Old men loudly spewing tinfoil hat-worthy conspiracies about the poor, persecuted white man might work at making relatives uncomfortable at Thanksgiving dinner but in a courtroom, it might result in a contempt charge.
But, hey, since Trump wants to view himself as a victim of systemic injustice —and is out here comparing himself to Nelson Mandela and suddenly feigning solidarity with Black people who have been fighting systemic racism in the justice system for 400 years—maybe his butthole-shaped mouth and stubby Twitter fingers should be given the Bobby Seale treatment.
In 1969, the Black Panthers co-founder was bound and gagged in the courtroom after he was arrested and tried with the Chicago 7. Seale’s lawyer was hospitalized at the time and he was denied a continuance or the right to represent himself, so he verbally lashed out in court and they treated him like a kidnapping victim waiting on a ransom call to keep his mouth shut. Seale was also convicted of contempt of court and sentenced to four years in prison.
Fortunately for Trump, he has the complexion for protection (Tang-tinted though that complexion might be) and he’s powerful and privileged enough that he doesn’t have to worry about being treated like actual victims of systemic oppression. Instead, prosecutors are only asking Merchan to fine Trump $1,000 for each of his gag order violations, and they asked the judge to warn Trump that if he continues to violate the order, he could face jail time.
Trump has constantly claimed he’s being treated unfairly by the justice system, but truthfully nobody but the rich, white and powerful get the VIP treatment the way he does. It’s exhausting.
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