'This is unseen': Ex-prosecutor stunned by Trump's disrespect for judge
Former federal prosecutor Elie Honig was flabbergasted by the sheer number of times former President Donald Trump appears to have violated Judge Juan Merchan's gag order in his Manhattan criminal trial — and emphasized on a CNN panel on Thursday that in all his years of trying cases, he had never seen anything like it.
Trump, who is charged with felony business fraud for trying to conceal alleged hush payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels to effectively defraud the 2016 presidential election, has been barred from attacking witnesses in the case — but has repeatedly gone after several of them anyway, including his former attorney and fixer Michael Cohen.
He's also complained about the jury, which he is also not allowed to do. Earlier today, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg alleged four more violations over the past three days. Merchan is set to rule on whether Trump is in contempt of court in coming days.
"Trump has done 12 or 15 violations of the judge's court order," said anchor Wolf Blitzer, turning to Honig on the panel. If any other criminal defendant behaved like this, he added, "would that average person be eligible to go to jail?"
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Honig was emphatic. "Oh, eligible, and I think quite likely," he said.
"I mean, I'm not being hyperbolic, but this has to be an all-time world record," Honig continued, drawing on his own personal experience in the courtroom. "I mean, I've seen people occasionally breach a judge's order, breach one of the courtroom rules once, maybe twice. I tried some bad guys who didn't really care about rules. But 10 times, 12 times, 15 times?"
"This is unseen in my experience," he added. "I can't think of any precedent for this."
Watch the video below or at the link here.
Elie Honig says Trump is setting an "all-time world record" for flouting judges www.youtube.com