Trump New York trial: Jailing former president could spark ‘mass protests,’ experts sayTrump New York trial: Jailing former president could spark ‘mass protests,’ experts say
By
Kaelan Deese
April 30, 2024 2:41 pm
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Donald Trump received the clearest threat of jail time yet in his New York criminal trial after a judge said on Tuesday that “jail may be a necessary punishment” for future gag order violations from the former president, a statement legal experts say could have sweeping consequences on his 2024 presidential election bid.
Judge Juan Merchan, who is presiding over the criminal hush money trial against Trump, found him in contempt for nine violations of his gag order due to various social media posts about witnesses in the trial, with a fine of $1,000 for each instance and an order to delete the posts. Trump, the Republican front-runner to face off against President Joe Biden, has decried his four criminal cases as “election interference,” a claim that legal experts told the Washington Examiner could be authenticated if Merchan decides to jail him over social media posts before the trial’s expected end in late May.
“Judge Merchan is operating within his discretion, but I think he would be an automaton if he didn’t appreciate that the world is watching him and how any imprisonment would be viewed by most as true election interference — not in the hyperbolic way that Trump routinely says this trial is amounting to by its very existence,” Alton Harmon, legal analyst and corporate general counsel, told the Washington Examiner.
Former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani told the Washington Examiner it would mark an “unprecedented step” to jail a former president and candidate during an election year, a move that would come with its own set of public policy problems.
While Harmon and Rahmani both said jailing Trump seems unlikely, Rahmani stressed that doing so “may lead to mass protests or even civil unrest.”
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https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/justice/2984573/trump-new-york-trial-jailing-former-president-spark-mass-protests/