(Picture by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Submit through Getty Pictures)
As of 4pm on Wednesday, Justice Juan Merchan had not delivered a ruling following yesterday’s present trigger listening to as to why Donald Trump shouldn’t be held in contempt for violating the gag order in his pending prison trial.
The listening to was brutal, with the choose warning Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche that he was “dropping all credibility with the court docket.” Blanche continues to insist that there’s an unwritten exception to the order for political responses, so Trump is free to abuse Michael Cohen or Stormy Daniels if they’re imply to him first. Blanche additionally insisted that it was simply “frequent sense” that Trump is free to repost articles saying issues he himself couldn’t, though he was unable to supply any caselaw to again up this proposition.
Chatting with reporters, Trump defended himself by saying that he couldn’t presumably be anticipated to learn an entire, whole article from the bottomless joybook his aide Natalie Harp generates for him on a transportable printer. And the way is it his fault if there’s a point out of a witness or juror like three paragraphs in.
And in the meantime Chatty Cathy isn’t making the job simpler for Blanche. Right here he’s flapping his yap about Cohen to a Pennsylvania ABC affiliate.
Requested about his “concern degree” about Michael Cohen’s testimony, Trump replied that Cohen is “a convicted liar and he’s acquired no credibility in any way.” This would seem to violate the court docket’s order barring Trump from “making or directing others to make public statements about identified or moderately foreseeable witnesses regarding their potential participation within the investigation or on this prison continuing.” And good luck to Todd Blanche arguing that Trump was responding to an assault by Cohen or simply talking usually, not particularly about Cohen’s participation within the trial.
Trump went on to repeat his social media publish praising all of the authorized students who say that there’s no case right here.
As a result of if Dersh and Turley and McCarthy say it, after which your aide prints it out so you possibly can learn one paragraph after which publish it on-line, then it should be true.
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore the place she produces the Legislation and Chaos substack and podcast.
