Judge Juan Merchan discovered Donald Trump in contempt on Tuesday for 9 gag order offenses in his New York criminal case. The state judge enforced the optimum fine of $1,000 per infraction and alerted Trump of possible imprisonment for more defiance.
While enforcing the penalty, such as it was, even Merchan acknowledged its relative weak point versus this rich accused. It was nevertheless a historical judgment versus the previous president and presumptive GOP governmental candidate.
That legendary background sets up for a potentially anticlimactic result from the newest gag order hearing, set for Thursday early morning over extra declared infractions. The reason that is that, even if Merchan were to discover more offenses, that may just yield more low-level fines. The declared offenses at problem happened before Merchan provided his judgment Tuesday.
If the judge’s prison caution in that judgment was just suggested to be used for offenses beginning after that, then one may believe that fines are the most that can come out of Thursday’s hearing. The law offers judges the alternative of fines of as much as $1,000 or an optimum of 30 days in prison (or both) for criminal contempt offenses.
Obviously, Trump was plainly on notification before Tuesday that prison was a possibility for breaching the court order. Even so, Merchan may not think about the choice a useful one heading into Thursday.
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Jordan Rubin
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog author. He was a district attorney for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro,” a book about the secret war on miracle drugs. Before he signed up with MSNBC, he was a legal press reporter for Bloomberg Law.