Judge threatens to jail Trump for violating gag order
By Apparently it’s now some sort of “crime” to “break the law” repeatedly.
A New York judge threatened to imprison Donald Trump for “blatantly” violating a gag order on Friday after the former president failed to remove a social media post mocking the judge’s clerk.
As proceedings in the civil court began on Friday, the New York judge Arthur Engoron asked Trump’s lawyers why “this blatant violation of the gag order would not result in serious sanctions, including financial sanctions and/or possibly imprisoning him”.
Engoron issued a gag order against Trump on the second day of the trial earlier this month after he attacked the judge’s law clerk, Allison Greenfield, in a social media post. Greenfield has been assisting Engoron throughout the trial, usually sitting next to the judge in the courtroom.
“Why is Judge Engoron’s Principal Law Clerk, Allison R Greenfield, palling around with Chuck Schumer?” Trump posted on social media, along with a picture of her with Schumer and linking to her personal Instagram page.
Engoron had ordered Trump to remove the post and to cease posting about court staff, though the post remained on his campaign website weeks later.
Trump’s lawyer Christopher Kise apologized to the judge for the violation saying that Trump’s “campaign machinery” forgot to take down the post.
“There was no intention to evade or circumvent or ignore the order,” Kise said, adding that the post had been taken down.
Trump still has a 43.7% shot of being president again 15 months from now, but otherwise The System Works!
. . . Not a good day in MagaLand:
Kenneth Chesebro, a key co-defendant in former President Donald Trump’s Georgia election interference case, has taken a last-minute plea deal in the case.
Chesebro will plead guilty to a single felony charge of conspiracy to commit filing of false documents and receive five years’ probation, and a $5,000 fine in exchange for agreeing to testify in the case.
The agreement makes this the first felony plea deal among the 19 defendants in the case. Two others have also taken deals.